Pro Tip: If you're working Tier 1 tech support, before you start reading your script to the caller, be sure to let the caller complete at least one sentence to tell you what steps he's performed and what the error message is vs. what you're thinking it is. That'll save you from a lot of grief with your boss who will ask you why the customer was screaming at you on the call recording to SHUT UP FOR A SECOND SO I CAN FINISH TELLING YOU WHAT THE PROBLEM IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They'll get more shit for going off script than they will for someone shouting at them before they did anything "wrong". It's not the fault of the person who answers the call.

The other two people I talked to in the course of fixing the problem were quite pleasant and listened and we got the root cause figured out. If they're judging Tier 1 reps solely on how they stick to the script and not how they solved the problem, that says two things: 1) this company sucks and needs to go out of business, 2) the folks that solved the problem need to watch their backs or look for new jobs.

Ok. relax. use shiboleet next time. I worked in 1 tier support for a very large univercity a long time ago. you would not believe what people called us for.
That script is really annouying for the 1-2 competent clients, but a must for the other 200+ clueless morons who call support b/c the can't plug an ethernet cable into thier laptop...

All it took was a minute of listening. If companies can't afford to listen for 60 seconds, my clients should take their money elsewhere.

Chances are if you a script, the script will make your life harder.

Pro tip: Listen, do not asume anything, just listen and think.
After Listening, paraphrase what you understood the problem is.
Only start working on it when both agreed on what the problem is.

This is a tip for life, not only for a given tier of a given role.

@mundo03 In general a good tip... but you really don't understand how tier 1 tech support works for large companies. They have a whole call centre of unskilled people who simply go down the script and do what it says. If they get to the end of the script then the issue might get escalated.

This is the key thing though: because they're unskilled, they're 100% replaceable. Imagine you're one of the people working there and you consider going off-script... you do that, and you could get fired within seconds, because there's a thousand other people who can jump in to do that job within minutes. So you either stick to the script or have the very real risk of losing your job and being unable to support yourself.

The system is not good, but imagine you're someone who works there for just a minute... what would you do?

@Zaphod65 I used to clean up the social media PR mess that this kind of rigid scripting led to. Very savvy social media customers would absolutely roast the brand over this very practice, and it would go viral quickly. It was a respected brand before they got the idea to robot-ize their customer service. Our customer service team was completely demoralized and began quitting in droves. Then they sent it all, including the social media cleanup job I had, overseas. That made it even worse because the PR effort to patch up the brand was now happening in broken English and in culturally disjointed and inappropriate ways. Stock price is now plummeting and the company is looking at breaking up and selling off.

My point with that is: Tier 1 scripting is where good customer service goes to die. It's tragic that the reps are treated this way, but ultimately it's on the company to provide better service. And this is not the way to do it.

@Zaphod65 Ibwas a supervisor om one of those call centers.
People get trained to have some skills, if the problem is too hard they can escalate.

Still, they have to listen and agree what the problem is to know is they can fix it or not.

I was tier 1 when tier 2 was somwhere else, then I supervised tier 1 and tier 2 when the time came.

I must say you are not wrong, these people have a very limited skill even after getting weekly training, we had to analyze the call topics and csat surveys to determine where they lacked..... Fucking call centers.