Customer Appreciation

4:47 PM March 22, 2006 (Ottawa)

Today I'd like to express my appreciation to the customer's a deal with on a daily basis, and let you all know how much your patronage means to me. I have compiled a list of common misconceptions customers have, and as a service to the international community I'd like to dispel them for you.

MYTH: You think illiteracy will not interfere with using online technical support.
REALITY: Regrettably if we can't understand you, then we haven't a hope of helping you. You might make our bloopers reel though.

MYTH: You think I care if you cancel your service.
REALITY: If you cancel your service it costs me nothing. All it means is we don't have to speak to you again. I've considered sending out thank-you cards.

MYTH: You think whining will change the nature of reality.
REALITY: I don't care if you're unhappy, I sincerely doubt the universe is any more sympathetic.

MYTH: You think that threatening to sue the company will result in us bending over backwards for you and giving you special deals.
REALITY: We are the biggest multi-national media conglomerate in the world, and we just keep getting bigger. We have an army of high-priced and experienced lawyers on retainer just twiddling their thumbs waiting for a chance to stomp on the overly optimistic pro-bono legal student that told you this was a good idea.

MYTH: We can fix any problem, with anything (computer/internet related or not).
REALITY: We have a specific field of expertise. We will help you with problems that are related to our service, and nothing else. We will not troubleshoot something that isn't supported as a favour to you. It's nothing personal, but our jobs are worth more than your happiness.

MYTH: If you complain loud enough you'll get a discount or free month.
REALITY: We don't even have access to the billing systems. We couldn't give you a discount if we wanted to, fortunately we rarely feel any desire to do so anyway.

I'm in a good mood at the moment, and I want you to actually be able to get support occasionally, so I'm going to give you some tips.

1) Error messages are important. Don't close them as soon as they pop up, we need to know what they say.
2) Lying is counterproductive. We can't help you if we don't know what is really happening.
3) Stick to the subject at hand. If you go off on a tangent and start talking about a second set of problems you're having that aren't related you can confuse the issue.
4) Don't tell us about your education, even if you think it's related. You don't know our network, we are specialists. Nobody knows more about our product than we do. I don't care if you invented the Internet, you didn't set up our network.
5) Don't complain about the English speaking ability of the previous agent you spoke to. Some of our agents do not speak English as a first language, but they're easier to understand than anyone from the southern states. Greensboro North Carolina is the worst, but you're all bad.
6) Do not give your technical support representative a nickname. We're not your friends. This is a professional service, if you can't keep our names straight then stick to calling us "Sir".


We are here to help you, but we're only human. If you don't treat us with the respect we are due we have a variety of ways making you feel our displeasure without doing anything that could actually be tracked. Red tape is always available to prevent service calls, passwords can be reset and lost with the touch of a button, at any time I can give your home address to Mormons for their next recruitment drive, and signing your e-mail address up to every gay porn list service on the net is dead simple.

Be nice, or we won't be.