I honestly feel like I’m getting better service when my support guys acknowledge the issues with their products and/or coworkers. It makes them seem more genuine and collaborative.
@@zanewolf2509 Yeah! It makes you feel like you're talking to a real person who isn't restrained in their responses to the point of having zero autonomy to actually solve your issue sooner if they know how.
I used to do support for HP years ago (2005-2007) , and back then we HAD to follow the support tree, even if we knew exactly what the problem was. Can't tell you how many times I was written up by quality control for going off script and just telling a caller what the problem is and how to fix it.
This is sadly the truth. A lot of call center jobs just need warm corpses to fill the seat and have predetermined instructions that you MUST follow, regardless of if you think you know anything. The job is just to follow instructions, get them off the call ASAP, try to prevent them from calling back and do it with a smile. Actually helping the customer out, listening to them and trying to be creative is discouraged.
From my experiences with NZXT, this is not abnormal. I found that their reps are generally very personable, knowledgeable, and enjoyable to talk to. Given how many international call/chat centers I've been forwarded too, they were a breath of fresh air
The NZXT rep badmouthing a different department in the company is not at all an unusual customer service strategy. It makes the customer believe the rep is on their side and helps put them at ease. The most common variant of this is to blame company policy or the manager with an "if it were up to me I would" when the customers request can't be done.
I agree with both @JETWTF and @F-5ENamedAki. It's a common (generally reasonably effective strat with most people), but in this specific case with the NZXT rep, it sounded genuine to me (for whatever that's worth).
I hope the NZXT guy doesn't get in trouble for this lol Even tho it's unprofessional to bad mouth their company, for the customer I think it makes the experience a bit less stressful and makes the rep more relatable
i would love if that's a strategy NZXT uses in the training they are like "yea bad mouth us it's cool makes the customer happy...just don't bad mouth bob he's crazy as f. "
I do phone tech support as part of my job duties and this video is actually pretty useful from a self-improvement perspective, seeing how certain techs avoid pitfalls that other ones fall into.
Honestly, I quite like it when Customer Service reps are a bit more human about the whole thing and randomly say things like "oh god, someone didn't put the exact model number - hold on, I can still help, just this should've been here" - it feels like they're on your side and they're trying their best to help. Even if it is airing internal process failures to one specific customer, it feels oddly reassuring to know the person I'M speaking to is also having to jump through hoops to help me.
Totally agree! Showing some humanity and emotion makes me feel so much more relaxed, and always happy to know they're not frustrated with me as the customer. Haha As soon as that guy aired his grievance (without staying on that train) I honestly felt great with the call. He is familiar with his company, and with what he is doing.
It’s all about walking people through what you’re doing. Some call centers might discourage that and tell them to put the call on a brief hold while they figure out the issue. Knowing a rep is solving an issue another rep missed is vastly more informative to who you’re helping than just putting the customer on a hold.
The problem is customer service, like many things, ends up being designed to cope with the most insane unreasonable individuals in society. Reps put callers on hold so they don't get screamed at by entitled Karens whilst they're figuring out the answer. Businesses keep internal processes and honest mistakes like missing model numbers secret because that information has been used in bad faith chargebacks and to sue them.
Lol, the CyberPower support segment was like watching a horror movie! First when Shea unscrewed the video ports and then when she started pulling the card out while bracket screw was still IN! 😂😂
I was on hold with Amazon once (after speaking to a person and they put me on hold to look into something), when my middle finger, wrapped around the edge and touching the front of my telephone, accidentally hit the hang-up button on the very edge of the front keypad. They called me back before I could even look up the number again. I was very impressed.
Little late. But, from someone working on a callcenter, the fact the hold can be about 10-15 mins on those who do not, means they don't have time to call back. Waiting 15mins means that there is no agent available and you must wait in line. So when the customer's call drops they inmediately get a new call automatically. Even if they wanted to they couldn't call you back. The whole industry is badly structured to be "productive" but they end up making hells for people that work there and that's why the reps sound angry, sad, stressed, etc. Imagine being stressed and under preassure to comply with metrics andhandling times for 48 hours a week, not to mention you can go from a call with somebody that got so stressed because of the issue with the hold or the call drop and stuff that they yell at you, to you with a new issue in 30 seconds, that conflict carries on within you for a couple of minutes at least. Worst part is the CEOs don't even think on how that ends up loosing them money overtime, thinking they are saving by using 3rd parties for the callcenter, when they are loosing clients because of the bad experiences. But it is what it is... Better go for smaller companies for better customer service, normally they don't get many calls, and if the CEO is not a cheap ass, they have more time between calls since there are more agents on idle, they can callback, they are happier and can take a bit longer with you.
From previous years they seem like a company where you pay more but get excellent service. If you just want a machine that works that's a pretty good value proposition.
For CyberPower, since they got an F here: Secret Shopper 1: Refuse to help with choosing a PC. DQ! 2: "I don't know what you need" but still got a system. Tech support went straight for the RAM almost instantly, with clear instructions on how to install RAM. 3: actually reccomended a system, but didnt solve the issue when the call DC'd. F
I've had great experiences with NZXT support. There was one support agent I actually had a genuine conversation with (outside of my issue) that I actually enjoyed. Easily a 10/10 customer service experience
Respect for the ibuypower guys, they both basically speedran the troubleshooting and fixes, and the first dude even managed to pull out the arcane wizardry of strange software workarounds.
Ngl tho I laughed my ass off when he told her to type reg edit. That shit was funny, but finding out why was even better! Great customer service for sure.
It was cool to see our app-less mobile video tool being used here to help verify the problem. More companies could've used it to make the process less painful (to watch). 😅
Yes, kudos to NZXT and HP for hopping on a video call. I maybe biased 🤣, but I would imagine it would have been helpful if they'd all go for the video call sooner than later. It would have at least reached the conclusion sooner and eliminated some fumbling around. I'm sure the customer would have appreciated the shorter call time and the next customer wouldn't have had to wait as long.
@@warrenwong It's only a matter of time honestly, it would be cool if it happened faster but these things do take time to adopt. Whether it's retraining your techs/support staff on how to use the new software or even just getting the cranky old boss to sign off on a fancy new change, the fact that NZXT and HP offer that in their service means their competitors will eventually have to offer it as well. Especially once the word spreads amongst less tech savvy folk that they had their issue fixed with a simple video call.
Holy shit, NZXT, go ahead and pat yourself on the back. What an amazing rep to provide support. As somebody that has managed tech support this guy is a friggin gem!
Same. I'm planning to buy my next build, primarily because I can't be bothered to source components on my own at this point, nor can I come up with enough spare time to build and test a PC these days. I was leaning toward NZXT for this upcoming purchase, and now I am even more so.
@@egis4500 I think if they offered a call-back option, I would give them an A+. At least then I wouldn't have to sit on hold listening to someone possibly picking up the phone.
I think the Dell one should've been A+; most Dell users are grandparents who don't know monitors need power, and probably has a higher hit rate checking the monitor & cable vs. checking for obscure issues like unseated RAM.
the problem is that the whole time they had a simple indicator that showed exactly what the problem was, so they should have gotten that out of the way first thing. If the indicator light was fine, then proceeding to troubleshoot the monitor would be fine. Troubleshooting the monitor before simply checking the light indicator was just a complete waste of time.
@@kiminimuchu__ Hear me out. While the indicator is a great first step, I still agree with Nathan. What if it is an old woman who doesn't even know what the fuck you are on about with LED lights. What if she wants to just plug it into her 1992 monitor and is lost?
@@smash461986 I work in IT for a company that has tons of young 20 something employees. They know shockingly little about computers. I’ve spoken to plenty that just had their monitor turned off and thought the computer was broken. I’ve also spoken to many who have just powered the monitor down when I asked them to shut down the computer.
My favourite thing is filling out a form with my email address, name, phone number etc on a web form, then getting a call back, in which the first thing they do is have you tell them ALL the stuff you originally typed out.
As a person who provides IT services in house for a medium sized company, this is a way to get more information about the problem, as well as evaluate any troubleshooting steps that were taken after the ticket was submitted. As a techy person it's annoying, but as the person providing support it is vital, especially if the person your helping is not very knowledgeable.
@@Jujukungfu in my experience they don't even give it to the agent - HP's web chat asks you to fill in details about the issue stating that it's for the agent to get up to speed on the issue quicker, but then just sends you into the chat and they ask you what the problem is from scratch again
NZXT could really help out themselves by having a queuing system. I don't mind waiting to get a callback for things. I'd rather wait two hours for a callback than 30 minutes on hold.
Yeah, Google have that as well - it's much easier as you can just go do something else as long as you keep your phone on you, and queuing on hold stops you from doing lots of things.
@@itskdognot to mention that hold music sucks due to audio compression, but you need some kind of "you are still on hold" indicator, and, because phones, it has to be audio based.
I had my kraken z63 pump die 10 days ago I was able to get someone on the line in less than 45 seconds at 2pm on the Thursday before thanksgiving week, so the one hour wait isn’t always there. However, they really could save themselves a lot of customer anger by just adding a callback system this should be standard in 2023. A 1 hour wait time is never acceptable for any company, but I just felt I had to say that was not the experience I had. Also, just call NZXT support line don’t bother with emails they will not respond for like 3 business days which I deem unacceptable. For anyone wondering I got a new one from the RMA yesterday and installed it today. They also were able to pull up my order just from my phone number without me having to tell them anything which was super nice especially since the order was from over a year ago.
Just gonna comment here to make sure the ltt team knows statistically how much we as subscribers love this series. Always good to see these companies held accountable for their customer service cuz its one thing you realise the value of only when you really need it.
I'd feel comfortable with NZXTs guy ngl. That feeling of an actual human helping me and being like "yeah instructions suck, I got u tho" makes me kinda confident in them
But it's not a case of "instructions suck" but "my co-workers suck and don't do their jobs" (of completing the hardware specs on the customer account). He's throwing his own company under the bus, and undermining the customer's trust in them altogether, regardless of how much confidence they might have for HIM personally. I'd worked CX Care for years and became even more cynical then he is, but I still recognize that's a no-no. "If I call back and don't get Him, apparently the other people there are crap at their jobs?" And NZXT, holy hand grenades - an HOUR on hold?!? If in my decade as a phone monkey for MULTIPLE companies I ever heard of a cx holding that long before even reaching Tier 1 support, I'd be firing off an email to my supervisor myself; probably about compensating them for their time (only time that kind of hold time happened for the US broadband ISP I worked for was when 9/11 happened, and the ISP's trunk lines for the entire New England market went through the basement of the WTC...customers understood and were pretty patient with us over that, tbh.) If your C/S department is going to these excellent lengths (iirc he stayed on the call with her and helped her through the setup process once the ram issue was fixed), you have to compensate for the the long handle times and put more bums in seats to bring down that hold time.
As a tech support person, I'm often shocked about what colleagues say to customers. We get trained on the techy bits, the talky bits however are just experience. I've been doing it for about 13 years now and it took me 3 to 5 years to actually get good at making customers do what I want them to do and stay happy while doing it.
All of these companies should have a RU-vid guide to each of the issues they are explaining - so the caller can watch how to fix/resolve their issue on a phone/tablet or even TV.
Secret shopper 1 actually had Alienware and origin PC with this solution. Problem is: Alienware is no longer available as a $1500 option since secret shopper 2. and we know origin straight up said "you're too poor for an origin pc!!!"
That would be a decent solution for a low pc information person, but a low pc info person might also get thrown if things are different in the video than what is in front of them. It might not be feasible to have a video for every PC they sell. I think the video chat option is much more robust and gives the customer more confidence.
@@Crushnaut the video call also keeps accountability and warranty, you are not doing it by yourself so they can't deny a warranty claim. if you open a video and do it by yourself things go into grey areas really fast. I am tech savy and could figure out a problem with a prebuilt quickly by myself, but I would call just so they don't void my warranty if things go wrong.
Might work out, but I'd actually make a manual of sorts. Underrated things and oh boy those things are gone. Most new components I'm like, where is the goddamn book, where is it!!!
@@SomeGuy_GRM I actually agree deeply with what you are saying. Hell, when I swapped phone companies the first rep I spoke to mangled things up so badly that it took me and a tech working together for over eight hours to get it fixed. An hour is a best case scenario as far as I am concerned based on lived experience.
I honestly don't think iBuyPower's FAQ is a bad idea at all, as long as the points are actually useful. It should probably start with a "You are in the queue for talking with someone from our support team. In the meantime, here are some common issues you can try troubleshooting on your own". It would make the wait less boring and it might even solve the issues some people are having without needing to talk to a person.
Agreed, giving the customer a minute plus of FAQs read out by a robot voice before telling them they are actually on hold is crazy. I genuinely believe its a tactic to make people hang up thinking they dont have the correct line - easing the congestion for support
It's a lot of information to listen to when only one chunk may even be useful. You could put the info behind a phone tree, but if you don't put a "talk to represenative" option upfront and make people go through the tree first then it will be frustrating. Making someone sit through basic information before putting them into the queue is not acceptable.
@@codexx7756 if you make it clear that is that it wait music, I don't think it's a problem. "All representatives are busy right now, while you wait let me give you some information that might be helpful in trouble shooting later."
I also like that it attempts to explain what different components are in a clear and uniform way. As we clearly saw with some of these calls some of the reps did a terrible job at directing the customer to what they were talking about. Disassembling the GPU in the case shouldn’t have happened. If a little prep communication can help I’m all for it. That said the techs should also just be better trained on how to communicate to non computer people.
Shea's facial expressions were a better measure of the support quality than the commentary. Instead of letter grades, the scale should have been: Shea's happy. Shea's neutral. Shea's frustrated. Shea's about to cut someone. This is an entertaining and useful video series. If I was running a tech support outfit, I'd have every new hire watch all the Secret Shopper videos on their first day.
To me anyone trying to troubleshoot by making her remove and put back anything is bad. Most people forget to even power on their screen and you want from this people to remove and put back parts inside a PC? No, just no. They could end up destroying stuff that where actually good. If you can send a support technician otherwise have her send it back and fix the issue. It is a pointless act sitting with a clueless person for hours trying to teach them something they have no idea about threw the phone. Bare in mind this gal although not some computer expert person she still is far better than your typical person that just ordered a PC online and has no idea how anything works. I mean she does work for LTT.
@@SIPEROTH This is someone who actually doesn't work for LTT and is instead a partner of someone who works at LTT they specifically grabbed someone they knew didn't know anything
Make sure Shea gets a fat-ass holiday bonus! She put up with horrible support from CP AND still had the presence of mind to hawk your wares when the opportunity presented itself. Shea gets an A+++!!!
A+ for Shea's patience with dealing with cyberpower I would have given them what for for the non-call back as they should be able to call back within 2-3mins
For a split second I imagined the 3rd rep sounded like a young upset boy waiting for his minecraft to update while trying to help his buddy download the right mods and I CANT UNHEAR IT!! D:
@@BreakOutChillerRealmy experience was good 😳 i didn’t have any issues though, but I had asked some questions in email which were responded too quickly
Shea did great here. This was an interesting Quality Assurance recording for the integrators to post mortem. It's not often you can see so well the results of the individual reps, their troubleshooting flow - or there call IVRs or hold time impacts. Also your new glassware / coffee shop set is so realistic. ;)
@@dotmd_ it can’t be; the lighting on the table is perfect and there are no artifacts around any of the foreground subjects… unless they’ve completely perfected it, I don’t see how it could be.
To be fair to hp, I know the type of people who purchase hp computers. Asking them to reseat ram is pretty damn near brain surgery for the type of customers who usually need to be told to turn on the monitor for the system to work
Its the same type of people who made my dad quit his IT tech job at American Family Insurance and begin working as a semi-truck driver for a decade instead. He got so tired of people not knowing how to turn on a dang CRT monitor that he gave up on computers.@@AusKipper1
if that's the case, why on God's green earth did they have her reseat the GPU before reseating the RAM? RAM is so much easier to do than the freaking GPU.
Shea is such a champ for this, I've been a hobby builder for 20+ years and some of these calls made me want to put my face into my monitor while jamming a fork in a power socket.
iBuyPower should make the FAQ part of their hold music or if it is, make it more obvious. "While you're waiting, here's a few common shipping issues that you may be able to resolve". This is going to help the overall customer experience by making hold times lower for people that the FAQ doesn't help. Even if you actually aren't in the queue until you listen to it, making it sound like you are is going to make it feel better overall as opposed to making it clear that you aren't waiting for someone until you listen to it.
That Cyberpower one was HARD to watch. This is why it's good to build your own PC if you're able; it's so handy being able to understand basic troubleshooting steps.
I just built my pc a couple days ago and put it into place and went to turn it on, got no display. Looked inside and my MSI motherboard had a yellow light, and I just googled “yellow light on motherboard” Got RAM not seated and checked, one of my RAM sticks was half out. Like duh. Funny to see this video popup using that as the problem.
@@sjneow Yeah. I've bought my last 2 PCs from Cyberpower because their prices are pretty comparable (actually a bit less) than buying off the shelf myself. And it's super convenient. Though I immediately completely rebuilt them as soon as I made sure there were no major issues. I have actually had issues with one of their systems before. Ended up having a bad CPU I believe after a few weeks with a computer. I don't remember anything about their support so it wasn't amazing or terrible, but I am also knowledgeable enough to build my own system so I'm not a good point to compare against.
@@DJ88Masterchief that just goes to show you that just because the info is out there and readily available doesn't mean the average person is going to be willing or have the motivation to care to look it up. most people when they make purchases expect things to just work or get a refund or exchange if it doesn't. Many get frustrated at the thought that they would have to put some effort in after spending money.
You can tell the person from NZXT knows what he's talking about and is able to effectively explain what to do. He's probably just frustrated by the untrained/lazy front-end support staff not giving him adequate information to handle the call more effectively. You are correct. He should not be airing internal issues. Waiting on hold for a hour is unacceptable, but when the problem gets resolved quickly you can almost forgive them.
The NZXT thing had me cracking up. I mean, I kinda appreciate him 'venting' about the others in the company. At the very least it shows he cares and that other people need to 'get it together'. I like it lol.
Wow Cyberpower, they have big balls and no brain to send that survey without confirmation of the issues resolved. Hard to fail harder than that, just amazing!
I've had Dominoes Pizza do that before, they somehow managed to take 2 hours to deliver some chocolate 'lavacake' and a few cans of drink when I live 3 minutes by car away. 40 minutes before they delivered I got an email asking me to rate the quality of my delivery, so obviously I gave them 1s across the board. They were so shocked and embarrassed that they asked for my info and refunded the full order, even though it did eventually get delivered. Cyberpower is doing worse than Dominoes, and thats scary.
I bet the support ticket was just closed and that's automatically sent which is bad if you closed that ticket because as far as the support rep was aware it was still broken.
To be fair, in some companies the survey is sent automatically by the system since some customer support agents refuse to send it themselves to avoid being audited. Some companies also won't let you call back the customers, the phones only work for incoming calls. At least in the places I worked for
You have NO idea how much I LOVE getting someone who is straightforward with me and just "I have no idea what they were doing, but this is what we're gonna do to resolve this". Giving extra info about how you constantly have to deal with this particular issue is just icing on the cake.
One of the best skills I was taught in my 10 years at Apple was landmarking by referencing directional information (in your upper left of the display... etc.) and to NEVER use jargon. Most of your customers aren't going to know tech jargon. Putting computer terms into layman's terms they'll more likely understand makes your job as a technician infinitely easier.
On the HP "taking forever to try opening it up" - speaking from someone who's done IT at a reasonably sized organization, agents probably have at least some script they need to follow, check some boxes, and go through certain steps even if they seem redundant else they won't be able to escalate or get other stuff done on it. We tried to avoid having users interact directly with the guts of their PCs and favoured just shipping a replacement so we could diagnose issues inhouse instead of risking people getting confused and/or breaking something.
I think LTT knows that, which is why they aren't really blaming the techs themselves. It's pretty clear for some of these that company policy is just bad. The score is not just based on the techs having the knowledge to fix the issue, but the experience as a whole.
If customer service isn't trashing on their own rigs, they're NOT trustworthy. You NEED to point that out if your customer finds an issue with your product, builds trust and keeps honesty on the table. Give kdos to the NZXT rep for going that far. I would've done the same if the PC company I work for does that to our customers. Honesty works.👍
@@jbritain Technically yes... However, I'd argue that it's actually bad for the company to do that because it only shows that the company is lazy and refuses to fix any issues which in turn will legitimately drop/tarnish their repuation and trustworthiness more a tech being somewhat frustrated with the broken system (and pointing out an issue). The real move here would be to *FIX* the issues so that the reps have nothing negative to say about it and can instead just do their jobs unimpeeded (which is a net win for the company, especially in long term). Also, businesses LOVE psychological tricks for making customers like and trust them so if anything even if its a rep as positive feelings are positive feelings so while they may not like the complaint from their own rep, if they are smart then they won't punish them for it (and, like i already said, just fix the issue instead).
@@jbritainIt is but it isn't? On the one hand in doing that you don't exactly instill confidence in the company as a whole, but on the other hand the result is also that the customer is likely to see the customer service as trustworthy and on their side, and a pleasant experience alone leaves them feeling good about the whole interaction. I'm genuinely not sure this is a bad move if it's executed correctly, which I think here it was pretty much okay.
@@squall7734 Most people, especially the types they're trying to affect, go based purely on emotions, if they come away feeling good from the experience, that's reflected in the company. If the person on the other end doesn't want to be there, you'll see the customer hating the company.
@@WidgyAinz If you hate a company simply because an employee is frustrated with policies that impede the problem solving or having to fix another employee's mistake, then I'd say that say **considerably** more about you as a person than it does for the company. It means that you have extremely unrealistic standards for companies to begin with. I would much rather have an employee be honest and unable to help than be gutted with a cold smile (or just completely ignored while I have a broken product), just saying. If this is a common occurance that leads to one hating a company, then you stop using it and find another one. People care **way** more about not getting ripped off than a dislike for a company making a mistake (intentional or not). It's the repeated nature of those mistakes that lead to hate (unless you are just an extremely judgement and hateful person to begin with, but again, that says way more about you than any company).
The problem with HP and Dell is that they have a scripted check list that they have to complete before they can just into other troubleshooting steps if the user hasn’t stated they already did all of that. Very frustrating.
to be fair, I would also assume HP and Dell especially get a LOT more calls than the other OEMs where the solution really is "the monitor isn't on" or "the monitor is set to the wrong input". If 90% of your calls is people not turning on their monitor, you probably would check that before status indicators.
@sunegraversen6492 I can confirm that. I worked for Dell pro support in 2021. There is a scripted tool that we go through each call. We would type in the symptom that you are experiencing and it would give us a troubleshooting checklist to go through. If the user tells us what troubleshooting steps they already went through it allowed us to skip to the basic steps. We would get pinged on teams if our calls took longer than 20 minutes. I averaged 40 to 50 cases a week that I was managing. I happened to be the one that would get the odd calls that took forever to complete. I would average around 20 calls in an 8 hour shift. Some were really easy as they just wanted to send the system to the depot to get troubleshooting and repairs done all at once since the on-site tech would have to call back if the parts we dispatched didn't solve the problem or a new problem showed up. Others were a nightmare.
Honestly, i feel like the first thing each support agent should ask is "what's your knowledge of identifying parts in your pc?" So they know how much hand helding is needed
32:06 As a support agent, I really agree with what he is saying. Sometimes, the internal stuff of a company can suck so much a**! He has probably worked there a long time and really started getting sick of how bad the internal processes are. Probably shouldn't say that to the customer of course🤣
Admitting when a process sucks is a great way to calm cx down. It says "we messed up, let me help you fix it." There's a lot they don't know about support but I can't really go into detail about my experience I'm sure you are aware.
They try to make these videos as short as possible but when you have over 3 hours of footage that can be a little difficult, so that likely has something to do with it
@@bsan89 After a month I worried there was something in it that they hesitated on, but to be honest, I'm glad it was delayed so it comes out with less or no issues. I think this would be a video they need to make sure is accurate given the recent issues with the channel. I'm happy to see them being accountable, and the recent videos have been much better than the quick release schedule they were on. Kudos to the channel for dotting their i's.
There's one thing we have to keep in mind when comparing the support experience - the time on hold and the whole experience - it would be different based on the time of the day and which rep you get. Some of these companies might've been at their busiest and/or we've seen their 'worst' rep, while others were called when they were basically free and we reached their best rep. Can't generalize based on a sample of one. I think this was very obvious with CyberPower in particular - the first rep with the question about HDMI vs DP sounded very experienced and I bet he would've been able to help much better than whatever Shea had to go through with the other two...
The NZXT guy just felt real, telling the customer that the infrastructure could be improved in what i think is a kinda funny manner, i would take him over everyone else
@@evomikkind of ironic really, if that happens/happened. Builders don't document properly but let's kick our GREAT tech support person out and keep the loser/lazy builder.
That girl looked so stressed dealing with some of these tech support groups......she gets the highest score in my book!! The facial expressions of agony and unyielding patience were priceless. LOL
If Ibuypower had just stated you would be transferred to a rep at the start, and then given you that troubleshooting list so you could maybe not even HAVE to wait for a rep, that would have been A+.
Yeah I think an automated troubleshooting list isn't a bad idea, but they should make it clear you're on hold for a real person beforehand (just like zito88 has said), and they need to make it speak slower and with pauses in between the different infos to not make it so hard to follow. Maybe keep it more user-level too.
There is NOTHING more infuriating on a support call then having to fight an automated phone system to tell them a code, then immediately having to tell a tech that code it took your 4 attempts to get the automated system to recognize.
I instantly love the people in customer service when they trash talk their co workers, it makes me feel like I'm talking to a real person and not a fake peppy everything's rainbows support agent.
CyberpowerPC is honestly an embarrassment to the entire S.I. industry and should be seriously ashamed of themselves. Not only was this painful to watch as a viewer, but the agent sounded like she didn't want to be there, which tells me that that place is probably a nightmare to work for. The sheer fact they had the audacity to leave Shay hanging w/ a defunct computer at the time of the second call drop and send a survey rather than a follow up w/ RMA instructions is appalling.
it is worth noting a lot of systems nowadays will send you an NPS survey based on the fact your account was accessed, so its automated and not sent by the rep(s) that didnt call her back fwiw. not defending anyone, but thats how a lot of companies in a lot of sectors work tbh.
...and to be fair, if they're going to send out those customer satisfaction surveys, they better be sending them to everyone and not just the satisfied customers. That'll just end up skewing the results and projecting a dishonestly positive result to whoever is in charge of improving the customer support process. Although not following up afterwards was definitely awful.
A long time ago my dad had to get a company Thinkpad warrantied because the hard drive was dying. The technician that showed up was like “well the drive technically still works”, proceeded to whack the drive several times against a table, and said “okay, now it’s broken, we can get this replaced” Also why does Nick look like Craig Benzine at 0:05?
the technician is already here, and the drive is dying. What the technician did probably is just to save another trip when the drive actually die and needs to be replaced. still a fun thing to see tho lol
@@rainedrop14 The guy probably knew he if he tried to repair it he would be back in a few weeks to repair it again but company policy states he has to try and repair all products without using new hardware first.
From Call Center experience most surveys are only triggered if the rep hangs up the call or if they closed the customer case. Depending on Cyber Power’s phone system, the last agent most likely hung up on purpose…
Whats painful here is that even after the wait the first Cyberpower rep was SLAYING it, then his co-workers ruined it. Don't wanna put it on him that they don't have a callback policy as that's probably above his head.
Not quite the same but I did work a little time for a call center company as a Metro(T-Mobile) support. And its more or less. call ends new call comes in. No callbacks
Definitely a policy issue on the company. Either way the first rep from Cyber Power needs to go work for iBuyPower and then we can fail the rest accordingly.
@@aether6293I worked for an internet tech support company and it was the same. Call to call to call, I could only callback if by chance there was no one in the queue at that moment (which was incredibly rare).
@@aether6293same for some european telco company. As I ended up in sales at that outsourcer managing their contract, it boiled down to them saving less than 1 euro cent per call when factoring in dissatisfaction/retention and other negative effects vs the cost of the outgoing call. A cost that they absolutely where not willing to take.
I truly feel sorry for Shae. The amount of torment she had to go through. Most people would go mental. And you see her going insane slowly. Absolute angel of a person. Staying this calm (as far as we see)
ibuypower... wow... I can't remember ever calling any national or global company and getting through their horrible menus in under 10 minutes let alone actually talking to a real human being and getting my issue resolved in that time. that is actually, truly impressive customer service.
I think the 59-minute hold with NZXT was likely because they were super busy, and their tech support team might be smaller than the sales team. But overall, I'm really impressed with NZXT support. The guy she talked to knew his stuff about computers, instantly recognized the orange light as DDR/RAM, explained about RAM slots and clips, and even suggested putting the PC on its side to make things easier. He also had her try using just one RAM stick to check if any were dead. In my opinion, it's a solid 9/10.
Good support doesn't outweigh having to sit there and wait for an hour. If their wait times are that long for whatever reason, they should take customer's phone numbers, give an estimated time and call them back. They should also have a procedure for quickly getting back in touch with the customer should the call drop - because having to call back and waiting for yet _another_ hour should that happens is enough to drive most sane poeple crazy. Or just get more support staff, like they say in the video. Either way, an hour on hold is terrible service, even if the rep at the end of it is god tier.
If NZXT's technical support team is smaller than sales because they only hire and train good knowledgable support reps so they are all as good as that one. Then I don't think they sould "just get more" because the attempt to grow the team too reduce the wait could very likely require a compromise that lowers that quality. However, they should definately make it easier on the customer. If they make it clear that their technical support is staffed by knowledgable technicians and that agent is reserved for the customer until the call is finished. Then asll they really need to do is default to offering a call back, make sure the agent can reconnect with the customer, and ensure orders have proper details on the parts.
Support is smaller in just about every company because they don't directly generate revenue, their effect is harder to measure financially, even if bad support can ruin a product for a lifetime in a person's eye, the financiers don't care. Support is first one to get cut if money is tight and training is often minimal.
@@danfr I will say their email support is top notch. Just had an AIO from them die randomly and their email responses were pretty fast and were really quick with sending the shipping label and getting me a new unit
@@CimliteI'm gonna argue against that. I will take good support that can fix your issue any day over short wait but a dude who doesn't fucking know anything.
Going forward I would love to see "unexpected disconnection" as a standard part of the tech support portion of secret shopper. I would love to see how everyone handles a disconnect.
This may be my favorite series in LTT history. I’m always stoked when secret shopper comes out. Also it feels like some companies have definitely stepped up their game, maybe due to the pressure from secret shopper. This needs to continue being an annual thing.
They wanted it to be annual from the start according to Linus on WAN Show, but it's a lot of work to produce something like this so it's turned into every 2-3 years.
@@lulucukipofa7411Scrapyard Wars is fucking great, but I loved the whole room water cooling series. At least years later I got Server rack pool cooling lol.
I work on the technical customer support line of an isp in my country. Apart from the learning experience for me, there's. A lot in this video that applies for learning in the whole way of customer support within the company. I'll take some notes to share to our quality department as well as sharing this video in our social channels. Good video and amazing seeing my colleagues in different branches do their job❤
Fyi: we don't help with the exact same issues however we do work structurally similar. You have your "opening+verification" then comes "analysis" followed by "solution" and finsinging up with "summary/farewells". I'd love if we'd had more freedom to call back/email customers but due to the differences between the type of support it is somewhat explainable that we are very VERY limited in this.
after a support call, an automated email to customer with a 4 digit code that could be input when calling the hotline again and send you back to the rep you just talked to would be great
Loved this video, wish there was more for the repair aspect. linus said it best "he's only getting a better result because the user is evolving" I think a really good idea would be to get a wheel of reasonable problems that could happen then spin it for each company. That way it doesn't give a disadvantage based on who goes first.
The Dell LED diagnostics are so useful yet so overlooked by even their reps. I can't count how many times I called them only to realise that I could have completely skipped the call by just going to the diagnostics table on the web. On some older optiplexes there are 4 LEDs with a mask of digits 1-4 that light up in various combinations, on newer ones you get white/amber like what Shae had. It also applies to laptops and I have seen it on their servers too (but more comprehensive of course as you sometimes even have a smart diagnostic diagram/screen that you pull out and it shows what is wrong on it).
my only complaint about the diagnostic LED codes for (modern) dell systems is that they can be *about as far from specific as possible* without just going "well, it's fucked". And yet some other codes are SUPER specific!
To be fair to the rep. Dell will get the most computer illiterate customers on the planet. So I don't blame him for trying the basic things before going to post codes.
I feel like NZXT could be an A+ if they went to an appointment based support help. Like, instead of waiting an hour, they could do an appointment based call and, say that they are delayed by a previous call, give them a heads up if they previous call is taking too long to troubleshoot.
Or just do a callback instead of a hold queue, like Google do. It means you don't have to sit there listening to the music, you can just keep your phone on you and wait for it to ring while you do the housework or watch TV.
If this hasn't already been mentioned, I would love for Shae, or whoever will be the next Secret Shopper give their own rating. At the end of the day, the average consumer won't have Linus' opinion on how good service is. If the secret shopper feels satisfied, or gives a higher rating, that deserves to be acknowledged.
On the IBuyPower one, the automated tips is a good idea, but it should just tell you "please hold for a rep" before it starts talking so you don't feel like you're getting forced to wait through this thing first. I would maybe have it say some different tips there though, like to look for POST codes/error messages or something that might help with the troubleshooting process once the rep answers.
13:23 Hey linus, the keys HP support is telling her to press are commonly used to load the BIOS backup. This is useful incase the user initiated a BIOS update and the computer turned off mid update. If i had to guess, they're probably doing it because BIOS issues are hard to locate. It's usually just easier for a user to try to restore the bios backup rather than take apart the PC just incase a scenaero happened where the BIOS was corrupted. Edit: lmao that tech did not want her messing with the insides at all.
I always love calling into support and having some automated system ask me for a bunch of information that is seemingly IMMEDIATELY discarded once a human answers, who then asks me for all the same information again. WHY!??!?
From someone who once did tech support, I really do think Linus and team need to ask one the suppliers reviewed here if they can work a day in there tech support centre to see how many (blind) user issues they'll be able to solve using the suppliers native support tools and flows. Would like to see that
This is still one of my favorite series, making at home computer and maintenance user friendly and consumer friendly. I think this really highlights a huge area of improvements to be made for computer companies. I feel if people were able to feel more confident with troubleshooting and basic maintenance and fixes we could end up to reducing the amount of e-waste that is around.
Loved this video, the Cyberpower segment alone was *Chefs kiss*. Also, Shae did amazing, natural screen presence or if she's done something like it before. Hope she shows up more! Would love a segment with her and her husband lol, the Tech Upgrade their banter was amazing.
Ibuypower could easily mitigate their FAQ problem by saying up front "while you wait for a rep, let me give you some information that might be helpful in trouble shooting later"
What the NZXT guy did is actually taught in business school! It humanize you while also putting yourself and the customer on the same side against an imaginary common enemy. Then when you tell them you have a trick to overcome the barriers set by the "enemy", it sets you as the hero and makes the customer confident that his problems will be resolved and that you are going above and beyond for them! And it's not even bad for the brand reputation, since most people understand there are some bad apples in every companies, but the fact that the customer service personnel is helpful enough to overcome the bad apples actually makes the brand look even better!
When Shay pulled out a Non LTT Screwdriver I laughed so hard because I knew in 0.5 seconds Linus was going to get pissed hahaha Hire NZXT guy to work at LTT, y'know.. like Linus did
Conclusions I am getting from this is that these companies should only use motherboards with error codes (I know most do, but there are without) and train their staff to actively ask for them straight away. That is like a 1-2 combo that will immediately improve efficiency of troubleshooting.
I can't fault the Dell guy for doing the obvious first before going to post codes. With Dell customers 9 out of 10 times it will be the monitor not being plugged in.
@@4203105 I wouldn't quite fault him either, but when the box has post codes to read, or in that 'case' a light sequence, it really should be the first thing to check.
Man she deserves a bonus for having to go through this. My least favorite thing is calling customer service let alone going through all of her situations.
things i want on a support call: -estimate of wait time -callback option -a human receptionist that just puts me into the right department -for any hardware issue a videocall or visual descriptions (manuals are a thing)
I love that NZXT tech support, saying out loud there's an issue might look bad but you know for sure he care about the jobs being done right. I can see him ranting with a manager for better process and user experience
@@thecremeeggyeah, it make the tech closer to the customer since the customer might already be angry and could put that anger towards the tech, the tech doing that helps him redirect that anger towards someone else and may even improve the customer mood.
@@thecremeegg I do it all the time as well as Internal help desk. It usually lets the person know at minimum I am digging into the issue and at most I know what I'm doing. If they are frustrated they often end up not being frustrated anymore.
I love these series, thank you so much Linus and team for make it possible, I believe these videos push companies to do better. They are good for everyone and they are very entertaining. I think all those companies should have their own videos for addressing each of these possible problems, at least for the easiest ones. So clients may solve it by their own with exact instructions and visual examples. I mean, this could save a lot of time on calls, and avoid potential damage by the client.
