141 lines
7.1 KiB
Plaintext
141 lines
7.1 KiB
Plaintext
Subject: FW: BEFUDDLED PC USERS FLOOD HELP LINES
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Date: Wednesday, April 06, 1994 8:23AM
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> Everyone should have a copy of this. Have fun!!!
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>
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> ------------------------- Cut Here --------------------------------
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> History of the article:
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> Title: BEFUDDLED PC USERS FLOOD HELP LINES
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> >From the Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, March 1, 1994
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>
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> BEFUDDLED PC USERS FLOOD HELP LINES, AND NO QUESTION SEEMS TO BE TOO
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> BASIC
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>
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> AUSTIN, Texas - The exasperated help-line caller said she couldn't get
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> her new Dell computer to turn on. Jay Ablinger, a Dell Computer Corp.
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> technician, made sure the computer was plugged in and then asked the
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> woman what happened when she pushed the power button.
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>
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> "I've pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happens," the
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> woman replied. "Foot pedal?" the technician asked. "Yes," the woman
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> said, "this little white foot pedal with the on switch." The "foot
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> pedal," it turned out, was the computer's mouse, a hand-operated device
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> that helps to control the computer's operation.
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>
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> Personal-computer makers are discovering that it's still a low-tech
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> world out there. While they are finally having great success selling
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> PCs to households, they now have to deal with people to whom monitors
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> and disk drives are as foreign as another language.
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>
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> "It is rather mystifying to get this nice, beautiful machine and not
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> know anything about it," says Ed Shuler, a technician who helps field
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> consumer calls at Dell's headquarters here. "It's going into unfamiliar
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> territory," adds Gus Kolias, vice president of customer service and
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> training for Compaq Computer Corp. "People are looking for a comfort
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> level."
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>
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> Only two years ago, most calls to PC help lines came from techies
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> needing help on complex problems. But now, with computer sales to homes
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> exploding as new "multimedia" functions gain mass appeal, PC makers say
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> that as many as 70% of their calls come from rank novices. Partly
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> because of the volume of calls, some computer companies have started
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> charging help-line users.
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>
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> The questions are often so basic that they could have been answered by
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> opening the manual that comes with every machine. One woman called
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> Dell's toll-free line to ask how to install batteries in her laptop.
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> When told that the directions were on the first page of the manual, says
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> Steve Smith, Dell director of technical support, the woman replied
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> angrily, "I just paid $2,000 for this damn thing, and I'm not going to
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> read a book."
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>
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> Indeed, it seems that these buyers rarely refer to a manual when a
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> phone is at hand. "If there is a book and a phone and they're
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> side-by-side, the phone wins time after time," says Craig McQuilkin,
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> manager of service marketing for AST Research, Inc. in Irvine, Calif.
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> "It's a phenomenon of people wanting to talk to people."
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>
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> And do they ever. Compaq's help center in Houston, Texas, is inundated
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> by some 8,000 consumer calls a day, with inquiries like this one related
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> by technician John Wolf: "A frustrated customer called, who said her
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> brand new Contura would not work. She said she had unpacked the unit,
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> plugged it in, opened it up and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for
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> something to happen. When asked what happened when she pressed the
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> power switch, she asked, "What power switch?"
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>
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> Seemingly simple computer features baffle some users. So many people
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> have called to ask where the "any" key is when "Press Any Key" flashes
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> on the screen that Compaq is considering changing the command to "Press
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> Return Key."
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>
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> Some people can't figure out the mouse. Tamra Eagle, and AST technical
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> support supervisor, says one customer complained that her mouse was hard
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> to control with the "dust cover" on. The cover turned out to be the
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> plastic bag the mouse was packaged in. Dell technician Wayne Zieschang
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> says one of his customers held the mouse and pointed it at the screen,
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> all the while clicking madly. The customer got no response because the
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> mouse works only if it's moved over a flat surface.
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>
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> Disk drives are another bugaboo. Compaq technician Brent Sullivan says
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> a customer was having trouble reading word-processing files from his old
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> diskettes. After troubleshooting for magnets and heat failed to
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> diagnose the problem, Mr. Sullivan asked what else was being done with
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> the diskette. The customer's response: "I put a label on the diskette,
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> roll it into the typewriter..."
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>
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> At AST, another customer dutifully complied with a technician's request
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> that she send in a copy of a defective floppy disk. A letter from the
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> customer arrived a few days later, along with a Xerox copy of the floppy.
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> And at Dell, a technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy
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> back in the drive and "close the door." Asking the technician to "hold
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> on," the customer put the phone down and was heard walking over to shut
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> the door to his room. The technician meant the door to his floppy drive.
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>
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> The software inside the computer can be equally befuddling. A Dell
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> customer called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything.
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> After 40 minutes of troubleshooting, the technician discovered the man
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> was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor
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> screen and hitting the "send" key.
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>
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> Another Dell customer needed help setting up a new program, so Dell
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> technician Gary Rock referred him to the local Egghead. "Yeah, I got me
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> a couple friends," the customer replied. When told Egghead was a
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> software store, the man said, "Oh! I thought you meant for me to find a
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> couple of geeks."
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>
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> Not realizing how fragile computers can be, some people end up damaging
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> parts beyond repair. A Dell customer called to complain that his
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> keyboard no longer worked. He had cleaned it, he said, fulling up his
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> tub with soap and water and soaking his keyboard for a day, and then
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> removing all the keys and washing them individually.
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>
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> Computers make some people paranoid. A Dell technician, Morgan Vergara,
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> says he once calmed a man who became enraged because, "his computer had
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> told him he was bad and an invalid." Mr. Vergara patiently explained
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> that the computer's "bad command" and "invalid" repsonses shouldn't be
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> taken personally.
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>
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> These days PC-help technicians increasingly find themselves taking on
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> the role of amateur psychologists. Mr. Shuler, the dell technician,
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> who once whorked as a psychiatric nurse, says he defused a potential
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> domestic fight by soothingly talking a man through a computer problem
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> after the man had screamed threats at his wife and children in the
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> background.
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>
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> There are also the lonely hearts who seek out human contact, even if it
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> happens to be a computer techie. One man from New Hampshire calls Dell
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> every time he experiences a life crisis. He gets a technician to walk
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> him through some contrived problem with his computer, apparently feeling
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> uplifted by the process.
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>
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> "A lot of people was reassurance," says Mr. Shuler.
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>
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>
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> --
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> - - - - - End forwarded mail - - - - -
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>
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>
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>
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