Abstract
Research focused on the user experience of home networking repeatedly finds that householders have difficulties setting up networked equipment. No research to date, however, has studied the in the moment interactions of householders with networking technical support professionals. In this paper, we analyze 21 phone calls to a technical support call center of a home network hardware manufacturer. The phone calls focus on overcoming difficulties during one particular task: adding a wireless router to an existing home network. Our results reaffirm prior studies in remote collaboration that suggest a need to support shared understandings of the problem at hand between remote parties. Our results also suggest that technical properties of the home network and the structure of the home itself complicate the social work of remote diagnosis and repair. In response, we suggest new approaches for remote home network problem diagnosis and repair, including resources for householders to reason about their home networks prior to call placement, and improved methods of inter-organizational information sharing between stakeholders.
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Notes
Two of the calls are the same caller diagnosing the same problem with two different technicians. During the first session, the call dropped and the caller had to restart the call with another technician.
If the caller is inquiring about a problem he or she has previously called about, the case number will allow the technician to look up relevant information recorded by the previous technician who spoke with the caller.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to the hardware manufacturer who provided us with audio recordings from its call center, and to Susan Wyche, Zach Pousman, Brian Landry, Marshini Chetty, and our anonymous reviewers for helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. An NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the Intel Opportunity Scholars Program, and NSF-CNS grant no. 0626281 supported this research.
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Poole, E.S., Edwards, W.K. & Jarvis, L. The Home Network as a Socio-Technical System: Understanding the Challenges of Remote Home Network Problem Diagnosis. Comput Supported Coop Work 18, 277–299 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-008-9087-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-008-9087-2