By Joe Barr
Originally published in August, 1993

tech support 1. That part of an organization responsible for telling customers the truth about a product and its warranty. 2. (archaic) Assistance offered by hardware or software manufacturers in installation, operation, or or repair of their product.

One night after work I stopped on the way home and bought a pair of Thomas-Conrad ARC-NET cards and Lantastic networking software. I wanted to connect my desktop machine with my BBS machine so I wouldn't have to move back and forth between the two PC's in order to read Fidonet messages or perform Sysoply functions. After dinner I took the BBS offline and began the installation. Three or four repetitions later I had really gotten the hang of the install, but still couldn't get the machines to talk to each other. It was Friday night, nearly midnight, and appeared that I was way up the bitstream without a paddle.

Naturally the store was long since locked up for the night. Lantastic's phone number in Arizona advised me to call back on Monday during normal business hours for for technical support. Then I noticed that the Thomas- Conrad documentation included a 24 hour support number. It was nearly midnight, so I didn't really expect a live technician. Much more likely I would hear a recording or possibly instructions for using a fax-back support system. Desperate, I called anyway.

Not only did a live tech answer the phone at Thomas-Conrad, he was friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable. In just about five minutes he diagnosed the problem, had me switch a few dip switch settings, and had my machines talking like two secretaries on a short break. That was my first experience with technical telephone support in the Austin area. Since then I've learned that it's big business, and an important aspect of the Austin econoscape.

The telephone support industry owes its existence to the success of the personal computer revolution. Today you can buy a 486DX2/66 at the retail department stores where you buy your underware, refrigerators, and big- screen TV, or the office supply store where you get yellow stickies, legal pads, and desk calendars. This level of availability also means that you are much more likely to buy such a machine from someone who knows less about it than you do. In the old days, when only dweebs, serious hobbyists, and professionals had personal computers you could almost always turn to the salesman assistance. Turning to the salesman in today's marketplace doesn't often lead to a satisfactory resolution of the problem. Then too, as the demographics have changed, the knowledge level of the buyer has dropped as well. Today's purchasers are construction workers, housewives, school children, and doctors. As the level of technical prowess on both sides the transaction has dropped and the volume of transactions increased, the need for round-the-clock technical support has mushroomed.

There are differences in the way manufacturers respond to this need. To cut support costs, Microsoft has done away with toll-free support for its product line. You can call an 800 number to get the number to call for help with Excel or Word for Windows, but the number you're given is direct. When I called with a question about DOS 6.0 this summer, it was on my dime. Not long after getting through, a live person got on the line with me long enough to get my DOS serial number to make sure I was eligible for support. A hold-line DJ breaks into the Muzak now and then to give estimated wait times in the various queues. When a 120 minute wait was announced for me to ask my question about DOS, I gave up. The 'free' technical support would have cost me a whole bag of dimes. Microsoft offers technical support for their latest product, Windows NT, at a cool $150 per incident, charged directly to your phone number.

Wordperfect takes a different approach. Calls are made to their 1-800 number and you don't even have to prove you own a registered owner of the product. If you have a problem with Wordperfect, you get help. Period. Lotus Development, who operates a telephone support center for Lotus 1-2-3 here in Austin, provides a toll-free support for 90 days after purchase and a 1-900 number for support after that grace period. According to Peter Green, their very personable Tech Support manager in the Austin area, the 900 number is not a profit center but simply a way to control costs beyond a reasonable period of free support.

Falling margins, stiff competition, and a listless economy have computer manufacturers everywhere micromanage technical support costs. This often leads to consumers being shuffled from one vendor to the next in search of a solution. If you have a problem with Windows and call for help, don't tell them it came preinstalled on your new IBM PS/1 - they won't help you. If you have a Netware problem on your IBM machine and call for support the first question you're going to hear is 'Did you purchase it in a red box or a blue one?' If it's red, you got it from Novell and you're going to have to call them for support.

Austin's own hardware and software manufacturers all have telephone support centers here: Dell, CompuAdd, Austin Computer, Thomas-Conrad, and Origin for example. In addition, the biggest and best names in the industry also have drawn upon our talent-rich populace to staff their own phone centers: Apple, IBM, Novell and Lotus are here too. A recent survey estimates that over 2,000 Austinites make their living answering technical support calls.

MaxServ is a local firm who specializes in telephone support, although they've only been handling PC related calls since the first of this year. For years, Sears and other major appliance vendors have called MaxServ when their technicians needed assistance or reference material on a tough repair problem. When Sears sold their Business Centers last year, they decided to use MaxServ to provide the technical support for customers and technicians that the Business Centers used to provide.

It takes a special kind of person to be a good telephone support technician. It's not enough to merely be knowledgeable about PC's and the products you are supporting. To give good tech-phone you have to be able to listen: to hear past the frustration, possibly faulty observations, or previously given bad advice ("my neighbor Joe said...") to find the real problem. You also have to have the patience of a saint and a high boiling point. Talking a neophyte user through a complete reinstall of DOS and Windows is a lengthy and tedious process, or as they say in Internetese, a 'non-trivial task.'

At MaxServ, the PC technicians first try to determine whether the caller has a hardware, software, or user problem. If it's software, they will usually help if they can rather than simply refer the customer to the appropriate vendor. If it's a user problem, they do everything they can to resolve it over the phone. When it's bad iron, they make the best determination possible about the parts at fault, order those parts, and schedule the service. Making the correct diagnosis is the hardest part of the job. You have to rely on the customer to be your hands and eyes to determine the damage. In order to do the best job possible for Sears, MaxServ technicians always try to resolve the problem on the phone and thus avoid the need to order and ship parts and schedule a repairman's time. It's amazing how many 'problems' are really user error.

The answers to some problems become so well known over time that the tech appears to the caller to be some sort of wizard having a solution in hand so quickly. IBM's PS/1, for example, has a non-intuitive design for the operation of the 5 1/4 inch diskette drive which results in a lot of calls. Instead of using a latch to lock the heads in place like every other PC manufacturer in the world, IBM decided to use a button for that task. It's very similar to the button on the 3 1/2 inch drive, but it does extra duty.

"Hello, this is Joe Blow. I just bought a new IBM PS/1 from your store and the diskette drive is busted."

"The 5 1/4 inch drive, sir?"

"Yes. All I get is an error message whenever I try to read a diskette."

"Sir, after you insert the diskette, press the button next to the drive once. Don't press it twice, it will eject the diskette. Just insert the floppy, press the button, and then try to read it."

"Well, I'll be darned! It works!"

This sort of call makes everyone happy: customer, technician, management and the repair technician. My call to Thomas-Conrad a year and a half ago was very likely similar in degree of difficulty for the tech who took the call, but that didn't matter to me. I went from being unable to use the product to being up and running. I felt that I received excellent support and would definitely buy their product again. That's really what it's all about, isn't it?