In customer service there is no substitute for some smarts

Webtrix dropped into my office the other day.

“I hear you can’t get Dell to jump on your network problem?”

She had read the story Dell’s customer service hits new all-time low. I wanted to wax eloquent about it but she cut me short.

“What color is the network cable?”

“That’s the same stupid question the Dell CSR asked me. What difference does that make?” I replied with another question.

“Just answer the question or I’m outta here.” 

“It’s orange or red or some thing, just like I told the guy from Dell three times when he had me climb under my desk to check,” I replied irritated at the question.

Webtrix doesn’t take kindly to customer kickback and she left.

A few minutes later she threw a blue network cable at me and said “Hook this one up. You should not be using an orange cable.”

“Why not?” I said ducking the flying cable.

“It’s for crossover, like between switches,” she said leaving me again.

I crawled under the desk one more time, unhooked the orange cable and plugged in the blue one then snaked it up to the switch.

“Holy smokes!” I yelled. “It’s working at 1 Gb already. The orange 100 Mb light had turned to 1 Gb green.

I wheeled down the hall to the other office, a look of wow and relief on my face.

“That worked. I’ve got 1 Gb networking!”

“I can’t believe,” she said turning towards me for a second with disdain “they put kids on network support who don’t know the difference,” as she turned back to her screen trying to do something with the blog.