When You Need to Get Help

Posted by Cyn

  • Do not trust every­one who claims to “know about com­put­ers.” I can­not tell you how many times I’ve inter­viewed peo­ple who claimed to have pro­fes­sional tech­ni­cal expe­ri­ence, but who sat in front of me and said unbe­liev­ably stu­pid things in response to sim­ple tech­ni­cal ques­tions. Find some­one who really knows his or her stuff, and pay for sup­port if that’s what it takes. Don’t let the neighbor’s kid muck about with your PC because it seems bet­ter than doing noth­ing at all. If you needed stitches, you would go to a doc­tor and expect to pay for the ser­vice. If you need to have your PC repaired, take it to some­one qual­i­fied to rebuild it and pay her for the service.
  • Learn where to look for help. A needle­work news­group is not the best place to ask about prob­lems with your web site. Col­lect resources that are help­ful. I’ll list some of the ones I rec­om­mend shortly. If you need help ASAP, no news­group, web-​​based forum or email list is the best place to ask for it.
  • Use the resources avail­able to you before ask­ing for help: soft­ware man­u­als, the help files in a pro­gram, web sites related to what­ever you’re hav­ing trou­ble with, etc.
  • Have rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion at hand before you call some­one to help you (hard­ware and soft­ware infor­ma­tion, etc.).
  • Try to pre­pare your­self for a pro­duc­tive sup­port expe­ri­ence by remov­ing any dis­trac­tions in your envi­ron­ment. Get the kids to play in another room if pos­si­ble and let your part­ner, room­mate or cowork­ers know that you’re on an impor­tant phone call. I find it best to call into a sup­port line, put the call on the speak­er­phone, and amuse myself by watch­ing TV or read­ing a book. As soon as the tech comes on the line, I switch to the nor­mal hand­set and mute the TV.
  • Have your com­puter ready to do what­ever the sup­port tech needs you to do to get the infor­ma­tion she needs. Don’t start down­load­ing a big file or print­ing a long report while you’re wait­ing in the phone queue. When a tech takes your call you’ll prob­a­bly have to can­cel the down­load or the print job and you’ll be just a bit more annoyed because of it. Be ready and will­ing to shut down the com­puter, reboot it (sev­eral times if nec­es­sary), open and close var­i­ous pro­grams, make changes as requested, etc. Go ahead and close any soft­ware that isn’t rel­e­vant to the prob­lem at hand. If the prob­lem is hard­ware related, you’ll need to be able to get to the piece of hard­ware in ques­tion. If it’s inside the case, have the case open and be ready to take the card in ques­tion out if you’re asked to do so. Don’t wait ’til you’re on the phone with the sup­port depart­ment to start look­ing for the screw­driver that you know was here just a minute ago so you can start try­ing to get the case open. Be prepared!
  • When speak­ing to sup­port peo­ple, be very clear and pre­cise with what you say. Try to pro­vide infor­ma­tion like “Every time I try to do a mail merge in Word with more than 50 records, my com­puter crashes after about the first 10 records and I have to reboot and start all over again.” That’s much more help­ful than “Mail merge won’t work.“
  • Lis­ten very care­fully to what the sup­port tech says. Ask for clar­i­fi­ca­tion when nec­es­sary. If he starts throw­ing around a lot of tech­ni­cal terms or buzz­words, ask for def­i­n­i­tions. Good sup­port peo­ple can explain most things in non-​​technical terms. Peo­ple who can’t or won’t explain the jar­gon they’re using prob­a­bly don’t really know what the words mean any­way, and quite pos­si­bly don’t know did­dly about what­ever they’re sup­posed to be sup­port­ing. If I have rea­son to believe a sup­port tech is try­ing to use obscure terms for obfus­ca­tion, I get his super­vi­sor on the line.
  • Stay calm. Do not take your frus­tra­tions out on the sup­port per­son. Remem­ber, both of you want what­ever it is he or she’s sup­port­ing to work, so you’re on the same team. Don’t yell, don’t curse, don’t get nasty. Those things will not improve the sit­u­a­tion at all.
  • Most sup­port techs have a script to fol­low when they answer the phone. Part of that script is prob­a­bly the tech’s name. Write it down. If the tech is rude or delib­er­ately less than help­ful, speak to his or her super­vi­sor. Be per­sis­tent. There’s almost always some­one avail­able who is higher up the lad­der than the per­son who answered the phone ini­tially. Do not, how­ever, get rude. It won’t do any­one any good, and the fact that some­one else is nasty doesn’t jus­tify doing the same yourself.
  • Be rea­son­able. Don’t ask your ISP’s sup­port depart­ment to help you with a prob­lem with your video card. It isn’t their prob­lem, just as it isn’t the place of the guy at the video card manufacturer’s help desk to get you con­nected to the inter­net, even if you do need to con­nect to down­load a new driver.
  • Be mind­ful of the fact that most help desks are con­stantly mon­i­tor­ing how long each tech takes to resolve each phone call. Those call sta­tis­tics rule pro­mo­tions and raises. Take the time you need to explain the prob­lem and under­stand the tech’s sug­gested solu­tion, but don’t expect the tech to chat with you. Stay on topic.
  • Take notes, care­fully, espe­cially if the notes are about some­thing you will be doing after you’re off the phone and can’t ask for clar­i­fi­ca­tion. Get the trou­ble ticket or case num­ber that the sup­port­ing orga­ni­za­tion uses to find the records of your call so that if you need to call again later, you can have the next sup­port tech pull up that record quickly instead of start­ing back at ground zero.

Permalink | June 21st, 2012

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