There is nothing i hate more than calling customer support. I tend to spend hours trying to diagnose a problem- fiddling with settings, googling, asking friends. Calling customer support as far as i am concerned is the last resort. So imagine my frustration today having to phone my employers about a problem I was having with one of our products.

I had done all my diagnosis and as far as i was concerned all I needed was to talk about it with a service rep check i hadnt missed anything obvious verify my suspicions (my diagnosis had led me to believe my device was faulty and needed replacing) and then replace the device if i was correct. Instead i was treated like a technophobe... my work colleague ignored me when i said i had done all the obvious things and just didnt seem to understand that he wasnt the only technical person on the phone. I asked him just to replace my device which wouldnt have been much of a hassle however he kept telling me indirectly about his process he had to follow before he would be able to do this...

Lets take an analogy, if a doctor turns up at a hospital and says he is having a heart attack another doctor will take action immediately. He wont sit for 20 mins running pointless tests to determine the guy is having a heart attack. Thank god my employer doesnt run a hospital or we'd be in deep trouble!!

So what can we learn from this? Understand your customer. Listen and act on what they say. Value their opinion and use them to follow a process quicker and only follow said processes if the customer needs it...