Why They Call It Helldesk

While I’m often the first to rip a company for poor tech support, there is a flipside to that: these people often have to take a lot of crap (warning — the recording is loaded with cussing). Having been on the support side of the phone for a couple years, I can assure you that this is about the skill level of every caller. The extreme anger is rare, but the inability to deal with what most of us see as a simple problem is not.

And this is why the help desk is often referred to as the helldesk, and most people run away screaming after too much time manning the phones.

I think a lot of the problem stems from embarrassment. The user knows it’s probably something simple, but they have no idea how to fix it. By the time they break down and call tech support, they’re already angry and frustrated and the automated menu negotiation becomes insult to injury. Top that off with having to tell the human the same information you told the automated machine makes it worse and boom — people snap.

At the small ISP I worked for, we had several people who were relieved when they got a live person the moment they called.

Of course, we also got our fair share of people cussing out our voicemail after hours because they thought it was an automated system and we offered 24×7 support…