The call started with an older lady calling our store and asking for the General Manager. That's never a good start. Apparently she had bought a printer earlier that day and was having trouble getting it setup. Alright, that's fine, well, we'll get it figured out. She should have been sent to our remote support line, because they can remote in and take care of what's needed on the computer while she takes care of the printer. Apparently she had tried that, and had told her it would be $50 to handle it, and that nothing could be done over the phone.
At this point I figured there was a miscommunication between her and the remote support, but our GM figured he could hand off the phone to my direct manager. My manager can't help, because she knows nothing about printers. Guess who was the closest person who knew how to solve this? Yup, me. So I'm handed the phone. Now, I didn't know everything I'd mentioned earlier, so I tried to connect her with our remote support, and this is where I found all of that out, so I tell her I'll help her and we'll get the printer set up. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
It started out pretty well, I got her onto HP's website, got her to download the software for the drivers, and was getting her through the installation. That's when it stopped being easy and everything turned south.
Part of the setup process for the majority of HP home printers is to connect the printer to the computer with the help of the setup software. So I start leading her though getting the printer connected. I tell her to follow the directions on the screen of her computer, and it will help with getting them communicating properly.
Well she hadn't even turned on the printer. That's fine. Turn it on, and we'll go on from there. Well the printer itself has its own initial setup process, which can take quite a while. Now, mind you, as easy as it was to lead her through downloading the proper software for her printer on her computer, that still took about 20-25 minutes. Leading her through the setup process felt like an eternity.
Once she started going through the setup process, it starts telling her to make sure the ink is snapped shut. So I tell her to open the lid and make sure the ink is in there nice and tight. Based off my knowledge of various HP printers, I knew there were a few configurations that their ink is in, so I tried to get her to describe how it all looked, because I didn't know that particular model off-hand. Mind you, I'm flying blind. I have no idea, so I have to hope she describes it well enough for me to understand so I can continue to help her. I tell her to make sure the ink pressed in correctly, and the way she's describing everything, it sounds like the setup of a certain line of products, so I try to help her based off what I think I'm hearing. She tells me that the one ink cartridge went in fine, but the other just isn't going in. I think that's strange, so I tell her to try taking the other cartridge out to put it back in to make sure she's doing it the same way. She tries to take out the cartridge, but she says she's having trouble taking that one out. Strange. So I tell her to hold for a moment.
I run over to the section of our store with the printers and grab the shelf display for that model and bring it back to the phone I'm talking on (it's unfortunately corded). I open up the printer, look at the ink and think that maybe she's just having trouble slotting it in correctly. I get back on the phone and ask her if the ink is sliding in correctly. She says it's just not going down, and ask her if the lever on top is all the way up. She says it is, and then starts describing the ink well. At this point we've spent about 15 minutes trying to get her ink in there correctly. As she's describing how the ink well looks, something she says finally clicks. She says the back looks light with some gold beads. It hits me like a ton of bricks that she describing the connectors on the back of the well that tell the printer that ink is in and checks levels. The ink well is empty and she has no ink in it.
I ask her if the ink is still in the box, and she gets excited, because she thinks she remembers seeing something else in the box. I hear her set the phone down, rustle around in the box, and grab plastic packaging. She comes back to the phone, then tells me she needs to get scissors to open it up. She gets the ink out of the wrapping and gets them into the printer. All right, I think, we're on track, we should be done soon. I couldn't have been more wrong.
Once her ink is in, I tell her to close the lid and the printer should finish the rest of the setup. "The listed ink cartridges are missing." DANGIT!!! Well I tell her to open it up again and make sure the inks were in there nice and snug. She checks, and she says they are. She closes the lid. "The listed ink cartridges are missing." Well, alright. Let's turn it off and back on again. Let's see what happens. "Cartridge Jam." Wut? Okay, open the lid, check the inks, close the lid. The printer is running its checks. "Success!" What!? YES! Okay. Now let's connect to the network.
I tell her to follow the directions the computer gives to connect to the network. This seems like it should be fine, but we run into a snag. She doesn't know her wifi password. So I try to figure out how to get her password. I ask her if her desktop is wired or wireless. "Wired." Nuts. Okay, well, maybe I can lead her to finding her router. Maybe it has the password. Well, that was almost impossible. Thankfully, she thought about using her cellphone to call the guy that setup her wireless network. She doesn't get a hold of him right away, but says hopefully he'll get back to her soon. Great. We're stuck without that password. I go back to trying to lead her to finding her router, until she gets distracted by a phone call. It's the guy! I here, in her responses, that he's telling her how to find the password. Yes!
She puts in the password. It connects! She runs the alignment pages on the printer. On the computer, I tell her to continue doing the setup with process. The printer list comes up. She selects it. The computer says it's connected! She prints a test page, and it goes through! She thanks me for all the help and I hang up.
All in all, leading her through a process that normally takes me maybe 20 minutes on my own, took over an hour and a half from handing me the phone to hanging up. Gotta say, that's the longest support call I've ever had to take, and I normally don't have to take any support calls. Not gonna lie though, I hope I don't have to do another one again.
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