SCHNEIDER'S WORLDThe Receiving End In the seminar work I do, I define "Frustration" as "Respon-sibility without Authority." From a management perspective, I'm not sure there is a better definition.
Once you leave the realm of leadership or management, however, frustration can take on an unlimited number of shapes and forms - most of them quite ugly and uncomfortable. When that frustration flows out of a technology issue, it can easily take you to the edge of your own emotional stability without the slightest hope of return. I know. I'm fully embroiled in such a test even as I write this and based upon the events of the past three or four weeks, there is no longer any chance for a positive outcome.
The only positive that may come out of such a nightmare is empathy: a heightened awareness of what it must be like for a "civilian" to come crashing through the ceiling into your world or mine.
My ordeal began in the most benign possible way: with a gift. My wife decided it was time to replace our current television with a new, larger flat-screen TV. Believe me, when she suggested it was time for a new "Home Entertainment Center" no one was more surprised than I was. But, truthfully, I wasn't going to argue, at least not very hard.
The only positive that may come out of such a nightmare is empathy.The next thing I knew we were both drowning in a sea of acronyms: more acronyms than you could put together with a case of alphabet soup. Just about the time I was about to give up and give in to the first individual willing to rescue me from the land of the unknowing, the home of the ignorant ... I was saved.
While bemoaning my fate - I know, everyone should have the "bad luck" of a wife who insists on purchasing a new home entertainment center just before the Super Bowl and the start of the Winter Olympics - my "Radio Guy" heard me complaining about the pain and frustration of having to pick the "right" system in an area in which you are the technological innocent.
He is someone I have come to depend on over the years; someone I trust implicitly. Fortunately, he's not shy and started asking questions that could only come from someone with a deep knowledge of such things. It turns out that he both sells and installs the same equipment I have been agonizing over purchasing.
I was looking for the absolution of responsibility: someone to make the "right" decisions for me in an area in which I am the novice. He was more than willing to do that and more once he knew exactly what my wife was looking for. A week later we had a new television, a new receiver, a new DVD player and speakers everywhere. The installation was immaculate and both the picture and sound quality excellent beyond our wildest expectations. Everything was perfect ... with one exception. We had to upgrade our current satellite receiver in order to receive the High Definition (HD) transmission.
It meant a new dish, a new HD-DVR and a change in service, but the friendly folks at our satellite provider ensured us it would be a piece of cake as long as I didn't run out of money. They were right. But, what they failed to tell us was that the cake was stale.
The installation was scheduled for Sunday, a week before the Super Bowl. The technician finished by assuring us that everything was perfect, a word I use reluctantly when it comes to any kind of technology issue. But, he said he had checked everything and rode off into the sunset. The set was working flawlessly when he left, but a few hours later none of the HD channels were working.
Everything was perfect ... with one exception.I called the technical support line, was transferred into the land of bad music and blatant propaganda until I got my first "technician" and started down the lonely road that is telephone support today. Luckily for me, most of the people I have talked to over the past three weeks - that's right, three weeks - were able to communicate well enough. That isn't to say they knew what they were talking about; they just were able to express themselves well enough for me to realize that they didn't know what they were talking about.
We did everything we could to ensure the equipment was working properly. In the process, I told them that my wife had noticed that the satellite worked from 8:30 or 9:30 in the morning until about four in the afternoon and then took the rest of the evening off. I'm not sure they heard me. I'm not even sure they were even listening.
They sent out another technician who arrived at about 10 o'clock in the morning two days later. He checked everything the first technician had done, made a couple of adjustments, replaced a couple of cables and connectors and assured me everything was perfect. There was that word again ...
When I got home from work that evening, the first thing I did was turn on the television. No High Definition - the system was still "Searching for Satellite."
I called again. More bad music and more lies about service quality. I
related my tale of woe and told anyone who would listen how everything seemed to work fine during the day, but failed at just about the same time every evening. They went through the entire process of checking signal strength, satellite position, software and hardware all over again. The technician finally gave up and scheduled another service call - our third.
Only this service call was for the Thursday after Super Bowl Sunday.
The third technician arrived mid-morning and went over everything the first and second technicians had done. We told him about our High Def hours: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. But, once again, there was no interest. He pulled up carpeting and installed more new cable, adjusted this and set that. And, when he left everything was working. But, then again, everything was working when he got there.
Can you guess what the first thing I did as I walked in the door the next evening? I turned on the television and reached for the telephone. It was past four o'clock and - and you guessed it - no signal. I called technical support ... again. The young lady I got on the phone actually seemed to know what she was talking about. She was everything she needed to be. So much so, she was able to get me to do something I really didn't want to do. She convinced me to remove my "regular" DVR from the bedroom, remove the HD DVR from the living room, and switch one with the other to help isolate the problem.
Exchange with a known-good part... There are only two problems with using "known good" parts as a diagnostic tool, especially when it comes to electronic components: One, it doesn't always work. And, two, it's dangerous.I switched the units and watched quietly as the smoke escaped. I don't know about you, but the one thing I've learned about all things electrical is that the smoke is what makes everything work and that once you let the smoke out, well, you're doomed.
We let enough smoke out to ensure there would be no television in the bedroom that night - no television in the bedroom until we returned to the bedroom with another "known-good part."
I was starting to get just a little cranky about the whole situation. In fact, I had actually made the journey from "cranky" to "surly" somewhere between the second and third service calls and was moving rapidly from "surly" to "militant."
I had left the land of First Level support a long time ago and was living in the land of Second Level, which didn't really seem that much more sophisticated. I had no interest in proceeding any higher. I called for a supervisor and told him there would be no more service calls until they were willing to send someone to the house when the problem was "live." I explained that I had more than a little experience with "intermittents" myself and could easily empathize. What I couldn't understand was why they were so reluctant to send someone to the house when the system was actually "symptomizing," especially since the failure was so absolutely predictable.
What would you give to have an intermittent drivability problem that appeared and disappeared with military precision every morning and every evening?
The supervisor finally gave in and scheduled the service call four days later at 4:30 p.m., and, lo and behold, the tech saw it, found it and fixed it almost immediately.
There was one amusing component to all this aggravation, frustration and expense. From the beginning, my wife kept asking if it could be the HD-DVR, while I kept asking if it could be a malfunction in the dish itself. The more we brought it up, the more the techs and support people dismissed our concerns, insisting that it couldn't be either.
In the end, the last laugh was on them. Well, OK, the last laugh was on us because we were the ones suffering through the problem without the use of that which we had paid for. But, ultimately, we were right and they were wrong. Both the receiver and the LNRs turned out to be defective.
I could have written about this just to cast the demons out and never submitted it. But, there are too many parallels between our world and the world I just left to ignore. Too many parallels and really, too many lessons.
The first lesson is all about empathy: a sensitivity and an awareness that flows out of knowing what it's like to be on the "unenlightened" side of a technology problem or any problem for that matter. The second could have something to do with arrogance, or at least the kind of misdirected confidence that prevents you from listening to the one person who just may know more about the failure than you do - perhaps the only person more interested in solving the problem than you are. A third would be "response-ability," the willingness and ability to respond to customer wants, needs and expectations. And, a fourth might have something to do with procedure: a set way of approaching a diagnostic problem, something sadly absent from the service calls and telephone conversations I witnessed or was involved in.
I'm sure there are more, but I think those four might provide a good start, the kind of start that could result in a whole new level of customer support: real support. A level of support missing from most areas of business today. A level of support almost guaranteed to show you care. A level of support guaranteed to bring customers back.
