Earfuls of High-Tech Horrors

They call when their faith in technology is shattered and their faith in themselves shaken. They call when they are desperate, bitter or scared, at all hours and from all over.

The mother from Seattle whose daughter wants to play “Tuneland” on the family computer but can’t until mom makes the sound work. The man from Mount Pleasant, Pa., so angry at his new PC that he has to hand the phone to his wife. The cabinet maker from Azle, Texas, barely holding back his tears: “Everything we do, something goes wrong.”

The faster the red lights on the phone banks blink, the more frustrated owners of personal computers are waiting for help. And the red lights never stop blinking.

Tucked unobtrusively in a strip mall near Salt Lake City, Packard Bell’s support center is one of a few dozen sites across the country where the most personal dramas of the digital age are played out over 1-800 lines. Nowhere else do America’s anxieties about new technology come to focus with such naked intensity.

And no one is as familiar with the traumas of the transition to a computerized world as the young technical support representatives--”techs,” they call themselves--who field the calls. At Packard Bell, the average age of the callers is fortysomething. The average age of the techs is 22.

Low-paid and levelheaded, their job ostensibly is to explain to callers with a valid warranty how to fix what’s wrong. But the techs, whose ranks are rapidly expanding along with the popularity of home computers, have also been drafted to fill an urgent societal need.

Whether they like it or not, they are prevailed on to help solve the emotional crises that accompany the technical glitches of their callers, guiding them through the vagaries of the new information society, easing the sting of technology’s treacheries.

They listen. They talk in soothing tones. They bolster self-esteem. With Zen-like calm, they absorb the hostility often leveled at them personally, as representatives of the technological elite. And sometimes they break, especially during the after-Christmas crush.

This time of year is the worst, as first-timers sit paralyzed before the new Pentium--click on the wrong icon and the whole thing could go up in smoke--and advanced users discover their hard-earned skills are no longer compatible with version 5.0.

Packard Bell’s Magna center expects to take 30,000 calls a day for the next few weeks--10,000 more than usual. The emotional content of the calls is climbing as well, here and at other help lines.

“We had one customer put her 5-year-old daughter on the phone and tell the tech: ‘You tell her why Santa brought her a broken computer,’ ” says a tech at Gateway 2000’s Kansas City help center. “That’s pretty harsh.”

This is not your average customer service job. A traveler whose flight has been canceled or an account holder whose bank has made an error at least understands what has gone wrong. Frustrated computer owners, facing the loss of a master’s thesis, the reproach of a child or the withdrawal symptoms of a game addict, are often haunted by self-doubt and an unspecified anger at expectations unfulfilled.

And for some whose lives have become inseparably intertwined with their technology, a computer crisis can seem much more dire than an unscheduled change of travel plans.

Being deprived of e-mail when you’re trying to conduct an online romance, for example, can be intolerable. For others the breaking point comes when they are denied access to stock quotes.

“I had a member call up one day, she was crying so hard she couldn’t hear me,” says Erin Watters, 27, a tech at America Online’s Tucson support center. “She said, ‘I have to get online, I have to get into my chat rooms.’ I had a supervisor contact her and we told her we were working on it but she kept calling back. She was still crying.”

There are lighter moments. A student called Magna pleading for help to unsnarl his girlfriend’s hair from her computer’s fan. Every tech has had a customer who confused the CD-ROM drive with a cup holder. Most have helped a child who is trying to restore the family’s finances to the hard drive before dad comes home.

“The main thing we have to tell them is they’re not stupid, like they feel,” says Steve Banuelos, 29, a Packard Bell tech with two-tone hair and a pierced eyebrow.

The mantra at Magna is “control the call.” Let the customers vent, techs are told, then focus on the problem at hand. “Avoid Chit Chat,” reads a list of tips pinned to the techs’ cubicles. “Fix it if it’s broken. Let others teach ‘how to.’ ”

The rules may be necessary, concedes tech Robert Findley, because “a lot of us are here because we’re computer enthusiasts, and it’s easy to get off track and talk about some new game, or whatever.”

Packard Bell won’t say, but Dataquest, a market research firm, estimates that each support call costs computer makers an average of $20. Techs are exhorted to shave their average time per call by 10%. The longer the calls, the longer the queue, and the more distraught the customers when they finally hear a human voice.

Those who cannot be pacified by normal measures get “escalated” to a group of techs designated to handle irate callers, or to the bank of senior techs whose knowledge of computers is considerably deeper than the average employee’s. Paid a paltry $5.50 to $11 an hour, many of the techs are students at community colleges or recent high school graduates who have no technical training beyond the company’s two-week course.

For many, mastering basic computer skills holds the promise of better jobs and salaries. If they have to start out by working on a high-tech crisis hotline, that’s OK.

“I was working in a warehouse doing manual labor,” says Mike Sampson, sipping a Super Big Gulp and half-listening to his current phone companion’s woes (“I have a thick printout of all errors. Some were fatal errors . . . “). “But the computer field is outrageous now.”

Still, there is a high turnover rate among Magna’s 400 or so techs. “A lot of them leave after 90 days, they can’t take it,” says Indra Neelamegham, a tech supervisor at Magna. Even the most determinedly stoic techs can come unglued as customers whom they know only by serial number expect them to perform miracles. They have their own feelings of inadequacy to cope with.

“People think we can fix anything,” says Findley. “They think it’s our fault.”

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Liberal use of the mute button to decompress is encouraged on difficult calls. “Pop-up messages” with less than flattering descriptions of customers zip around the room, despite strict instructions limiting use of the e-mail system.

Those who survive tend to construct phlegmatic shields. “Rule number one, don’t take it personally,” says Walter McFashion, manager of customer satisfaction at Magna.

But the best techs may be those who remain open enough to enjoy the strange intimacy in which they are invited to partake. Murmuring into one of the ubiquitous headsets that make Magna’s techs look like members of “Star Trek’s” cybernetic Borg, Banuelos assures his caller from Pennsylvania: “When I first got my computer I was ready to throw it out the window.”

“Really?” she says, audibly relieved. “It’s just getting to that point, it’s just so frustrating. See, we bought it for our kids. . . .”

The sense of betrayal expressed by many callers has much to do with the mismatch between the current state of computer technology and the way it is marketed to the public. More computers were sold this year in the United States than cars or televisions, and retailers present PCs as all-but-essential 1990s appliances, yet they are far more complicated to operate than any other consumer goods.

“The thing we hear all the time is, ‘I paid $2,000 for this and why doesn’t it work?’ ” says McFashion. “A lot of people think it’s like a TV, and it’s just not.”

But perhaps most jarring to new customers is how technology has a way of turning the established order of things on its head--or at least leveling it out a bit.

Parents, it turns out, don’t necessarily know better. Money can’t buy the intuitive ability to configure sound card drivers. PhDs still have to RTFM (Read the ------- Manual), a computer-world colloquialism that techs usually have to restrain themselves from articulating.

Often, tech support employees say, those who are used to being in control and having things go their way feel the most threatened. And in a private phone call to a faceless tech, they can get ugly about it.

“Doctors are the worst,” says Paul Nettleson, a senior tech at Microsoft’s support center in Las Colinas, Texas. “They feel like they’re above the average person, like, ‘I’m a doctor, why isn’t this working for me?’ Lawyers are the same, but not quite as bad as doctors.”

Another problem is that most people just don’t like to ask for help, especially from what they perceive as a bunch of whiz kids who are probably laughing at them.

“I don’t ever mention my age unless I’m asked,” says Sloan Mitchell, 19, a tech supervisor at Packard Bell.

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Increasingly, good techs are in high demand. Realizing that many customers are buying based in part on the computer maker’s reputation for support, companies are pumping in more resources.

Packard Bell recently raised its base salary for support workers in Magna because too many were being lured away to other centers in the area. Micron Electronics in Nampa, Idaho, plans to offer employees the choice of a carwash or back massage during the Christmas rush, which will last through March.

The ideal tech is both good at computers and at ease with people, a combination which can be difficult to find. John Hlavic, who runs Packard Bell’s Magna center, says he chose to locate the site here in part because of Utah’s “pioneer spirit” inspired by the Mormon ethic of helping one’s neighbor. More than half of his employees are Mormons.

A talent for turning the other cheek can be a bonus in a working environment where bomb threats are not unusual--Packard Bell has evacuated its building twice since moving here in 1994 from Chatsworth. Profanity and threats of violence are common.

“I’ve had them threaten to rent an airplane and fly over and drop their PC on the building,” says Nettleson, a tech veteran at 35. “People can be very abrasive and condescending. In your mind you’re thinking, ‘Well, if you’re so great, why are you calling me?’ But of course we think things that we can’t say.”

Most of the hostility--or at least the portion that isn’t generated by interminable time on hold--is rooted in what techs call the “fear factor.” The customers feel inadequate, and they need someone to blame. So they blame the person on the other end of the phone.

“When they start screaming at you, you just have to say, ‘I know she’s not mad at me, she’s mad because she can’t print, and she needs to print, real bad,’ ” says a Microsoft tech.

Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, describes it as a form of performance anxiety.

“Some people are intimidated by the technology and when they can’t make it work, they feel stupid,” says Turkle. “A lot of people have liked having the ‘it’s too expensive for me right now’ excuse or the ‘I don’t have one, and see no reason to get one’ excuse.”

But as prices plunge and the percentage of American households with a PC creeps toward 50%, those excuses are less and less viable, and the pressure to join the digital juggernaut intensifies.

As a result, help lines handle more stressed-out callers. Micron now sponsors classes in conflict management and interpersonal relations for its techs.

“It’s not really our job, but we do end up kind of counseling people--people cry daily,” says Jeff Bopp, a product support representative for AST in Fort Worth, Texas. The end of the academic year is another high-pressure time, he says.

“I usually have at least 10 seconds foreknowledge when someone’s just lost the only copy of their thesis. I try to console them ahead of time but it never works.”

Worse than those who know nothing, techs say, are those who insist they know more than they do.

“A lot of people will try to act like they’re part of the culture, use jargon that’s not quite right,” says Chris Autry of AST.

“When you tell them a 10-keystroke combination and you hear them typing 36 keystrokes, sometimes you just have to say, ‘Sir, if you’re too busy now maybe you should call back when you’re ready to work with me,’ ” another tech says.

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Different techs have different tactics.

Nettleson says he likes to make customers feel “like we went to high school together.” But Bopp, who works the night crew, says too much rapport can be a problem.

“We have callers who call so much sometimes you can even recognize their voices,” he said. “They want to know what the weather’s like, how the Cowboys are doing.”

“It’s cheaper than [calling] 976,” adds a colleague.

For all the abuse, there are moments of unmitigated delight as well. Some have received flowers, fruit baskets and framed certificates of approval.

Despite the wear and tear, most techs take their role as lighting the way to the future with a certain mature gravity.

“The worst is when they hang up,” says the 19-year-old Mitchell. “Then you’ve lost them.”

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