I’m all for advances in technology, especially when it makes a job easier, or eliminates unnecessary aspects of tedium.  And I understand concepts such as efficiency when it comes to contact centers – the more customers you can handle in a shorter period of time, the less expensive it is.

But I still haven’t had a good online chat experience.  Here’s today’s example, with an catalog company called Personal Creations:

The time between “personal shopper is joining you now” and “you are now chatting with Sarah” was a good 3 minutes.  The time between “it is probably best” and “thank you goodbye” was about 1.5 seconds.

The issues I have with this:

1. She assumes I’m looking for an approximate shipping date.  Maybe this is because she COMPLETELY IGNORED MY REQUEST.  She probably had other steamy instant messages going on with her prison pen pals in another window and I was interrupting.
2. I didn’t get to explain my issue.  Maybe she was doing her nails and only uses the mouse, no keyboard.
3. I didn’t get to complain about the bad service.  After the “chat session has ended” I couldn’t do anything – not send another line, not give feedback, not call a supervisor, nothing.  How can I rip someone a new one if they’re not there?

Thanx for nothing, Personal Creations!  We’ll see if we spend our hundreds and hundreds of holiday dollars with you next time.

Oh, and on top of that, I call the number, wait for 10 minutes and when they answer the first thing they tell me is that if I placed the order within the last two hours, I have to WAIT two hours for the order to be in their system.  I let them know that I can view the order fine on the web site, but she assures me that she can’t do anything for two hours.  Oh, and if I want to make a change, I have to call before the end of the day, because once it’s in the warehouse, there’s no changing.

I still haven’t had a single positive online support chat experience.  I’ve tried it with several companies, and I guess I still haven’t learned my lesson because I keep trying.  My brain continues in it’s annoying wondering way that maybe, just maybe, I’ve just been unlucky in the past and maybe it isn’t as bad as it seems.  Maybe some company out there has actually mastered the art of online chat support.

But I never learn.

Question for you: have you EVER had a positive chat experience with tech support or customer service?  Have you ever even tried online support?

So this week we had a Dell W4201HD plasma TV break.  We hit the power button, and the power button lights up, but the TV itself is dead.  No noises but two small clicks that all my favorite plasmas make, but pretty much, “it’s dead, Jim.”  I decide to go online and find out my warranty status (woohoo 650+ days left of “Complete Care”!). 

After I click for Technical Support, I see the option for “chat support” just taunting me, daring me to click it and try it out. 

At first, I declined it’s invitation.  I’ve been down this road before.  Like Charlie Brown and his highly-documented nemesis, Lucy Van Pelt and her football shenanigans, I’m not going to get fooled again.  It’s just a trick!  Dell offering me help in the form of canned clicks and slow responses is a ruse to waste my time and delay my call.  Because I know that if I take 20 minutes trying to chat with a non-existent person, chances are the problem will either A) go away or fix itself, B) get fixed by me in the meantime or C) become unimportant enough to take EVEN MORE TIME to get help on the phone, where I’ll end up talking to someone in India who knows no English other than “what is your case number?” and “have you tried resetting your box?”

But it KEPT BECKONING ME.  They’ve even gone to lengths to customize the portal for me:

I really wanted to click on the “Call Dell Technical Support” icon so I could get the phone number and start my lengthy phone call, but my traitorous mouse changed course and suddenly clicked on the “Chat with an expert” icon!  Oh no!  I didn’t know what to do. 

Quickly I tried to move my mouse to the little [x] in the upper right-hand corner to stop, but no, my computer joined in the mutiny and actually answered the question of “do you want to initiate a chat session for support?” question that almost made me puke.  I couldn’t believe my peripherals were against me.  I eventually had to go to my blackberry to type this blog entry because every time I started typing these facts about them, they’d visit non-work-friendly web sites and download unsavory videos and then blame *me*. 

Someone must have been watching out for me up above, however, because even though Dell offered the chat, and my mouse accepted the offer, and the computer clicked that I was sure that I wanted to enter into chat, I ended up with a “nothing” experience anyway:

PRAISE THE INTERNET GODS.

Minor note: when I called the number, it informed me that I’ll be holding for more than 10 minutes.  And every minute or so, it reminds me that I should “go online and chat with a support agent and have my problem resolved more quickly.”  This is so wrong.  For one, they shouldn’t OFFER CHAT if chat is unavailable!  On the phone or on the portal!

Oh, and when the agent answered (after 34 minutes of hold time), *I* informed *him* that “our call may be recorded for quality assurance.”  He stammered and paused, I’m sure wondering why I said that.  It feels very good to be able to record my calls – I just hit a button on my Avaya IP Phone, and the conversation is saved into my voicemail box.

And in case you’re wondering, it still took another 20 minutes to get to where I knew we’d be all along – they’re shipping a new TV to us overnight.  I mean, I should have some sort of geek credential dripping through the phone that says to the support agent “The person calling you is smarter than you.  He’s smarter than your Tier III support.  He already has done the 50 things on your checklist and 20 things NOT on your checklist.  Treat him with respect; you might learn something.”