The title of the article I chose is Get the Help You Need. It is an article that I found in the latest issue of PC World. It is written by Jeff Bertolucci and is in the June 2001 issue.This article begins with a story about Virginia Gudgel, who is a Technical Support representative for an internet service provider. She tells how MCI Internet laid down some ground rules for handling customer support. These rules are supposed to get the customer off the phone in five minutes. Getting the customer off the phone to keep call volume down does not do the customer any good. This is an all too common story when calling technical support. Your PC, printer, or internet connection go bad, and you waste thirty minutes listening to Barry Manilows greatest hits, and once someone does answer, you get rushed off the phone by a tech who hasnt solved your problem. There are even examples of extreme cases like people who have had to wait on hold for hours and speak to ten different people before getting anywhere. PC World ran a Reliability and Service survey over the past several years of approximately 10,000 people. The most significant change was in the number of customers who never reached a satisfactory solution to their problem. In 1998, 6.6 percent of home users said their problem was never resolved. By 2000, this figure reached 8.3 percent. Over the same time period, the proportion of home users who were very satisfied with the service they received went from 62 percent in 1998 to just 49 percent in 2000. The reason for all of this bad customer service is the high cost of quality service. A vendor spends anywhere from $10 to $15 to handle a typical tech support call. To the vendors, phone support is just a money pit. With all the competition in the PC industry and the low cost of purchasing a PC, vendors are trying to cut costs to stay competitive.The low wages and high stress level of being a PC support employee has created a sho...
