Hi Folks.

An Eternity ago I revealed some of my experiences working in tech support... Thought I'd share something new this time.

I've been in tech support for about 6 years over 2 continents now, and the most commonly suggested joke idea I've heard is that there should be some sort of test to use the internet. Usually suggested after you get someone with less IT skills than Homer Simpson had in that episode where he became morbidly obese and wore a muumuu.

I think I may have just cracked what the perfect test should be.

Its simple, one question. "What is your full name?".

I don't know if this is a british thing or not, but I commonly get 1 word answers to this question (Smith, Jones, Windsor, etc). I can only think of two people that can be correct for - Prince and Cher.

Or I get initals "E king, Mr F Jones, Ms E Windsor). One guy I spoke to this week I had to correct twice (Can I take your full name please? F Jones. Sir I need your full name. F Jones. I'm sorry sir I need your full name. (Customer Grumbles) Frank Jones).

I mean, if you can't follow an instruction like that... what hope do I have?

Anyone else out there on the other side of the screen have any ideas what should be included in a "Test" you had to pass before using the internet?

(post not affiliated with anyone except myself, and its only affiliated with me under strict protest)

Wow I never heard of anyone complaining at costumer support about giving there name.

:D An internet test that would be grand eh!

F. Jones passed the internet test, one should never give full personal details on the internet

I hardly call giving his first and last name giving away full personal details, especially when his name is something as common as Frank Jones.

Most of the time, only the given name or surname is all you really need to communicate with tech support. The only time one's full name is really needed is for writing a form of some kind, such as when you send an object away for repair and they ask for full name and address. And that's when speaking on the phone or in person. Over the internet, keep personal details to yourself. Standard common sense and netiquette.

As for the test, I don't mind inexperienced people using the internet. What I do mind, however, is them not using common sense while on the internet. You may not know the terminology or how the internet works, but if you can get to google and use it's search function, I expect you to be able to differentiate between the desired website and the rest à la Facebook debacle some time ago.

The internet should never be closed off to anyone. Knowledge is power, bro.

I'm still waiting for my http://therobotcoop.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/lg_tab.jpg.

You know it could just be that some people are uncomfortable giving their full name to a stranger over the phone.

If, however, the support guy needs to pull up their account or something (as would be in the case of an ISP, for example), then a name is kinda necessary. For stuff like, "My phone melted when I chucked it on a bonfire", no, a name is not needed.


That is what I would assume.



Question for test: If you see a flashing, all-caps ad which says you've won hundreds of thousands of dollars, what do you do?

Kindly accept this generous gift. Surely the people offering it to me mean no harm.

I always wondered how nice it would be for a "Common Sense" quiz to be mandatory before one could play MMO's or get on XBox Live.

"When you get killed in Halo, you should ______

A. Get payback by owning him.
B. Get payback by calling the person whom killed you a [censored] and insulting his mother.
C. Tell your team to target him alone.
D. Argue with your team about how much of a pure genius you are, because mommy says so...

Most of the time tech support won't give me their full name

Why should I give them mine? I just want you to help me with my damn computer problem

Wonder what's wrong with adblockplus and noscript.

Bonus points! :trophy:

Lol digital eugenics. Well... without the genetics. Sort of.

I think a plain old pop-up for all browsers that says "Press any key to continue" is sufficient.

Time spent searching for it is time spent away from the Internet. :shrug:

This is where I don't agree. Is it to users to adapt to the tools or to the tools to adapt to users ?
IT should focus on even more usability. The core of IT is still completly dominated by nerds who think that we should bend down to Mainframe.
There are so many cultures and so many human behaviour that "What is your full name ?" is not meaningful. In some culture, the full name is almost unknown from other people and even on passport, the name is not the "real name".
My former wife full first name was Amogechukwu but on the passport, it was Ogechukwu. We did not have any birth certificate as she was born in Biaffra in 1969, in the middle of a war zone. So we just used the baptism certificate with, this time, the full name on it, as 'birth certificate'(church was a refuge while courts for birth registration were nothing but ruins). The French authorities were intelligent enough to recognize the complexity of the situation.

Internet should not require special capacity or even be restricted. It should, at the contrary, adapt to the users. Since 1994 that I have been using it, I frankly do not see a lot of improvement in the user interface on the net. 90% of the pages are just a digital translations of books.

Customer stupidity aside (of which there was a lot, but not nearly as much as people make out) the most common thing I found when I worked tech support was staff being totally inconsiderate of customers as human beings, rather than just as problems that need to be sorted out. The very fact that you refer to asking their name as an "instruction" rather than a question exemplifies this attitude perfectly.

Of course people know what their full name is; what you're encountering here isn't misunderstanding, it's reluctance. Privacy isn't just important to people because it keeps their personal details safe and protects you from identity fraud and whatever else; it's something which most people desire, to various extents, as an end in itself. Yes, you already have their full name on the system and them giving it to you isn't doing them any harm, but that doesn't change the fact that they feel uncomfortable about giving you it for perfectly valid reasons. A little consideration of that fact, along with the myriad other factors which can cause people to get hostile or cagey or whatever else on the phone, would probably make your job a lot easier.

One exercise cabin crew are often made to do in training involves imagining that every customer they serve has had a death in the family. Obviously this doesn't extend to consoling every stranger you serve over an imaginary death - but it does encourage you to be much more considerate of personal circumstances about which you know nothing.

I'm not saying you don't get some [censored], because I did as well, and they are a pain in the [censored] to deal with. But I often found if I treated them calmly and politely they quickly mellowed out. And then I often found that they'd already had bad experiences ringing us, which is why they were so anxious to begin with. The unhelpfulness and rudeness of customers is often a result of unhelpfulness and rudeness of tech support themselves (whether in the immediate past or in the customer's general experience) and it all just goes around in circles and gets worse as it continues. I can't help but think that if both sides started from a more open-minded, considerate standpoint, that a lot of this frustration could be easily avoided.