Not Always Right
This entry on notalwaysright.com is reinforcing my desire to order everything I ever want over the web so I never have to enter a store and talk to store help again. Especially a tech store. Actually, let me just reproduce the entry here for you:
Sure this has now changed with tablet PCs, but those never took off with the general population, and you still need a stylus for most of them. Little personal organizers also come with styluses. And yes, touch screens really are nothing new; I remember seeing billboards for touch-screen systems in the mid-to-late eighties when I was visiting Brussels -- an HP business system, with the big slogan "Touchez l'ecran. L'ecran responds" or something close to that because I cannot spell French -- but that system did not take over the world, the mouse-based systems did. (I do remember my mother's answer to me telling her excitedly of this new computer I had seen an ad for was of course something about greasy fingerprint. Bit of a wet blanket, but I now fully understand where she was coming from.)
To this day, every touch-activated kiosk has some form of "TOUCH HERE TO START" on the screen because else the majority of people will not know what to do, and certainly will not try touching screens in public without knowing on forehand that is a reasonable thing to do, lest they look in public as 'stupid' as a small child or cat pawing something on the screen. And even then, most kios touch screens have such bad tracking you end up looking like a moron anyway, repeatedly mashing the screen until you walk away in disgust. You know where you got to see touch screens widely deployed? All Star Trek series after the original one. As in, touch screens are Sci-Fi.
But not to this snotty store kid, who probably even rewrote this exchange to make him or herself look better. Well, one day they will be older too, and their years of experience with technology will stand in the way of "just" knowing something so "simple" it is worth being oblique and patronizing about to a customer, instead of sharing the joy of something new finally hitting the consumer market.
(X-Posted to TST.com)
Look, since the first screen came out we UI makers have spent decades telling people through the systems we designed that the screen is dead. You need a knob or buttons to tune the radio, you need to press quickly to cycle through digits in an alarm, you have to look at the remote and hit the special button to cycle through system entries for the VCR, you press the arrows on the microwave to change the cooking time or hit some timer button repeatedly, we use mice and pads and trackballs to move pointers and we are supposed to laugh at pets and small children when they try to paw moving things on the TV screen. 40 years of UI experiences right there: the screen only displays. (Then UI designers had the gall to name the paradigm of moving a mouse to make something on the screen, at least a foot away from the hand doing the moving, happen 'Direct Manipulation'.)Customer: “Hello, I just bought this iPod, and I can’t make it go.”
Me: “What’s the problem?”
Customer: “It won’t go.”
Me: “Okay, how exactly?”
Customer: “IT WON’T GO.”
Me: “Can I see your iPod?”
(The customer takes out iPod Touch and shows it to me. I turn it on and open up Safari.)
Me: “It seems to be working fine.”
(I hand it back to her. She presses the home button multiple times.)
Customer: “How did you do that? It’s not working.”
Me: “Ma’am, what kind of iPod is that?”
Customer: “iPod Touch.”
Me: “Yeah… so try TOUCHING one of the icons on the screen.”
(She does.)
Customer: “OH MY GOD, THAT IS SO COOL! YOU’RE A GENIUS!”
Me: “Yeah, well.”
Sure this has now changed with tablet PCs, but those never took off with the general population, and you still need a stylus for most of them. Little personal organizers also come with styluses. And yes, touch screens really are nothing new; I remember seeing billboards for touch-screen systems in the mid-to-late eighties when I was visiting Brussels -- an HP business system, with the big slogan "Touchez l'ecran. L'ecran responds" or something close to that because I cannot spell French -- but that system did not take over the world, the mouse-based systems did. (I do remember my mother's answer to me telling her excitedly of this new computer I had seen an ad for was of course something about greasy fingerprint. Bit of a wet blanket, but I now fully understand where she was coming from.)
To this day, every touch-activated kiosk has some form of "TOUCH HERE TO START" on the screen because else the majority of people will not know what to do, and certainly will not try touching screens in public without knowing on forehand that is a reasonable thing to do, lest they look in public as 'stupid' as a small child or cat pawing something on the screen. And even then, most kios touch screens have such bad tracking you end up looking like a moron anyway, repeatedly mashing the screen until you walk away in disgust. You know where you got to see touch screens widely deployed? All Star Trek series after the original one. As in, touch screens are Sci-Fi.
But not to this snotty store kid, who probably even rewrote this exchange to make him or herself look better. Well, one day they will be older too, and their years of experience with technology will stand in the way of "just" knowing something so "simple" it is worth being oblique and patronizing about to a customer, instead of sharing the joy of something new finally hitting the consumer market.
(X-Posted to TST.com)
One of the key aspects of front-line customer service is trying to maintain empathy with the customer. And it's NOT for the faint of heart, because by the time people get to you, they're usually very frustrated, and you're who they can reach with that.
Here's the thing I notice: not all of my users want to be "empowered." And it's the ones who *don't* want to learn their tech, who are so afraid of it, or so annoyed at being forced to use it, that wind up being the hardest to serve.
But the people who are willing and able to learn usually come to me with fewer and fewer problems over time.
So while I'm happy to be given credit for being a "genius" (and I got that from a user just last week, over something that, for me, was really simple), it's actually to my benefit to help them realize that their questions are not so dumb, their concerns not so invalid, and that they can learn some of this stuff too, enough to help themselves more.
Because then the questions they do bring me are genuinely more complex and don't feel as much like a waste of time for all of us. They usually come to me after trying their best, and although still frustrated, they don't always feel quite so powerless. Especially if I can honestly say (as I often can), "Yeah, you tried all the smart ideas, so let's see what's going on."
Shaming the user/customer into feeling like an idiot ... well, I can't say I've never done it. But in the long run, it doesn't pay very good dividends for ME, let alone THEM.
I felt bad as he explained this to her... he even apologized to her that it might be a little confusing. I was humbled by thi man's customer service mojo!
Ten years later, they finally made the trash can turn into an eject symbol if you drag something that would be ejected rather than deleted if dragged to the trash.
It's a hardware thing. The trackpad on your machine has to allow for multi-touch. Some WinPCs have a dedicated area on the trackpad (Toshibas for example) for scrolling (the extreme right side and bottom).
Yes, that's it exactly.
On the other hand it's pretty hard to believe that someone could buy an iPod Touch and somehow have missed the extravagant marketing campaign around the interface. I'm about ready to call bullshit and say the poster just made up the whole exchange.
Bananas For Vanana
Ice Cream Shop | Florida, USA
Me: “Welcome to ***, how can I help you?”
Customer: “Yes, I’d like some banana ice cream.”
Me: “Sure thing.”
(She pays and leaves. A moment later, she storms in, literally pushing people out of the way.)
Customer: “This is not what I ordered!”
Me: “I’m sorry ma’am, I’ll be happy to change that for you.”
Customer: “You better!”
Me: “So, what can I get for you?”
Customer: “Banana ice cream.”
Me: “Banana? That’s what I served you earlier. Is that not banana?”
Customer: “No. I said banana!”
Me: “Yes, banana.”
Customer:: “You taste it! It’s not banana! I said banana!
Me: “Ma’am, I’ll be happy to give you a new bowl. Perhaps, since we mix our own ice cream, the banana taste wasn’t mixed all the way through.”
Customer: “Listen, I said banana, not banana!”
Me: “…”
Customer: “BANANA BANANA BANANA!”
Me: “Banana?”
(Suddenly, her B’s turn into V’s…)
Customer: “Vanana!”
Me: “Oh my God. Vanilla?”
Customer: “Yes you dumb, b****! VANANA!”
Edit to add: Customer education is the key. If these piehole kids understood that their job isn't "customer service" but "customer education," maybe they wouldn't be so condescending. You're sharing an exciting technology, dummy, not straining your back, so be nice about it.
Edited at 2008-08-27 01:57 pm (UTC)
Very close. "Touchez l'écran. L'écran répond."
But thank the gods they finally got rid (mostly) of the "giant bank of push-button hell" machines they used to have (in LDN).
Go spend a day working in a retail store. Then let me know how well your utopian designer vision of customer/product harmony protected you from verbal abuse and having products physically thrown at you. (Yes, I've seen it happen. At the start of a conversation, no less.)
If this vignette had been written to actually start with an irate customer throwing things at the store rep, him reacting by being a dick about product names might have seemed justified. Instead it seems to start with simply a confused customer instead.
But if customers are throwing products around, they must be really disappointed by them.
Does NO ONE appreciate the value of [giving] good customer service?
In fact, it's not just bratty kids. This applies to bratty so-called adults behind the counter, too.
Edited at 2008-08-28 03:17 am (UTC)
It was a good 45 seconds of this before we resorted to trying the OnStar button again, which finally silenced it. We had a good laugh about that. It was like a scene out of a Star Trek movie. "Computer? Hello?!"
And maybe it's worth mentioning that one reason I was reluctant to try the button again was because I didn't know if it would then do some *other* thing that might show up on a bill at the end of the month. I was scared of it.