Thank You For Choosing Bell Sympatico
My name is (legion). How may I help you?When you finally get through to Bell Sympatico after turning cartwheels of button-plugging, and listening interminably to the most abominable music piped through your receiver while "waiting your turn", it's with a great sigh of relief that you hear those words. Your problems will be solved. Expeditiously, summarily and to your great satisfaction. We are here, dear subscribers, to deliver you from your misery.
Background: my computer pooped out, we bought a new one. Needing to be set up, to be programmed. Natch. I had no problems whatever setting the parameters to go on line and achieved Internet entry with ease. But what the hell? Why wasn't I able to successfully log on to Outlook Express? After all, this new CPU came with the latest available version of Windows XP Home Edition.
I tried, oh I tried mightily. I logged on to Yahoo and set up an email account there, did the same with hotmail, which one of the sympathetic Sympatico call center enablers suggested. And found both miserably wanting. I hated, detested the advertisements, the pop-ups, the news coverage, the total infringement of my sense of serenity when faced with a blank screen offering nothing but my allotted daily emails. Moreover, although I set up the email accounts I had no more success receiving and sending than I did with Outlook Express.
Bloody damn! Yes, I went to mail2web.com and used that awkward medium to receive and respond and get rid of emails, but it's cumbersome, slow, inefficient, and no match for the excellence of Outlook Express. Doom. Gloom. All was most definitely not right with my world.
Dear, dear, all of the above and I haven't yet really mentioned the inestimable assistance I received from the magical advisers and fixer-uppers at Bell Sympatico. On three separate occasions when I dialled "help!" I was introduced via the telephone to three young male East Indian technical assistants.
I am aware that increasingly often call centres are being set up in India where a young tech-savvy and proficient force of intelligent people are embracing the industry. Including taking voice and language-inflection lessons the better to deal with the North American public seeking assistance.
So here were these smooth-voiced, eagerly helpful young men questioning me with respect to my problemss. And here was I attempting to convey to them the steps I had taken, their obvious inadequacy, and my growing frustration. And each time a comment was made I would say: "pardon?". And when it came to conveying vital information to authenticate who I was they would say: "pardon?".
I would repeat, they would repeat. Letters and numerals sounded completely different to them and to me, and we resorted to the age-old connection of letters with words to ensure we were completely understood. Not - for words and names which I might consider common were occasionally unknown to them. Things began to get a little dicey as I would exaggeratedly emphasize letters attempting to ensure they "got" the right ones, and they became a little testy with their inability to understand my clumsy attempts with the English language.
But their general good nature persevered, as did their cheerfulness and assurances to me that they had everything well in hand and would solve my problems - not to worry! One of these really truly nice guys gave me a new password; my beloved old password, a combination of some of the letters of my name and two easy-to-remember numerals were to go: instead I was given - write this down, now and remember it! - a fourteen letter-and-numeral combination - oh gawd!
Another of my cheerful helpers spent a full half hour on the telephone with me, long after he felt he had solved my problem, doing his utmost cheery-salesman job to have me take out a service for my computer which I did not want, had no intention of acquiring and paying for, and couldn't find it in my heart to deny him the pleasure of pressuring me for. Until my husband came upstairs and asked what was going on, divined what was happening and said to me "just say no!". Hey, it worked.
The third in the East Indian triumvirate of helpful guidance led me, like his brethren, through countless steps of deletion, re-entering data and promises that this would really work. And if, perchance it did not, then I could be assured that there was something drastically wrong with my software and I would then be well advised to contact the software people and have them solve my problem. I thanked them all and every one effusively, genuinely touched by their efforts on my behalf.
And in each and every case when I once again, trepidatiously, but hopefully, went through the procedure of logging onto the Internet and then to Outlook Express was disappointed anew as the programme stubbornly refused my blandishments and advances, my promises to use it carefully, thankfully, with full credit to its brilliant design and potential. To no avail.
Since I have dial-up service I had to take it on faith that these young tech-savvy, confident Sir Galahads knew whereof they spoke, and that their machinations on my behalf, their instructions to me to obey their orders which did indeed instill in me confidence in their analytical abilities, would result in that long-anticipated success. That !finally! Outlook Express, thanks to their deep understanding of the requirements of the programme and enabling me to surmount the trifling difficulties that had been thrown up to prevent my use of the programme, would be over.
Alas, not to be. I felt completely dragged out, mentally fatigued past endurance, and vowed that I would next day contact Hewlett Packard and have them coax my new Compaq through the hoops because it was they who had programmed this computer with Microsoft's Windows XP Home Edition which refused to grant me entry and use of Outlook Express.
Next day there was I - when I suddenly decided I would try again, give Sympatico another opportunity to restore my lost confidence. Again the logging-in rigmarole and the wait, enjoying someone's diabolical idea of music. Aha, this time a young woman's voice introduced herself and enquired what my problem might be. She listened quietly, patiently, as I outlined my grievance with my new computer.
Then that sweet voice advised me she would take me through a series of programming steps that she felt certain would solve my seemingly insolvable dilemma. And so she did; returning back to basics, those very same delete-and-add instructions I'd already been taken through so interminably. But she also added a few steps hitherto avoided. And she restored my original password.
Here's the rub: each time she initiated a new procedure she advised me that we would terminate our conversation to enable me to go back on line and try out each of the initiatives she had me try. And, she said, she would call me back in two minutes. One after another, I tried out a total of four new procedures, each one failing. And she called me back unfailingly. The last time, when she restored my password, among other things, the procedure was successful and Outlook Express came to life.
This young woman - did I forget to mention she was genuinely North American, genuinely female, genuinely young, genuinely good-natured and determined (oops and obviously well schooled in the mechanics of Internet-and-software lore)? - never faltered in her determination to do her work to the best of her abilities and beyond.
Thank you for working for Bell Sympatico.
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, October 03, 2006
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