Phone support is expensive. An average stupid support call can cost a company easily $20 or more. So companies buy and install automated systems with friendly voices or outsource phone support to overseas.

When calling 1-800 WHA TEVR, you are told three times that your call may be recorded for training purposes, asked to enter all sorts of numbers and identifiers only to hear that due to heavy call volume, your wait time is longer than expected. Sometimes the system says “…is over 10 minutes”. DirecTV has a new one: “Your wait time is approximately five minutes and three seconds”. The information was actually incorrect – the wait was way over 10 minutes, I did not argue about the 27.3 seconds.

If you are lucky you get a more or less competent human on the line, you may also end up with another automated system or a message that says “our office is now closed, please call back during business hours”.

Now users may be stupid, but they are not idiots and they find ways around the automated systems – different systems require different tricks and some systems are set up for that and disconnect you when you try to outwit them. Check out a list of methods to get a human being on the line.

Online support is much cheaper than phone support but most email requests are never answered. There are exceptions. My new ISP Mediatemple answers at an amazing speed – any time 24/7 and you may have your own favorites. DirecTV sales is fast, support is slow. Competence is equally low – but this is another blog.

What can consumers / endusers do to encourage companies to provide better phone support? Use the online tools and when calling tell the person why you need to talk to somebody (online system answers only the simple obvious questions, nobody responds to email, Web site is outdated). Insist that you talk to someone who can actually solve your problem and/or make a decision. ( I miserably failed on this with DirecTV three times in a row, of the dozen people I talked to there not a single one could give a correct answer).

Be a repsonsible communication partner – make clear that customers may be stupid enough to buy their products but not complete idiots and providing competent and correct answers is much cheaper than five support calls in a row.

Senior managers of companies using any type of phone support should be required to call in with different questions at least once per week into their own system and publicly blog their experience.

Do you remember the days when the start-up scene was seriously shaken – and with it all its players? Ryze had started their meetings to bring people who look for jobs together with people who offer jobs – with the result that 95% of the attendants of these gatherings were looking for jobs and the remaining 5% looking for a partner. The unemployed crowd was clinging to the few events that happened to get out of the house. You remember? Good. You have good memory as this is way out of sight.

Now there are way more events than someone with a full agenda can juggle. I missed today’s Lunch 2.0 but managed to briefly attend the STIRR Mixer at Blue Chalk in Palo Alto. The event was RSVP only and the wait in line for the processing of the credentials to get the name tag took longer than immigration at SFO. Everything well organized and thorough – the event was sponsored by Commerce Net (thank you) and is one of the hottest gatherings in town.

Once inside I find myself in a time warp. Almost everybody is a Founder&CEO and with a few VP Business, Marketing and Sales in one person in between. Yes – it’s back – with a vengance – and you can hear the roar as everybody is assembled at the starting line, kickstarting their companies. I briefly talked to the “PM Dude” of Mintpages, a Web site where women can review beauty products and create their beauty profile. Isn’t this Epinions all over again? My inquiry about their USP (after explaining what USP is) was met with a “it’s targeted at women”. (I checked the sign-up process and the basic demographic question about gender is conspicuously missing – so no place for metrosexuals. Me: “How do you guys make money?” – “We don’t make money” – which settled the basic question of Start-Up 2.0 (To his defense I must add that it was noisy and he probably meant – we don’t make money – yet the comoany exists a fews months). 3jam exists just one (1) month but has raised – the small amount according to their VP BizDev of – $1m from NEA for a solution that allows groups to communicate via SMS (SMS is by definition a point-to-point communication) – the Founder and CEO was busy so I talked to the VP BizDev who tried to explain to me how you sign up and then get a code and with this code you can access the server and initiate the session. He agrees that this is complicated and a barrier to acceptance by consumers but is confident that all providers will adopt this product. A brief how-to is on the back of his business card – which may be helpful if you are willing to add your friends to 3jam.
I met the CTO of Fonav near the food (chicken wings, chips, salsa, fries and catchup) – they develop software for mobile WiFi devices as “the device producers have no idea about software”. They are already around several months.

I left the mixer somewhat shaken and definitely stirred.
P.S.: more on shaken not stirred is here.