Sounds like the PFY had to reboot Simon there.
BOFH: We want you to know you have our full support
BOFH logo – telephone with devil's horns "NGGGGAAARRRGGGHHH!" the PFY says, slamming his mouse onto the desk several times. "Problems?" I ask. "Yes, I'm trying to get pre-sales support for a product but I'm just going round and round in the website which sends me to a Virtual Agent that can only interpret my question in …
COMMENTS
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Friday 9th February 2018 12:17 GMT wyatt
They need to speak to Rita, she'll remember the sales person and find a number for the business which will bypass support and get to the MD who'll get pre-sales to call them so they don't lose the sale.
Especially as BOFH and PFY will have kept in chocolates/brews/flowers/etc * (delete as appropriate)
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This post has been deleted by its author
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Friday 9th February 2018 13:25 GMT Prst. V.Jeltz
Re: Oh the Irony... the irony
I have been dealing with a similar system all morning - an infinitely configurable helpdesk system , that amounts to full on dev work but in a stupid GUI process map system that you cant google because virtually no one else in the world has used it.
They do have a full support site full of out of date duplicates manuals , a log a call bit and - the community.
Unlike the bofh's example answers in the community will be supplied by one dedicated and expert customer(reseller) very promptly - much quicker than asking the company themselves.
I feel guilty asking too many beginner questions of the guy, so this morning (after reading all the documentation on the bit im struggling with) decided to make the actual company do it and logged a call.
.... and all I want to do, in a normal high level language would amount to:
binVariablename = 0
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Friday 9th February 2018 12:33 GMT steelpillow
"Maybe the PFY realized the BOFH was behind the convoluted virtual agent website thing all along..."
Certainly. The value being that a certain percentage of visitors will be desperate and foolhardy enough to click the pay-for option, which takes you to the second level of exactly the same game. This time the pay-for option is a phone number, which when called of course offers only spoken menus and haphazard voice recognition sending you round in an even harder circle....
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Friday 9th February 2018 12:49 GMT Steve the Cynic
This time the pay-for option is a phone number, which when called of course offers only spoken menus and haphazard voice recognition sending you round in an even harder circle....
Back in the mid-noughts I worked for a large finance-related outfit in London, and their telephone system didn't have any of that crap. It was a matter of company pride that any phone call to the company at any time of day or night on any day of the week was answered by a human who actually worked for the company. It might be picked up by an automatic "hold" system that played an audio news feed while you waited, but you *always* got to speak to a human.
The human might be in another part of the world (Bombay, Singapore, New York, Tokyo, London, etc.) but whoever it was was an employee of the company, on site in one of the company's offices.
But speech recognition systems on telephone lines are the worst. DTMF menus are bad(1), but speech recognition systems are infinitely worse.
(1) My general habit with those is to hammer the zero, star, or tic-tac-toe key on the phone until the system gives up and just routes me to a human out of despair. It's brutally effective.
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Friday 9th February 2018 12:49 GMT Anonymous South African Coward
And it also sound like something the Bastard himself will do.
Anybody remember this episode?
You are in a twisting maze of little support options all alike.
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Friday 9th February 2018 12:57 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
Brilliant
Only too recognizable, alas. Put me in mind of the rant in the Travel Agent Sketch somehow
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Friday 9th February 2018 14:00 GMT Nick Ryan
Logitech
Sounds almost exactly like my recent experience of logitech support. I generally like their (keyboard and mice) products but had to ask a question about one of their keyboards. Which for other keyboards would have been resolvable with a product sheet or possibly even good photos, but no... Lots of stupid redirections, missing products (disparity between what was listed on their website, what was in the market available to purchase and what products their support department admitted to), stock totally unhelpful responses and lots and lots of waiting.
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Friday 9th February 2018 14:50 GMT steelpillow
Choices, choices...
You are in a long comments thread where all the best jokes have already been taken. Press:
1 to crack a bad joke
2 to comment on an existing joke
3 to tell a workplace anecdote
4 to purchase a BOFH-branded (sic) cattle prod. (Please have your PayPal credentials ready).