Upon contacting their help desk, customers assume they’re paying for the time it takes to discuss the problem with the technician; research into discovering a solution to fix the problem, and, of course, the installation of the solution. For most retail technology companies, the aforementioned are true. At BHD, nothing could be further from the aforesaid truth.
During BHD technical support training, BHD technical staff is taught to make one assumption: assume it’s a technology problem and not a customer problem.
What does that mean?
The quickest way to get a customer off of the phone is to blame the customer for what is commonly called user error. User error works only when the true identity of the problem was discovered to have been an error created by the customer. But without proper investigatory practices, the technician is making an assumption. In other words, the technician doesn’t know how to fix the problem and attempts to pass blame for the problem back onto the customer. For this, the customer is billed?
BHD technicians are not concerned about user error. They are trained to investigate the problem from the technology perspective. Once the technology is investigated and shown to operate properly only then does the technician focus his attention on the use of the technology. Historically, most calls to BHD support ultimately conclude with user error. And what did the customer pay to discover a user error? Before that question can be answered, another question beckons: What if the problem is caused by faulty technology. In short order, BHD technicians fix the problem. And how much does the customer pay? Not a dime.
Researching a devilishly difficult technology problem can sometimes take weeks. Regardless, the customer does not pay for the research or the implementation of the solution. BHD sold the technology and BHD will pay for the repair of the technology.
Again, how much does a customer pay for correcting a customer error?
Like a technology error, a technician can invest large chunks of time into finding a user error and fixing it. To be exact, the customer does not pay for the research. It doesn’t matter how long it takes for the technician to investigate, create a solution and implement. “On a few occasions a BHD technician has taken days to investigate and discover user error only to bill the customer for the five minutes it took to correct the user error,” says BHD Tech Ken French. French goes onto state that those episodes are rare, due to the strength of BHD technical support and the massive knowledge base BHD techs use to assist in investigating a problem. “I would put our Retail Pro knowledge database against anyone in the world,” says French. “For the last 15 years, we’ve stored every topic and solution related to Retail Pro support. We know what we’re talking about.”