In one of my favorite bits of his, the legendary George Carlin rants about jargon and soft language. It’s worth watching if you’ve never seen it.

I was thinking about his words last week in the context of my resurgent Mac issues. After last week’s MacOS updates, I again experienced the same massive issues with Handoff and Continuity I described here.

After spending yet another 30 minutes screwing around with my computer, I called support and quickly blew through the poor rep’s cursory recommendations. I requested an escalation to a senior rep. Antonio proved undecidedly helpful. Among his lame suggestions:

• Restart the computer.
• Reinstall the operating system.
• Go to an Apple store.

Sheesh. I had done each thing at least two times over the past five months, never mind posting to Reddit and asking tech-savvy friends for tips. Oh, and the tsunami of e-mails:

But back to my call …

Ultimately, the department’s name doesn’t matter. 

Antonio seemed hell-bent on getting me off the phone and repeatedly refused to let me share my screen with him. I ultimately figured it out. Logging out of iCloud on my iPhone and resetting Bluetooth and Handoff appears to have cleared things up—at least for now and until Apple breaks it again.

Simon Says

I’d wager that most companies have rebranded customer service as customer success or customer experience. (Smack me if I ever use the initialism CX.)

Ultimately, the department’s name doesn’t matter. Call it whatever you like, but make sure that your employees actually do something to help solve customers’ problems. And if you want your employees to be rude and unhelpful, do it the right way.