LetalisK said:
I received a job offer to be a Level 2 tech support at a contractor call center for Google and I was just wondering if anyone had any insight into what that's like, even if it's just being tech support in general. I have zero customer service or tech support experience, but I guess they liked my other credentials well enough.
Sad thing being I probably won't even accept the position in favor of a job that pays $2.50 an hour less and probably fewer hours per week, but it's a job related to my chosen career field and something I think I'll be better at and enjoy more. I'm just curious what I might be missing.
Hell, anyone been a Level 1 and later a Level 2 tech support? How different were they?
I was tech support for BT Openworld back when it was still dial-up and the gradual introduction and takeup of ADSL. It was an experience and then some. I could write a lot of anecdotes but I'm not sure how helpful they'll be, so I'll bullet point.
Cons:
- Can be quite stressful, particularly when you have stringent targets and angry customers
- Call centres have an extremely high staff turnover
- You are often required to stick to a script, process or explanation even though it's plainly not appropriate or efficient
- May not apply to all companies, but mine monitored us practically on a per-second basis. That much scrutiny isn't fun
- You only ever hear from unhappy customers who don't appreciate your support boundaries or that you can't make drastic changes to service provision or contract terms
- You'll frequently be unable to help customers whose fault lies outside of your remit, and have trouble explaining that to them
Pros:
- It can be very satisfying
- You will learn to be highly adaptable, able to visualise what customers are seeing, gain great interpersonal skills and superlative logic and problem solving skills
To be honest, there's not a great deal of difference between 1st and 2nd line support. The role is the same, the difference is in the delivery. In that regard I much prefer 2nd line. 1st line you get angry customers, one after the other without relent, with call targets. With 2nd line, you have more time and freedom, access to previous notes from the 1st agent and generally customers are happy to have your help, rather than the anger directed when they have to seek out 1st line support. Obviously the faults are tougher to diagnose and fix, or they wouldn't have made it as far as 2nd line, but that is fine too.
A handful of anecdotes from my years wearing a headset:
- I had a Russian man call who, after several minutes of both of us explaining that we didn't speak the other language, I resolved to try with his extremely limited English. When I asked him if he could click something with his mouse, he said "Mouse? No, used to be mouse. Cat. Now mouse gone". I had to disconnect his call because of how hard I was laughing.
- The text-type services for helping deaf customers is the biggest pain in the bum and quite surreal.
- Fixing a computer with the caller in a different room to the machine, or relaying orders to someone upstairs is also an interesting experience.
- Chatting with colleagues, sometimes about the customers, sometimes helping with each others faults, whilst we're both on calls with cunning use of the mute button. You'll be surprised how easily you can do this.
- Playing multiplayer Unreal Tournament on the network with the whole team, with each of us taking calls during the game.
Good luck if you do take it. It's okay for a couple of years at least, more on the rare chance they turn out to be a good company that cares about employees (unlikely, but you never know).
