Technicians Are Standing By (the wayside)

It’s often said by people who ought to know that consumer electronics are becoming too complex for the humans they’re designed for.  The truth in this observation isn’t lost on anyone who’s stared blankly at an owner’s manual, which is to say all of us, or kept a straight face while watching a sales associate bluff his or her way through a product explanation (“hey, you can always return it.”).

Mainstream consumers have already become resigned to self assistance when shopping for CE, which is why people now spend the equivalent of two full work days researching a TV online before buying one in the store. The cost of trained, commissioned salespeople has largely been eliminated from the mainstream CE retail market. One consequence of this shift has been somewhat lower prices for consumers.  The other is that more than one in four CE products are returned to the store, most for the simple reason that consumers couldn’t get their purchase to work the way they expected.

Buying a complicated product without expert help may be frustrating, but it’s easy compared to setting one up correctly and figuring out how to use it.

Which begs the question: Is it possible for consumers to self-assist when it comes to product support? And another question: If not, where will they find the help they need?

Technical support as we know if for consumer electronics – not counting PCs, which are a different support animal altogether – is the one place left where consumers still have an expectation of knowledgeable help from a live person, whether on the phone or face to face. The role of the support technician in the “trouble ticket” is not only crucial to the frustrated consumer, but also to the manufacturer who made the product and the retailer that sold it.  Historically speaking, the tech rep, whether based in Bangor or Bangalore, serves as the point of last resort between a misbehaving product and the returns window or trash can.

Because home electronics have become so complex, support technicians now come in two flavors.  Type A is trained to support a single brand (think manufacturer help lines) and Type B attempts a more “system” oriented approach, like Geek Squad or one of the many independent specialists you can find through CEDIA or other trade organizations.

In today’s connected households, the value of support Type A is quickly becoming obsolete, almost quaint.  A customer who buys a new Sony TV and connects it to a Toshiba DVD player, Samsung audio system, Comcast cable box, Linksys media sender and Sanyo VCR won’t find much help from a Sony help line when they aren’t able to get a picture.  A manufacturer’s rep is only trained on the manufacturer’s own products. This model works fine for a camera; for a Blu-ray player, not so much.

Geek Squad would prefer you to replace, not fix. Surprised?

Support Type B – we do it all — is the direction that live support is moving toward. Unfortunately for consumers, it’s no longer free, in fact, far from it.  Even the most basic in-home service call starts at around $100, a lot of scratch for the end user, and unfortunately, not profitable for the company that sent the technician.  This is why a house call from Geek Squad, and until recently Firedog, quickly becomes less of a service visit and more of a sales pitch to buy more stuff.

Given that the average tech support rep with four years experience now makes around $15 per hour (though these wages are rising), it’s hard to visualize a national force of expert technicians that will be able to address the intricacies of HDMI handshakes, IP addressing and other mainstream tech nightmares.  It takes time to become an expert with these skills, and it costs money to train these reps.  Someone who’s genuinely good at it will eventually gravitate to better paying work.

The result of all this is that we’ve already arrived at the point where truly expert tech reps are in short supply, and the complexity of today’s typical systems may be over the head of today’s typical support representative.

To demonstrate, we’ll describe a recent service call from Cablevision, a major cable TV, Internet and telephone service provider which is theoretically able to put skilled technicians in the home as a matter or course.

A Wirewize user recently upgraded an HD cable box to a model with DVR functionality.  Cablevision gave the customer the choice of picking up the new box in person at a service center for free (self-assistance), or having a tech rep install it at a cost of $35.  Since the user was tech savvy, he opted to change the box himself for free, only to find that the new box produced a loud ground loop hum through the home theater speakers.

Ground loops are a fact of life in many A/V systems.  Solving them is a bit of a black art, but in many, if not most cases, the cable or satellite box is a primary culprit. In this instance, the problem was immediately traced to the cable box.  An in-home service call would be necessary.

The Cablevision rep showed up on time, armed with a new box.  The new box produced the same loud hum as the old one, which befuddled the rep.  Disconnecting and re-connecting wires only confirmed the box as the culprit.  The rep, trained only to get picture and sound from his company’s product, tried his best, replacing the cable wire, the in-wall cable jack and the plugs at the end of each coax connection, all to no avail.  Common ground loops were clearly beyond his training.

A call to his supervisor yielded the puzzling answer that the rep’s only responsibility was to get the Cablevision box to produce picture and sound through the TV, which would obviously negate the purpose of the surround sound system.  The rep was ready to give up.

Because the customer was experienced in these matters, he showed the tech rep how a simple transformer (on hand) would isolate the grounding from the cable line.

Zip zip zip and the noise was gone, though this slap-dash solution (shown below) could not be used permanently, as changing from 75 ohms to 300 and back again would eliminate many of the user’s digital cable channels.

This simple trick solves the ground loop, but you'll lose some channels.

The service rep was impressed with this demonstration, but unable to solve the problem he came for.  A request for a true isolation transformer –  a small accessory costing around $30 at retail – was met with a blank look, as the rep had never heard of one, never mind having one in his truck.

The impotence of this service call was naturally followed by written complaints to Cablevision, which nearly a week later, have been given no response.

Since the Wirewize user knows where to find said problem-solving accessory, the question is not so much what to do as who should pay for it.  But a less technical — read ordinary — consumer would now be faced with a major choice.  Clearly a loud ground loop buzz is not acceptable, but the cable company won’t fix it.  What to do?  Switch to another provider?

An average cable TV bill might mean $100 or more per month to the cable company.  If the customer switches to another provider, that’s $1,200 in recurring annual revenue that’s been lost.  All for lack of a small accessory part and, more importantly, some additional training for the service rep.

Whether in the long run consumers will be willing to accept the idea of support as a paid premium, rather than a freebie that comes with the product, remains to be seen.  But until those economics settle themselves, the supply of truly qualified tech support will continue to be wildly outstripped by demand, as is unfortunately the case today.

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