Part of the problem, I think, is highlighted by your statements that:
"Dr Android couldn't give a stuff about being helpful, btw. Being helpful is not what he's paid for."
and
"Well, you're not being charged for support, and you get what you pay for."
Several contentious arguments are posited by you here. The first is that Dr Android couldn't care less about being helpful (something I shall dispute) and the second is implied by you that the only reason that he would care less about being helpful would be if he was paid for it.
You make this point more explicitly in the second quote, which I would disagree with rather more vehemently.
The problem is, you don't get what you pay for. My experiences with what we'll call the "free" Help sector and the "paid-for" help sector have generally come down on the side of the "free" help providers (viz, the Interwebs).
Let's look at the "help" areas I have accessed this year that could be described as "paid-for".
1) BT. Definitely far better than it was a couple of years ago, but I found out most of the technical stuff I needed re phone line set-ups from an ex-BT Engineer who maintained his own web page.
2) Microsoft/ and/or Windows. Not a help desk as such, but help files. Almost universally worse than the guides you can find elsewhere on the web.
3) Thames Water. Always polite, but nearly always unable to help. One piece of advice (from a sub-contracted company) was badly wrong.
4) Dyno-Rod. The "paid-for" advice was wrong. So wrong that if I had taken it I would have been far worse off.
On the "free" front, there's been various posts re poker software from people where I wasn't charged for support, but I got much more than I paid for. You may not get the perpetuial courtesy, and you may not get brilliant communication skills, but you do (eventually) get someone who knows what he is talking about.
This brings me back to your first sentence, which implies that people will only be helpful if they are paid to be helpful. I don't think that this is true. I think that the "free" help community online, as a rule, does try to be helpful. That they don't have the communication skills or the ability to put themselves into "I am not an expert" thinking mode is not their fault. But if they didn't want to be helpful, then as a general rule they wouldn't post. And you can filter out the standard "it's a virus, destroy your computer and then reboot" responses without going beyond the first sentence.
When you write that "we are no longer in charge", it's clear that you have lost the corporate battle. I can empathize here, in that I went through similar difficulties when it came to my own job shortly after a big company took over the small company for whcih I had previously worked. The subscription delivery list became a farce (40% bouncebacks, because no-one was paid to go through them) and if things had carried on as they were, I wouldn't have had a publication to edit within a couple of years. So what did I do? I wrested back control of subscription delivery and of customer care. It wasn't part of my job description, and I wasn't (directly) paid for it. But I did it anyway (mainly because to do so was vital for the product's medium-term survival). I had a couple of political battles with the office that was "theoretically" in charge of these matters, and I thought that I rather impressively kicked things into touch, knowing that they would soon be forgotten about.
Now, that might not be feasible for you so to do, and I'm not sure what the answer to that is, apart from some hard intra-business lobbying. And that doesn't tend to be professional geeks' field of expertise.
Re: Dr Aardvark Peels Your Brain
Date: 2010-12-23 10:31 am (UTC)Several contentious arguments are posited by you here. The first is that Dr Android couldn't care less about being helpful (something I shall dispute) and the second is implied by you that the only reason that he would care less about being helpful would be if he was paid for it.
You make this point more explicitly in the second quote, which I would disagree with rather more vehemently.
The problem is, you don't get what you pay for. My experiences with what we'll call the "free" Help sector and the "paid-for" help sector have generally come down on the side of the "free" help providers (viz, the Interwebs).
Let's look at the "help" areas I have accessed this year that could be described as "paid-for".
1) BT. Definitely far better than it was a couple of years ago, but I found out most of the technical stuff I needed re phone line set-ups from an ex-BT Engineer who maintained his own web page.
2) Microsoft/ and/or Windows. Not a help desk as such, but help files. Almost universally worse than the guides you can find elsewhere on the web.
3) Thames Water. Always polite, but nearly always unable to help. One piece of advice (from a sub-contracted company) was badly wrong.
4) Dyno-Rod. The "paid-for" advice was wrong. So wrong that if I had taken it I would have been far worse off.
On the "free" front, there's been various posts re poker software from people where I wasn't charged for support, but I got much more than I paid for. You may not get the perpetuial courtesy, and you may not get brilliant communication skills, but you do (eventually) get someone who knows what he is talking about.
This brings me back to your first sentence, which implies that people will only be helpful if they are paid to be helpful. I don't think that this is true. I think that the "free" help community online, as a rule, does try to be helpful. That they don't have the communication skills or the ability to put themselves into "I am not an expert" thinking mode is not their fault. But if they didn't want to be helpful, then as a general rule they wouldn't post. And you can filter out the standard "it's a virus, destroy your computer and then reboot" responses without going beyond the first sentence.
When you write that "we are no longer in charge", it's clear that you have lost the corporate battle. I can empathize here, in that I went through similar difficulties when it came to my own job shortly after a big company took over the small company for whcih I had previously worked. The subscription delivery list became a farce (40% bouncebacks, because no-one was paid to go through them) and if things had carried on as they were, I wouldn't have had a publication to edit within a couple of years. So what did I do? I wrested back control of subscription delivery and of customer care. It wasn't part of my job description, and I wasn't (directly) paid for it. But I did it anyway (mainly because to do so was vital for the product's medium-term survival). I had a couple of political battles with the office that was "theoretically" in charge of these matters, and I thought that I rather impressively kicked things into touch, knowing that they would soon be forgotten about.
Now, that might not be feasible for you so to do, and I'm not sure what the answer to that is, apart from some hard intra-business lobbying. And that doesn't tend to be professional geeks' field of expertise.
PJ
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