Is Tech Support the DMV of the Business World?

What do people think of your profession? That is, what do people outside IT think about IT?

I've got several friends in corporate America. All of them hate their tech support. They find it frustrating to describe problems that are outside their field. They find it frustrating to wait for support on a simple little problem. They hate explaining the same problem to a number of people and not feeling that progress is being made.

Aside from the basic hatred of all things IT, they describe their tech support people and the tech industry generally as:

• Uninterested
• Slovenly
• Arrogant
• Know-it-all
• Socially awkward
• All male (women not welcome)
• Simplistic (rebooting solves all problems)
• Only for the young
• All about "fixing computers"
• Solve problems by just Googling them
• Loners
• Disgruntled
• and they provide horrible tech support!

Did I miss anything?

Remember, this is from people who work in very big businesses. But it certainly filters down. These perceptions permeate our culture. (See the TV show "The IT Crowd.") 

Lots of your clients probably used to be in corporate jobs, so they do have experience with that world of tech support. And they bring that bias with them. How many of those traits represent what your clients think about your tech support people? 

I know we'd like to say that that's what they used to think before they met me and my team. But how many of these are also their current stereotype of your team? Some of these perceptions are quite negative. (Some are less negative but still stereotypes.) 

Luckily, this is something you can address! The most obvious ways are to ask clients for feedback and to train your technicians on "soft stills" and your brand of service.

Most technology businesses today are both obsessed with measuring everything and horrible about collecting relevant data. A great example of this is the so-called Net Promoter Score. The NPS is sold as measuring loyalty and customer satisfaction. It's actually horrible at both of those. (See below for a more detailed video on this topic.)

The NPS simply asks, "On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [our company/product/service] to a friend or colleague?"

How likely are you to recommend Cousin Larry's Pretty Good Tech Support? This is clearly NOT a measure of satisfaction. If you ask, "How satisfied are you with their service?" or "How satisfied are you with the value you receive based on the cost of services?" you might actually get useful information about customer satisfaction. 

You might get a score of 8 on the loyalty question from a client who might theoretically refer you in the right circumstances, and yet they're not at all happy with the way your techs treat them. They're not irritated enough to leave, but they're certainly not an eight out ten for satisfaction or loyalty.

I go through all that to make the point: If you want to measure customer satisfaction, ask about customer satisfaction! Customer satisfaction cannot be measured by net promoter scores. 

And if you want to learn what your clients think about your technicians, the level of support you provide, and how accurately they think your company fits the stereotypes above, you need to ask that. I know this approach is more complicated. It takes effort and brainpower. It's hard to gather this information by pasting one sentence at the end of every service ticket.

But it has some chance of being meaningful.

This is not a small thing. Perhaps the most pervasive and easily understood stereotype about bad service is summarized in just three letters: DMV. When you refer to the DMV, everyone knows this stereotype. Even if their last several interactions have been positive, the stereotype persists.

The generic concept of the DMV conjures up beliefs about "the government" and bureaucracy. Everything is slow, it's a paperwork black hole, things get lost, the clerks are surly and very unhappy in their jobs, it's inefficient, and it's a complete waste of money.

If you read the Reddits where there are a lot of corporate IT people, they seem pretty disgruntled, short-tempered, arrogant, know-it-all, overwhelmingly male, overworked, and underpaid. They often sound like they hate their jobs, and that has to come through to their customers. It's rare that unhappy employees give happy, good service.

Other than giving consistently great service, there's not much you can do about the stereotypes employed by your clients. What you CAN do is be aware of this and address it head-on inside your company. 

I can't imagine that you're too removed from the reality of what goes on in your business, how your techs actually give service, and how they are perceived. And you need to be honest: If your techs are disgruntled, act arrogantly, or make clients feel stupid, it's your fault. You can't do anything inside the client, but you can do a lot inside your company.

As with all fixes, it begins with awareness. How do you know what your clients think? You ask them. How do you know how happy your employees are? You ask them. How do you set and maintain standards of interaction? You train them.

If your company does have a problem, you need to address both how you deliver service today and how your employees will be onboarded and trained in the future. You have to build the culture you want. You have to address problems even if you don't want to. And you need to make sure that your employees see that this topic is important to the company.

Having touched on employee disgruntlement, I can't finish without noting that the biggest contributors of employee dissatisfaction are overwork and underpay. Both of those are in the perceptions of the techs. Whatever your beliefs about objective realities of reasonable work load and good pay, you don't know what your employees think until you ask them.

As Daniel Pink reminds us, employees are motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose. When they have "enough" money (whatever that is), they are likely to stay if they feel that they have autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Furthermore, attention to these things can even lower the financial rewards that are necessary for the employees to feel that they have enough. 

I know: Addressing this issue feels like a big undertaking with no immediately tangible rewards. But that's true with many things in your life and your business. We invest in culture, training, and standard operating procedures because they make everything better - eventually.

Comments always welcome.

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re: Daniel Pink, see the book Drive. Better yet, read it.

Video on the Net Promoter Score: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVCP8bt313A

:-)