Follow On TwitterCustomer Stories: Your Online Store Website is Down
BizSugar
The other day, I was having a conversation with a friend who works at a popular search engine company, and he was telling me about some of the idiotic ways people use their web browser. Did you know that the majority of people type in their search query straight into the URL box at the top of the browser? Did you also know that a good number of people don’t use search at all and instead just append a .com to whatever they are looking for?
Photo by Dana-2
It’s funny because as he was telling me these things, he was expecting me to look surprised and shocked but instead, I just stood there and smiled. After running our online store for the past several years, stories like this don’t faze me at all anymore. I’m well aware that there are a ton of people out there who don’t know how to use a computer very well and they all happen to shop at our store. This particular customer called to place her order over the phone because she was having problems pulling our website up.
Customer: Hello? Yes, I’d like to place an order over the phone please.
Me:Sure no problem. What can I get for you?
Customer:I’d like to order some personalized handkerchiefs please.
Me: Actually ma’am, would you mind placing your personalized order online? We’ve found that it is easy to make dictation mistakes over the phone and we want to make sure that your personalization is done correctly as you intended.
Customer:Actually, I’ve shopped at your store before and I would love to place an order online except your website is down.
**Pause**
Me:Really?(Frantically trying to access our page) Actually, everything seems to be up on my end. (I then went ahead and VPNed into work to see if my work machines could access the site. Nothing was wrong). Would you mind trying again?
Customer: Nope, it’s still down.
This got me a bit worried so I decided to take this opportunity to have her do a little bit of debugging for me.
Me:Ma’am, would you mind trying to access a different site for me just to make sure that your connection is working? I apologize. I just want to make sure that there is nothing technically wrong with our servers.
Customer: Sure I don’t mind at all. The last webpage I was looking at is still working. Seems connected.
Me:Can you hit F5 for me?
Customer:Webpage is still up.
Me: That’s really odd. I can access our page perfectly. In any case, let me take down your order.
Customer:You know what? All of a sudden, I can’t access any webpage anymore. What happened?!? Can you help me?
Me: Uhh….Is your computer still connected to the network cable?
Customer: I use wireless so there is no cable. Hmm, I wonder where Linksys went? It was there this morning.
Me:I’m sorry?
Customer: Linksys is what I connect to every single day. But it’s no longer here.
Me: Ma’am, you might want to go ahead and reboot your wireless access point. In any case, I’ve put your order through and you are all set.
Customer: My what?
Me: Your wireless access point. You know, the box that allows your computer to connect to the internet?
Customer: I don’t own one of those… Do I need one?
Me: Yes you do. But in the meantime, you can just connect your computer directly to your modem or however you get your internet service.
Customer: I’ve never done that before. I don’t think I have one of those.
Me: The modem is usually sent to you by your internet service provider. You pay a monthly fee which allows you to have internet access. Then, you need a wireless access point so you can connect wirelessly.
Customer: You must be mistaken because I’ve been using the internet free for the past year.
Me: I’m afraid not ma’am. (I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she’d been stealing access this entire time)
I’ll spare you the details of the rest of our conversation, but this poor lady was in shock. Not only did she come to the realization that she could no longer access the web, but she wasn’t willing to pay the money for access either.
I also discovered that when I told her to hit “F5″ to refresh her browser, she had typed in ‘F’ and then ’5′. The only reason that she thought that her internet was still working was because she hit the ‘back’ button on her browser and was looking at a cached webpage.
If you want a few more laughs, I found this tech support video online the other day. It’s pretty funny if you have a free moment.
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Welcome to my world! As an independent computer consultant, I make my living off of people like this. Technology changes quickly and there are countless folks out there who are not able to keep pace with how technology works. It’s not their fault, they usually have too many other things in their lives to worry about.
It’s funny to us in the “know” but terrifying to those who don’t understand it. Things either “work” or they dont. And when they don’t, they call me! Great story….and one I’ve heard from my customers too many times to count!
Great impromptu troubleshooting by the way!
This is incredible. We are relying more and more on the internet, yet the majority of people don’t even know the basics of using it. Also the people trying to log into facebook are another example of ignorance.