offshoring

NickB

Why tech help is a no-go area for AI

The one area where AI and bots are most needed will be one of the last to be automated

How do you handle a tech crisis? Pretend it’s not happening? Shout and scream at the malfunctioning system? Break things? All of the above?

If you’re a self-sufficient person who thinks they still understand how computers work you may be tempted to crowdsource a view from the many helpful pages on the web. However, the minutes tick by while you’re reading this stuff and the minutes then become hours. Before you know it you’re in danger of making no progress with half a day already gone.

Who can help me? you wonder, suddenly realising that, if you look hard enough on your suppliers’ sites you can find a helpline number.

Help! I need someone…

I’m pretty much describing my day the other week when I found my laptop with the hard disk equivalent of a tachycardia: disk drive whirring away like crazy with near 100% disk activity. Defeated by many similar-but-not-quite scenarios on various help forums – and having fruitlessly re-set my Windows 10 installation (here’s my one bit of tech advice: do not do this unless you have no alternative) – I decided to become a case for my hardware (Dell) and software (Microsoft) suppliers to sort out.

The Dell experience was passable with a hardware expert guiding me through a diagnostic process to determine that the hard disk was functioning normally, but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth: the PC was (just!) out of warranty and extending it to cover software support for a further two years would be almost 50% of the cost of the original system last year.

Ungenerous

I declined their ungenerous offer, figuring that Microsoft may well be the culprits since I had noticed that a regular Windows update was not loading and, from a diagnostic process that we can call “gazing forlornly at the control screen”, I deduced that it was stuck in a loop of repeatedly downloading the update and failing to install it.

I came to this conclusion during the long breaks waiting for the first Microsoft techie to help me out, not aided by the remote-control software he was using to take control of my screen failing to load at his end. As the breaks in our conversation got longer and longer I suspected he was juggling several customers at once and, after a fruitless 90 minutes, rang off, had a cup of tea, and had another go.

Chat line

This time I went for the chat option. This proved to be a more effective approach and Microsoft could even pick up the earlier case given the reference number (I shouldn’t really be surprised at this simple piece of cross-channel working but I was – I’m sad that way). Whilst the earlier remote-control software still wasn’t working the agent used a different one, did a lot of techie things relatively quickly (that’s relative to me and the previous agent) using some old-style MS-DOS commands and – hey presto – update installed and disk access back to a healthier level.

So, what did I learn from this tale of woe?

1) Tech help is outcome-focused

No one asked me what I was trying to achieve when the error occurred, and this is probably one area where, as a service provider, you don’t need to understand this as it’s blindingly obvious: my desired outcome is nothing more than getting back to where I was i.e. a working PC.

2) …a high skill level is required

The problems that arrive at a Windows tech help desk are many and varied as you can tell by the profusion of solutions offered on the web for many similar-but-not-quite problems. Each implementation of Windows seems to have its own quirks, so a high level of intuition and knowledge is required to get to the root of the problem.

3) Chat beats phone every time

I have come to this conclusion following some interactions with other providers. Chat gives the process of technical help more structure and allows you to get on with something at the same time (also true for the agent). Phone demands more of your attention and is particularly frustrating in a multi-tasking agent environment.

4) AI could help, but it’s a long way off providing a substitute for the human factor

Given the multiplicity of problems and solutions it’s possible to envisage a time when machine learning could supplement a human agent, analysing possible solutions from a range of previous problems. But I doubt you’d get as rapid a response to the problem as I got (albeit on the second attempt).

Maybe a better use of deep, machine learning would be in the design and testing of Microsoft’s Windows updates to make sure they don’t cause the problem in the first place.

After all, the best way to improve technical help is to reduce the number of reasons a customer has to contact them in the first place.

NickB

Is offshoring worth it?

Locating your contact centres offshore means being very clear about what they’re good at – but doesn’t mean ignoring soft skills

Right in the middle of a day of technical stress caused by a delinquent version of Windows 10, I get a phonecall from BT, purveyor of a broadband service with a habit of dropping out at key moments. My normal empathy for anyone making a cold call from a contact centre vanished for a moment, and when the caller announced he was from BT I told him I’d been waiting for them to call, so I could complain about the quality of my broadband. Undeterred, the sales agent told me that what he was calling about could solve the problem. I did not believe him so I put him off to the following day on the assumption that I would be unlikely to hear from him again.

Somewhat to my surprise I got a call the next day, and BT’s offer of an upgrade to my broadband capacity for a small extra cost, which I accepted. It does seem to have reduced to zero the cries of “****ing broadband” echoing around the house on a regular basis.

But there was a bigger so what to the story.

As Kelvin from BT was running through his sales script for the upgrade, he mentioned that from now on I would be dealing only with UK-based contact centres. I was aware of this and so it wasn’t a surprise, but it did make me ask a more basic question…

Why do we have a problem with offshore contact centres?

I’d spent the best part of a day in contact with various centres which, although it wasn’t stated at any time, were most likely to have been non-UK operations. I’m deducing this from the names of the advisors I dealt with and the trace accents that came across. However, none of this affected the most good quality of service I received. Although a day is a long time to spend dealing with a contact centre, rebuilding a faulty Windows installation is a time-consuming process so that would have been an issue whoever I had been talking to.

In the end I had a great service from the second Microsoft person I dealt with, via a text chat and remote control of my laptop which fixed the problem, so I’m left wondering why BT would feel it was so important to stress UK-only operation when it’s possible to provide a good service – presumably at lower cost – independent of geography.

Prejudice or preference?

There’s a fine line between customers having a preference for certain types of voices on the end of the phone and a prejudice against “foreigners” (it’s something that, sadly, seems to be more prevalent in the UK these days, but that’s a different topic for a different publication). And maybe BT took a view that customer feedback told them that publicising the UK-centricity of their call centres might have positive benefits – I’m only guessing at the details.

There are circumstances when a friendly voice is what you need – for example I had a great experience from Admiral recently, talking to a Swansea-based advisor who was doing his utmost to get me the best price on renewing my car insurance. His manner throughout was both friendly and professional. We had established a rapport and, since that’s a common factor in my dealings with both Admiral and their sister company Bell, I put my business with them.

But it’s also true that I had a sufficient rapport with the Microsoft adviser via text chat. The problem here was more technical and detailed than car insurance but his choice of words helped build confidence that my problem would eventually be sorted – and it was.

What sort of chat?

The simplistic view might be that you have your voice calls handled in the UK and text interactions by an offshore centre (maybe with an intelligent bot at the front end) but I think that’s missing an opportunity to handle calls offshore with the same degree of empathy that a well-run contact centre in the UK can have. The only problem with my offshore help-desk conversation when I first called Microsoft was that they were having technical difficulties with the remote control of my laptop and the advisor clearly had too much on his plate to get back to me in time.

My sense is that when offshoring decisions are made, cost has been, by far too much, the deciding factor. Performance in the essential soft skills has been neglected – it’s an old cliché that the “soft stuff is the hard stuff” – but allowing the bean-counters to dictate performance of offshore centres versus onshore means, ultimately, that you end up spending more on your operations than you might need to and find yourself pandering to the prejudices of your customers.

It’s a grey area though, so what are your views?