Three MonitorsToday’s guest post is written by Brian Meeks.

Gini Dietrich gives me cookies, so I write.

At the end of my last guest blahg post, I may have implied there would be a follow-up extolling the virtues of having three monitors.

This was a joke.

Gini left a comment that she was looking forward to the post, which was also, likely, a joke. Though, I can’t be sure.

It is pretty hard to crank up the old Machine DeSnark about three monitors being superior to one.

I mean, how do I work in a disparaging remark directed towards either Justin Bieber or Snooki? I needed a hook and I don’t mean “Sylvia’s Mother.”

(If you got that reference, you get an A for the semester.)

So I went for it and wrote a bitter angry post, dripping with vitriol and aged cheddar.

This is not that post.

Why Use Three Monitors

On the way to hitting send, I discovered something a little more appropriate for the PR crowd. It was one of those “eureka” moments.

I’ve figured out the main problem with online chat as a tool in customer service.

And boy has it got me steamed, and not in a good broccoli covered in the aforementioned cheddar, sort of way.

I have three monitors (is that obvious from this post?).

On the left one is TweetDeck with six columns of social media goodness.

On the right, taking up about 60 percent of the screen is Spotify, playing all sorts of great songs from my youth. (That was a clue to the previous obscure reference; it’s not too late to turn in your quiz.)

The middle of the three monitors is used for work. I use the term “work” in the loosest of possible senses, so loose that it borders on “play.”

I should mention that hiding behind Spotify is a browser with nine tabs of blogs in various states of being read or commented upon, and one tab of Adobe support page.

I could write a “Top 10 Reasons You Should Have Three Monitors,” but that would be hypocritical considering my best blog piece of all time was entitled “Top Seven Things I Hate About Top 10 Lists.”

Suffice it to say, the extra space is great, and it is really cool to drag and drop things across screens.  There is also the added benefit of being extra geeky, which is all the rage right now.

Live Chat = Customer Service?

So, I’m on the Adobe customer service page, and I see “live chat,” which is less sexy than “live nude dancing,” but more helpful.

When I first built this monster computer I purchased Adobe Photoshop CS3.

I love it.

A month ago I brought my computer up to date with a new 3.4 Ghz chip set, mother board, two new graphic cards (a requirement for multiple screens), and wiped the hard drive.

As such, I needed to reinstall CS3. This is where the troubles began.

The error message said something along the lines of: “You’ve installed this too many times…no soup for you.”

It then instructed me to go back to one of my older computers and “deactivate” CS3, at which point, I would be given soup.

The problem is that there isn’t an “old” computer.

This is the only computer on which it has been installed, but because of a virus and several poor decisions on my part, it has been installed multiple times.

So I clicked on “Live Chat”…and giggled like a teenager sneaking into the strip club for the first time.

A helpful man, whose name made me think of Rudyard Kipling’s adventures, started to look into my issue.

It felt like I was close to a solution.

I’m Taking Too Long

While he was trying to help me out, I noticed a new opportunity to leave some snark in the comments of my Twitter rant on Spin Sucks.

I mocked Danny Brown a little and then checked my Twitter stream, on TweetDeck, of course.

A lovely lady, who had read my post, was amenable to chatting, so we discussed her cat. The cat was napping under the Christmas tree at the time and I could just see it in my mind.

What I didn’t see, is that the poor gentleman on chat was trying to get my attention. He eventually gave up. In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “D’oh.”

No problem, I still had the Adobe customer service page up, so I clicked on chat again and submitted my problem. Four comments, twelve tweets, and a can of Diet Mountain Dew later, I’d lost another helpful friend from India.

It seems that the major flaw with my three monitors is that it can lead to unintentional customer service problems. Adobe really wanted to help me solve my problem. I just wouldn’t let them.

The Three Monitors Failed

When I got helper number three on chat, I minimized everything, except Genesh’s window. It took herculean focus, but four minutes later I had CS3 registered.

So if you have a client who is trying to measure customer service response times, please keep in mind, that the biggest flaw in the live chat system is, well, for lack of a better word, me.

If you are considering adding a few more monitors to the mix, I still strongly recommend it. So, I’m no longer steamed, in truth, I never was, but I thought the broccoli line was funny. I think I’ll go do some design work in Photoshop.

More cookies please.

photo credit: Shutterstock

Brian Meeks

Brian D. Meeks is the author of seven novels, including four books in the Henry Wood Detective Series, one thriller, A Touch to Die For, one book in the YA/Middle Grade series, Secret Doors: The Challenge, and a satire about social media, Underwood, Scotch, and Wry. He lives and writes in Martelle, IA, population 252, and follows lots of guinea pigs on Facebook and Twitter.

View all posts by Brian Meeks