This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2007 at 3:40 am and is filed under How To. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Many of us have came across with this trouble while trying to get help from people regarding to a ‘new-face’ product that we had bought. So, we have dug up the support phone number, navigated a treacherous maze of voicemail options, and now we are trapped in the dungeon of your vendor’s support queue. The predicted wait time? Twenty minutes. Worse, the hold music is playing. We can’t do anything to improve the music, but we can turn our waiting time into something valuable. 1. Stay detached. First, use your mobile phone to make the call, anything to avoid being tethered to the wall jack near your computer. That way, you can get other stuff done while you’re waiting for a live techie. 2. Timing is everything. Call the helpline once it opens up in the morning and this is the only way I prefer more as this will put you in very short queue. But most of vendors offer 24/7 support, so avoid peak call times, such as midmorning or just after dinner. If the problem isn’t that urgent, try to use e-mail support or online chat. Or try them all, this will increase your chance to get help! 3. Be prepared. Most PC makers put the information you may need in a very inconvenient possible spot that sometime you might surrender to find it. So, before you make the call or while you are holding on the line, write down the serial number for your machine, your express service code, and your Windows product key. A picture’s worth a thousand words–especially when it comes to arcane computer error codes. When your PC goes haywire, use Print Screen and Windows Paint to capture the evidence. 4. Be even more prepared. If your machine hasn’t completely given up the ghost, reboot the darned thing to see if you can re-create the problem, taking careful notes on everything you do along the way. Write down any error messages you encounter and don’t leave out any of the technogobbledygook. This could prove invaluable if you stumble onto a talented tech rep. 5. Screen your calls. Even better, capture a low-res screenshot of every error message you get. If you don’t already have a favorite screen-capture program, use the one inside Windows: Press Shift+Print Screen, open Windows Paint, select Edit+Paste, then save the screen in your documents folder with a descriptive title, such as “Error message when trying to access My Documents.jpg.” That way, you can refer back to the screen and even e-mail it to the techie, if necessary. Read Others: |
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