The Sad State of Technical Support: Take Two
June 25th, 2005My comment about the horrible condition of technical support these days clearly struck a nerve. You readers have plenty of horror stories to relate and the situation continues to get worse. Fortunately, you aren’t locked into the manufacturer to get help. There are alternatives that may be far better for you, and it’s clear that, where market opportunities appear, smart people will try to fill them.
Most of you know the name Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus, but unless you’ve heard the news on The Tech Night Owl LIVE and elsewhere, you may not realize that he does more than write books these days. The doctor has put together a new company, Doctor Mac Consulting, which provides, at a price of course, professional caliber technical help and training covering the Mac, Mac OS X and your favorite applications. There’s also a rich and growing section at Bob’s site offering free help on common troubleshooting issues. No, the doctor and his talented crew don’t make house calls, at least not yet, but they do guarantee that if they don’t help you solve your problem, you won’t have to pay for the service.
If you live in North Texas, you can call on Dru Richman and his crew at the Mac Help Desk for Mac advice and training. This company, being regional in nature, specializes in on-site support and can also repair your Mac. Richman is one of thousands of skilled professionals who are members of the Apple Consultant’s Network. And if you’re lucky to live in a city with an Apple Store nearby, you can come by and visit Genius Bar, but the service is essentially limited to Apple hardware and software. The stores do, however, run workshops and seminars covering Adobe Photoshop and other products.
But it’s not just computer users who are forced to suffer technical support woes. Even such basic consumer electronic devices as a TV set have taken on new features that often make them difficult to install properly. You can’t just plug them in and turn them on to get the best possible picture, and the bewildering array of setup options and increasingly dense manuals do not help. So retailers are getting into the act to fill the gaps.
Best Buy, the large American chain of consumer electronics outlets, has established a network known as the “Geek Squad” that can field support calls on a 24/7 basis, provide in-store repairs and make house calls. The squad currently has a staff of 8,000 spread across the landscape, and another 4,000 will be added over the coming year. You’ll recognize the Geek Squad on the job by their fleet of custom-painted Volkswagen New Beetles.
As CompUSA expands its product line beyond personal computers and peripherals, it has also beefed up its support team, promising next-day appointments if you need a house call. In addition, a growing number of online consumer electronics dealers provide direct help via phone, so you don’t have to cope with the varying support policies of a variety of manufacturers when troubles arise.
Understand that I haven’t tested these services, so I can’t vouch for their quality and responsiveness, but it’s clear where the real fault lies, and that’s the manufacturers who continue to build products that mere mortals cannot master. What’s the advantage of having dozens of powerful features when you need a technology degree to figure out how they work? One of Apple’s big advantages is that its products tend to be easier to use than the competition, but easier does not mean easy. Despite its advantages over Windows, many parts of Mac OS X remain difficult to use. There are still instances where you are forced to enter the dark world of the command line to fix some problems, although, to be fair, there are often shareware alternatives that promise to put a friendly, accessible face on many of Mac OS X’s built-in maintenance features.
Alas, the disease of creeping complexity has spread through a variety of products. Sure, you can pretty well figure out the basics of making and receiving a call on a mobile phone in a few minutes. But navigating the setup menus for the first time can be a frightening experience, and the product manuals seldom provide any illumination.
If you want to take solace in the fact that you can just drive off in the family vehicle with little fuss or bother, think again. Auto makers have also succumbed to the feature add-on game, and you can’t always depend on just putting in the key and firing up the engine to get going. More and more vehicles, and not just the luxury models, have keyless ignition systems. You only need to have the key fob in your pocket or purse, and you can push a button to start the engine. That doesn’t seem so difficult, but take a look at the radio and climate control system and see if you can figure it all out without cracking upon the manual or calling on the dealer for help.
A few weeks ago, for example, I observed a new owner of a Mini Cooper being shown the ins and outs of this popular cult car while visiting a local dealership. I caught a few snatches of conversation here and there, and it was clear that many of the features required special training before it was safe for the new owner to be allowed on the open road. The Mini’s parent company, BMW, has become notorious for its iDrive, a computerized navigation system that goes a long way towards making even simple functions as tuning the radio a complicated chore.
Yes, it’s great to know that more and more entrepreneurs are entering the technical support game, and I wish them well. But if the companies who build sophisticated technology into their products made a good faith effort to make them user friendly, you wouldn’t need outside help to operate these contraptions.
