What IT majors or IT job positions are least likely to or will not need to provide Phone support?

[WhatShouldIDo]

Market your customer service skills heavily. Technical things can be learned on the job and over a relatively short period of time...but customer service skills are a more difficult thing to "learn" and are developed over a longer period of time (or for some people, just comes naturally).

That's pretty much the key then. I remember we had to learn on the job as we go since requirements are different for different companies, but Customer Service skills are much more universal, same goes for effective communication skills.

But I do know I need to get updated training and it would be best to just take about 2 or 3 courses at my community college, as formal training can provide some proof or evidence. You did say Experience trumps certs and degrees right?

And I believe that connections should be of Greater priority vs. degrees and certifications, although that doesn't mean I wouldn't take the exams necessary to get the CompTIA A+, it will take time, can't do everything all at once.

The same goes for getting a whole new Internship, that's my second priority, because well, like you said, Experience. Real World experience acquired and customer service skills and soft skills beats someone that lacks them or someone have poor customer skills even if they had a 4 year degree or Certifications.

I'm thinking of the most entry level courses offered at my college, they have PC Hardware and Software, Introduction to Networking, and Windows Operating System, and they have a Cisco Academy or something.

When I worked at my college's Support Desk, we had one person that didn't know much of all about troubleshooting systems...but she had good customer skills, so she was able to talk to the people asking for help, and would learn how to do the technical things as time went on.

I guess they were right about just keeping things simple with communication, effective communication is what mattered most instead of being overly technical about it with various technical jargon when someone needed help unless it was for some problem or issue that is really specialized or unique and will need specialized help. They even have 2 part time positions at my college for this, but I haven't gotten around to apply to them yet. Been busy with my current job and classes.

 

[root]

guess i didnt explain well! I meant large companies that have all these type of roles under their roof tend to mirror what i said above.

not just in employee numbers ! I was cryptive

yeah, I work in a large company where there are some developers that never speak to customers. - do you know why they never talk to customers? because they are expected to be dumb, they aren't qualified to talk to customers they aren't trusted to speak to customers and they are treated as commodity items, hired for and fired right after projects.

I don't work in development, I work in an IT support role. and what you said isn't true.
as for Large company, the department I work in is probably 800 people, stretched through 18 offices/7 countries/3 continents. total company size including developers is knocking on 4000...

What you have said is almost universally untrue, good trusted and smart employees are expected to engage with customers. - regardless of company size. (that's true in all the places I've worked, (small/medium companies 20 - 4000)

Trust me, you don't want to work in the places where you never by policy talk to users.
that whole 3rd line only talk to third line is rubbish. 3rd line talk to users, because when you get a ticket, it's your ticket. you should own it.
that means you're in charge of everything about it. including communicating to users, gathering any other details from the user you think may be important, and getting feed back as to whether what you said works...

and in big companies I havn't worked in, (Microsoft, McAfee, Kapersky, IBM, etc) when you call and log a ticket, if the first guys doesn't fix it he escalates to second line and they talk to you, if they don't fix it, you'll get a call from the third line guy...

So I guess in all small/medium/large enterprises, all levels of support would talk to customers...

A note on entry level IT support jobs- if you don't want to speak to external customers, just get a job with an internal IT dept.

My first job was at a small software company, I was internal IT.
aside from the fact that you still have to actually talk to users, (and yes sometimes by phone) I did find myself talking to people who were customers, telling them what they needed to do to get the software installed or working properly.

I'd only be willing do phone support again if, and that's a big if that I knew absolutely that remote support is possible and will be used frequently along with phone support.

I'm struggling to understand your avoidance of telephones.
people call and what their problems fixed.
companies want problems fixed quickly for their users, it makes their KPIs look good, and there are no expenses or petrol receipts to satisfy.

these requirements you have based on bad experiences at just one place are seriously going to limit your opportunities.

That is ideally what I would be aiming for but I don't know if positions for smaller internal IT departments are plentiful in my area or not. Talking to colleagues within the same company and building is less frustrating compared to depending on customers willingness to listen and accept what I tell them and sometimes they don't, and sometimes they like to argue but it's even more frustrating relying and depending on them to correctly implement what I had told them to do, because they aren't familiar with what they are doing or need to do. Although if those positions are not plentiful enough then I will need to know for certain if support through remote access is absolutely available as a minimum with phone support otherwise I really don't know and will have to keep looking.

you don't like that people won't immediately listen to you without questioning or asking why?
or you can't explain to someone how to do something and they get it wrong.
i'm not trying to be a dick about it. but did you consider it might be a personal failing?!

I get what you mean. I've been in Customer Support before and had done phone support primarily for 4 years and wasn't really happy with it when I looked back on it, it was just lacking and not what I originally thought and expected it to be when compared to the very first time when I had done an Internship at a public high school. There was no room for growth and it was a dead end. We mainly just troubleshoot the problems of the products they provide to retailers to sell. Different environments and employers would result in different requirements and expectations but I had no idea at the time, what a fool I really was when I look back on it.

which is exactly why I wouldn't recommend you go work for internal IT in a small company.
you'll be doing the same stuff day in day out.
I work for an outsourcing company, (I deal with different tech across different product versions on a daily basis.)
I'm not stuck with rapidly deteriorating, or rapidly aging skills stuck supporting some old software waiting for the company to finally upgrade from windows 7 (or whatever)

The Internship I had done was very much the experience I wanted for a real regular day job, because I was dispatched to various classrooms troubleshooting problems, as I don't recall once that I had to do any kind of phone support, but then again it was just an Internship.

then that should give you an idea of the places you should look.

you found that you liked providing IT support at a high school worked well for you. look for that.

That's why I had realized that connections are so important,

there is no magic friend who is going to land you the perfect job.

if you have distinct requirements then apply through specialist recruitment companies, where you can tell a recruiter to go look for jobs that tick all your boxes.
or, you know, just ask at the interview what the job entails.


As far as talking to customers go...
learn how to do it. you'll need to do it at all levels of support, and consultancy.

support because you need to gather requirements, and give fixes
consultancy as you at least need to gather requirements. the deliver solutions, and possibly train staff on new systems!

If you can't do it, it will limit what you can do.

 

[WhatShouldIDo]

My first job was at a small software company, I was internal IT.
aside from the fact that you still have to actually talk to users, (and yes sometimes by phone) I did find myself talking to people who were customers, telling them what they needed to do to get the software installed or working properly.

But it wasn't on a regular basis, right? Just once in a while?

I'm struggling to understand your avoidance of telephones.
people call and what their problems fixed.
companies want problems fixed quickly for their users, it makes their KPIs look good, and there are no expenses or petrol receipts to satisfy.

It's not just the phones, but moreso having no means to provide support by remote access or even dispatch a technician to the client's or customer's location is what added to the frustrations.

It's just too little to control on how I can fix their problems unlike when compared to how the issues can be dealt with more directly, which is what I experienced for my Internship. I didn't have any of those problems when I did my Internship. I even seen the IT administrator use remote access to fix and troubleshoot problems from his office and he was my supervisor at the internship at that time.

these requirements you have based on bad experiences at just one place are seriously going to limit your opportunities.

But I know and realized what I didn't like or enjoy compared to what I did liked and enjoyed. But what else should I do then? I wouldn't want to apply to the exact same kind of positions where I'd be troubleshooting entirely by phone with no remote abilities and/or no way or possibility to dispatch someone, thus I'd be having very little to no control on how I can resolve the customers problems and I'd have to entirely rely on how they implement whatever fix I came up with. I wouldn't want to be troubleshooting similar products for a different company.

I did apply to a local Internet Provider some time after being laid off since it's relevant to the industry that the company is part of, since they manufacture and make various products that connect to Internet Providers.

But, I got nothing back. I believe it had to do with my lack of connections with the Internet Provider companies, and also possibly for not having an A Plus certification. After that I had looked for other work instead, as I can't keep waiting, unemployment checks would eventually run out. I just know that I really would not want to work in the call center type of support again.

The support by E-Mails weren't as problematic compared to on the phone since we had FAQs posted upon on the company's website I can redirect customers to and as well as make E-Mail response templates where I break things down step by step and explain as clearly as possible in plain english instead of using too many or any technical jargon that I didn't have to.

you don't like that people won't immediately listen to you without questioning or asking why?
or you can't explain to someone how to do something and they get it wrong.
i'm not trying to be a dick about it. but did you consider it might be a personal failing?!

Sometimes things get really difficult to explain over the phone, and then when there's no remote access abilities for support that further adds to the frustrations in my job. I can't see what's on their end, compared to when it's completely direct when I did my internship.

Although now we do have things like FaceTime, although I don't know how often that kind of video communication is used for troubleshooting, but I know that could also significantly help. But I understand that you can only work with what you have and what the company you work for is willing to provide, and if they don't provide any means for you to troubleshoot by remote access or provide any means for you to dispatch a field tech, it's just you and the customer trying to resolve issues either by communication from phones or e-mails.

It was a completely different experience entirely since I was troubleshooting various telecommunication products that provide connectivity and connectivity issues can be a real pain sometimes.

Our staff knows that the sometimes the problem isn't coming from our products but rather from the customer's service providers and the problem can only be resolved by their service providers, such as getting their password or username reset or changed, etc.

Sometimes the customer will get it, other times they don't and can argue and cause even more frustrations. So different environment different experience and different expectations. If I wasn't under the pressure of having student loans to pay off I think I would have left there sooner, since it really wasn't what I expected or thought it would be. I really thought they would at least have support using remote access applications, but nope, I was completely wrong about it.

which is exactly why I wouldn't recommend you go work for internal IT in a small company.
you'll be doing the same stuff day in day out.
I work for an outsourcing company, (I deal with different tech across different product versions on a daily basis.)
I'm not stuck with rapidly deteriorating, or rapidly aging skills stuck supporting some old software waiting for the company to finally upgrade from windows 7 (or whatever)

You lost me there, why are internal IT not recommended compared to what rulezero suggested?

But there's always going to be monotony on the job unless there is a lot of creativity needed right?

How can doing the same stuff day in an day out be completely bad?

I get what you mean by when companies are taking for ever to upgrade that should be the sign to look out for, as they may only care more about saving money than keeping up with the current technologies.

then that should give you an idea of the places you should look.

you found that you liked providing IT support at a high school worked well for you. look for that.

I do see 2 available open positions that are relevant to IT at my local community college. They could be a similar type of work to my first internship experience.

Both open positions seemed to be direct in-person support rather than entirely phone-based.

But I haven't applied to them yet, and I would rather get up to date and take at least 2 or 3 courses first at this point since I haven't been working in anything relevant to IT for about 5 to 6 years now.

They've been available and open since the last 2 semesters and I guess nobody bothered to apply maybe because they're low paying part-time positions, and there are no benefits provided.

But the work for them would be to help students in the computer lab sort of thing:

Could be a good start. I'll update everyone and keep everyone posted if I ever do accepted at these positions assuming if I don't find a better internship or something elsewhere first, but it's options on the table I'm considering.

there is no magic friend who is going to land you the perfect job.

if you have distinct requirements then apply through specialist recruitment companies, where you can tell a recruiter to go look for jobs that tick all your boxes.
or, you know, just ask at the interview what the job entails.

I understand that it is not an absolute guarantee, it's just increasing the odds and the chances.

Having connections helps significantly, but ultimately it's up to the employer to decide, if I got the interview and how I did on that interview is on me, the connection only just increased the odds of me getting selected and interviewed, the rest is entirely on me and how the employer feels and thinks about me after they had completed interviewing me, not the person that I am connected to.

But getting an interview as a result of having connections is better than absolutely nothing in return when applying for a job and receiving no response at all, no call back, no e-mail reply, nothing.

Cold silent rejection is tough and much more difficult, and is more likely to occur when someone doesn't have any connections at all. I've learned that the hard way.

I did try to stay in touch as much as possible with the company I had previously worked for though. I suppose I can go back there again and ask if they can provide me a letter of recommendation as soon as I've made up my mind and have found a good internship or something first.

As far as talking to customers go...
learn how to do it. you'll need to do it at all levels of support, and consultancy.

support because you need to gather requirements, and give fixes
consultancy as you at least need to gather requirements. the deliver solutions, and possibly train staff on new systems!

If you can't do it, it will limit what you can do.

Gotcha, I will keep this in mind. But talking directly when troubleshooting, such as being on-site where the problem is completely different when dealing with problems entirely over the phone when there are absolutely no remote access abilities available or any way to dispatch someone to the client's location and troubleshoot from there.

 

[carnageX]

yeah, I work in a large company where there are some developers that never speak to customers. - do you know why they never talk to customers? because they are expected to be dumb, they aren't qualified to talk to customers they aren't trusted to speak to customers and they are treated as commodity items, hired for and fired right after projects.

This is why I'm glad I don't work in private sector for development; public sector gives me a bit more job security IMO.

You lost me there, why are internal IT not recommended compared to what rulezero suggested?

He said small internal IT places - where you may not have very large of a budget, and their stuff "just still works" so they won't (or can't) spend money to upgrade.

But there's always going to be monotony on the job unless there is a lot of creativity needed right?

How can doing the same stuff day in an day out be completely bad?

Very dangerous thinking. If you're doing the same thing, day-in / day-out, then you won't actually ever grow your skills. You'll just cater your skills to what you were doing rather than expand your knowledge. Then what if you want to get a job? You'll kinda be back to square one, with not knowing any of the "new" things.

I see this attitude a lot at where I work with my fellow software developers...and it's really sad. I went to college with one of them, and all he does is maintenance on 1 single system for the entire time he's worked there. Meanwhile I've moved to a completely different position (more R&D focused), and gotten to do lots of different stuff - i.e. broadening my skills in case I did indeed want to leave and go somewhere else.

 

[root]

But it wasn't on a regular basis, right? Just once in a while?

Yes, only once in a while...

It's not just the phones, but moreso having no means to provide support by remote access or even dispatch a technician to the client's or customer's location is what added to the frustrations.

I didn't have any of those problems when I did my Internship.

Your internship was at a highschool?
so you literally walked up to desks? all the users were in the same building and none were remote?

the thing is, businesses aren't like that. most places are going to allow people to work from home, and there is a chance that they'll have IT issues with their machines, that do fall under support, and you may not have a remote access solution, and may have to provide phone support...

also, some schools are not going to be like that so much any more, with schools grouping and pooling resources you may find yourself sat on one site, expected to help the guy trying to connect to the network by phone...

I guess more or less schools or very small business with no work from home opportunities are where you will want to look?

I did apply to a local Internet Provider

but the only time most people call their ISP is when they cant connect there is no possibility of remote support as there is no connection, and you can't send an engineer to every customer!

But, I got nothing back. I believe it had to do with my lack of connections with the Internet Provider companies, and also possibly for not having an A Plus certification. After that I had looked for other work instead, as I can't keep waiting, unemployment checks would eventually run out. I just know that I really would not want to work in the call center type of support again.

sometimes jobs are not what they are advertised as.
As an example I used to work at a university, I decided I needed to move, and applied to work at a different university. I had experience in IT, I had experience in the specific sector. I got flat out rejected. no worries, I got a different job.
a few months after I started another guy started, much less experience, etc.
he had been offered the same university job I applied for they just offered him 5K less than they were advertising it as!
Don't think that there is a certain job anywhere, in that story I applied for a job I was more than qualified and experienced for... what they wanted was an unqualified guy that they could beat down on salary negotiations.

Sometimes things get really difficult to explain over the phone, and then when there's no remote access abilities for support that further adds to the frustrations in my job. I can't see what's on their end, compared to when it's completely direct when I did my internship.

Yep, that's sometimes how it is.
at my first job we had to install software in different languages, (stuff like chinese (double width characters) and hebrew (reads right to left)

sometimes you need to be able to provide support without seeing the screen, sometimes even if you see the screen it might not be helpful. when using different language versions for example, I just had to know where to click, I new what positions the buttons would be in.

when providing remote support, I literally used to close my eyes, try to picture the screen, then say, the third tab along will say "x" you need to click that, etc...

providing that kind of "blind" support is a pain, but it is something that if you can do well you'll be in demand to do it!

You lost me there, why are internal IT not recommended compared to what rulezero suggested?

you said "There was no room for growth and it was a dead end"

I used to work in internal IT, at a small company, you'll likely report to the CEO, maybe 1 guy between you and the CEO. where will growth happen? - there is also a skills issue I'll elaborate on in a bit...

But there's always going to be monotony on the job unless there is a lot of creativity needed right?

I disagree, right now,
I'm sat in a customers office, today, I've touched/configured.
2 Cisco ASA firewalls, 3 Cisco switches, MS Hyper-V core setup, MS server 2012, a couple of Linux squid proxy servers and a syslog server

and I'm in Ireland for this project (I live in England)
this year I've been deploying IT solutions (by travelling) in North America, South America, and Europe, I'll be heading back to North America in a month...
configuring remotely... I've also deployed stuff in Asia, and eastern Europe.

I rose through support to be working on project deployments, and I was at an exciting time product wise.

I was in 3rd line support from 2009 - 2014 sort of time.
and in that time, I touched/configure trouble shooted, NT4 (yes really) windows 2000/2003/XP/Visata,7, server 2012 and the R2 version, and various flavors of linux and UNIX (proper unix)
I've done support on all SQL servers version since version 6.5
and all the exchange versions,
and all the versions of Citrix from metaframe3
and various switches and firewalls, (Cisco/Checkpoint/Watchguard/nokia/Stonegate)

and that's because I don't work for just an internal IT company. I work for a company providing outsources support and consultancy... so today I'm in a windows Centric customer site. next week I'll be done here, and deploying something else somewhere else.

when I was in the support teams, I'd work through tickets, flipping between different server versions and different software versions. possibly looking at multiple combinations in a day...

Not at all monotonous... but not creative either!

How can doing the same stuff day in an day out be completely bad?

it's not bad, it's just not for me...
and as i said your skills get dull.
there are companies out there still running windows 2003 server.

when the tech guy from there wasn't a new job, he may have spent ten years there, but he has no currently relevant experience at all!

you don't want to pigeon hole yourself in a job that you can't get out of because some cheap *** company took all your relevant skills and never developed you.

I do see 2 available open positions that are relevant to IT at my local community college. They could be a similar type of work to my first internship experience.

Do that then! it sounds like you can be enthusiastic about those roles!

But I haven't applied to them yet, and I would rather get up to date and take at least 2 or 3 courses first at this point since I haven't been working in anything relevant to IT for about 5 to 6 years now.

then when you get around to it they'll be gone!

just apply, emphasis your previous relevant experience with your internships. and your customer service skills. and apply...
if you take a long course then the job will be gone by the time you finish, take a short course and it won't make a difference.

you could always write on your CV/resume that you're working towards certification. (and this would be true from day 1 of the course!)

if you find a job that you think is good for you, apply for it.
if you think your CV/Resume is lacking, write a cover letter explaining how enthusiastic you would be for the role.