Being an RV tech, and owning an RV repair company, my business is customer service. A person comes in with a problem with their rig, and they pay me to fix it.

Sometimes, even the best of us need help from the people who make the items in question, so we, in turn, need to call upon the “next level” of customer service, and talk to technical support. In the service industry, we have “super secret- I cannot reveal it” phone numbers for tech support- the reason being that tech support can much more effectively talk to a trained technician to diagnose a problem than trying to deal with the end consumer (you ;)). This saves time, and as long as the local tech is knowledgeable, will usually quickly result in a solution to the problem. Having a separate contact for service people really is a good thing.

But… having said that, in the past 2 weeks, I have spent a total of 4 hours on hold, waiting to speak to tech support (for 3 very different companies, ones which are usually noted for their customer service). The alternative to waiting on hold is leaving a name and phone number, and being called back. Being a “Mom and Pop” shop, we can usually deal with that OK- as long as the customer is not waiting for the repair to be done, but larger shops this can be a real problem. The tech doesn’t know how long it will take to get the callback- does he (or she) stop that repair and go on to another? Do they simply take a break until the callback?

Most of these companies have top rate tech service people- once contact is made, they have always given me the information needed to properly diagnose a problem, but they are simply over loaded- waiting until the second day to get an answer to a simply question is unacceptable, IMHO, and the answer seems to be a combination of more thorough service manuals, and hiring more people. The service manuals would seem to be more cost effective, to me.