Re: [SAGE] A Nightmare in Dedicated Server Land

[Elizabeth Zwicky <zwicky@otoh.org>]

On Sep 15, 2004, at 12:23 PM, Glenn Sieb wrote:
>
> He wouldn't *let* you talk to the manager??
>
> That boggles my mind. Basically that says to me "I'm wrong. I know I'm
> wrong. So to prove that I have power over you I won't let you talk to
> the guy who signs my timesheet."

To me it says "I know I'm right". Note that the tech support guy is, 
technically, right; they have an email support contract, they're 
supposed to send email. And he's a tech support guy, so he believes 
following the rules is the important part. So if he's right, and the 
customer's wrong, why should he let the customer break the rules even 
more? This is the sort of thing that causes people to put up "The 
customer is always right" signs. Not that the customer is always right, 
but that some employees need a lot of help with the idea that sometimes 
the customer is more important than the rules. The thing to do in this 
situation is to hang up and call your salesman, who will have no 
problem at all with this concept. Quite the contrary.

Help desks with non-escalation policies are not uncommon, mostly 
because people abuse escalation. Although larger, cleverer ones have 
fake escalation (if you ask for a manager in round one you just get a 
different operator).

	Elizabeth