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Techs Discover End Users Aren't So Bright
hkypipe writes "In response to a CNN story slamming tech support, a former tech fired back. He correctly points out that much of the trouble end users have with their PCs can be traced to their skillset, which in many if not most cases would make them more qualified to operate an Etch-A-Sketch." Not everyone who calls support is clueless though. How many of us have had to sit on hold for hours and reformat a hard drive as DOS just to convince the tech support lackey on the other end that a hard drive really is bad? The article also covers other factors like scripted support, and per-customer time limits, which can make for a poor tech support experience.
In other news, it was discovered that everyone looks like an idiot when they require the services of a domain expert. What's next, neurosurgeons complaining that patients don't know as much as them? Of course end users don't know much about tech - that's what they're paying support workers for! Just like drivers pay auto mechanics, and anyone who has a bathroom pays a plumber.
Just because someone doesn't happen to have some specialized piece of knowledge you have, that doesn't make them "not so bright". I know plenty of PhDs who are extremely competent in their fields, which aren't computing, who need to call helpdesks from time to time. You see, and this will sound harsh to a Slashbot, most people have better things to do than learn the minutae of their PCs.
Most of the people who call for help don't even know what operating system they're using -- even though they've spent their money buying the machine.
How many drivers know what OS runs their engine control computer? Even tho' they spent their money buying the machine. You see, techies are into operating systems are care a lot about them. End users care about getting their jobs done, and the computer is just a tool. One version of Windows looks a lot like another - can you tell the difference between '95, '98 and ME with just a glance? You can? Can you tell the difference between Red Hat, Debian and SuSE at a glance? You think so? I didn't tell you they're all in console mode at a $ prompt.
Tech support needs to stop thinking of end users as the enemy and start thinking of them as what they really are, its bread and butter.
its hard enough for them to support windows users and all of there troubles, looking from a buisness point of view why should they help linux users? If you are going to run linux and want support from isp, either just fake it and act like you are running windows, or understand that they probably dont have resources to help you.
Although even when I do fake it and act like a windows user sometimes they still can be unhelpfull and on some occasions even rude.
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
although, i do work for a mac only shop, ...
the people are really bad, when i switched from doing face to face support to phones, i realised people are alot more daring, and quicker to snap, or scream when there on the phone. it's like there less inhibited when there's that barrier between you.
the big problem is that less and less people do the research and read the manuals (and read me's) and more and more, just want instant answers and walk throughs. they don't want to learn how to fish, aka learn the basic consepts of computing.
this makes my job basically impossible.
every yuppie with a digital camera thinks he's a director, and cause he's spent 4 grand with you, wow you owe him.
After going over things with them on the phone I decided to drop by and see for myself. Back then hard drives (even in RAID arrays) weren't awfully reliable compared to nowadays. So I prepared myself for the standard fare.
When I got there I saw that the bookkeeper had placed their telephone right on top of the external drive array. It was one of those old rotary telephones that had a magnetic bell clapper. I supposed the magnet might have had something to do with their mysterious data loss.
I immediately told them I had the answer to their problems, promptly walked over and moved the phone to down on the desk, and handed them a bill for a flat one hour fee plus windshield time (they were in B.F.E.). Never got a call from them for almost a year. I wish all of my fires were that easy to fight!
I kind of laughed with my co-workers at the topic when I saw It..
:D
OK.. maybe I put the customer on hold and told the guy next to me, but while this is somewhat true....
From a more serious standpoint, some tech's exagerate the inabilities of users, and tend to be not as patient as they could be.
So, Joe Smoe forgot to plug his power cord in? Well why not just have him plug it in and see if he can connect? Why make a big deal?
There are a ton of similar issues which seem to be downplayed as stupid things the users do, but thats why we are here.
I personally believe that the reason that such actions are taken with such a bofh'ish attitude is the quality of the workplace, and the stress with dealing with someone over the phone that doesn't think exactly as you would like them to.
Perhaps there should be a study on how tech's often talk down to the customer because of the simple things, which the tech's themseleves are responsible for.
I do however, figure I'm set with my job, because there will always be users who need help
Mod me down im a newf (wiki)
Frankly, the problem is that many of my supposed "tech support" people don't know what the job actually entails. They somehow believe that the person who needs help has a reasonably high level of computer skill, but they don't. Many of us here consider computers a cool gadget, a fun toy, a nifty gizmo, and a tool. Most people consider their computers to be a tool, period, and they want a tool to "just work". How would YOU feel if you called your auto-shop with a problem and they told you that "all you have to do is "super-granulate your seventh posterior neonatal left-handed reverse sprag gear" and then "realign your cam shaft with your fuel gauge". That's the type of absolute nonsense that many "average" computer users hear if you try to explain the problem to them at your own level.
:-)
The trick is to;
1) Figure out what their level of knowledge is (without talking down to them)
2) Give them an answer they will understand, and if their isn't any way to give the answer non-technically, make a parallel to something they *will* understand (again, do this without talking down to them)
3) While doing this, don't talk down to them (get it?)
It really makes me angry that so many bad supposed "tech support" personnel give those of us who take our job seriously and DO IT WELL a bad reputation. I do a damn fine job of Tech Support for my clients, people honestly and deeply like me and give me excellent feedback and word-of-mouth. All it takes is some patience and an understanding that while the person on the other end of the line might not know "screen resolution" means, they might well be able to perform open-heart-surgery.
Now, I'll quit ranting....
Working on the front lines and dealing with end-users or customers is not something new that tech support people had to invent. Instead of - once again - placing all the blame elsewhere (users, management, poorly written and tested software, etc.) this could have been a good chance to look and say "Yes. We could deal with people better."
As the author pointed out: when people are calling tech support they are usually frustrated already. Most people just want to be reassured that it will be alright and given the best way to solve the problem.
In essence, really, that should be the job of tech support. Obviously they are not all computes wizards - that is why you have to read from a script, afterall - so maybe a bit more empathy would be in order. It would make the caller "feel" better and thus help IT support have a better image, even if it doesn't directly fix the problem.
I always find it difficult to jump in the rink with other techies complaining about the naivity of users.
If users suddenly started understanding the technology, 1/2 of the people on slashdot would be out of a job - and not just the clueless ones.
People calling tech support lines have bought a product which is meant to do something. The fact that they can't work it out even when everything is working is the fault of a bad UI - not the users.
When things are broken - tech support get paid to fix problems because people either can't do it or don't have the permissions to do it. For those working in tech support - stop whining as long as these people are providing your pay cheque.
And yes, I'll just in with the obligatory "I used to work in front-end and network support". Users seemed to appreciate the fact I wasn't judging them for going snowboarding and clubbing instead of sitting at home learning how to use our products.
I think the main problem is expectation management. Users occasionally encounter the tech support person who is everything that they could hope for - within 5 minutes, they've figured out that the hard drive cable was plugged in upside-down, and they're back in business thanks to Harold Sharpstuff. However, the next time that the user calls in, they draw Neville Newbie, and after Neville fumbles around and finally helps them get their system running after 2 hours of tests, the user comes up with fodder for a new customer support horror story.
Meanwhile, Harold Sharpstuff has quit because after the tenth "coffee-mug-holder-is-broken" call in 2 hours, and after the third "I'm-paying-your-salary-so-you-should-help-me- adjust-my-screen-contrast" call (which is particularly ironic from users calling a toll-free support line), he's decided that his not-so-great paycheck isn't worth the headache.
There's lots of aggravation to spread around, folks. The users who piss and moan about clueless phone support (but who could never do that job themselves!) and the tech support personnel who complain about the 10th "the Internet is down!" call (but forget that these are 10 different people, NOT 1 single person calling 10 times!) both need to modify their expectations a bit.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
The helpdesk is a great place to pick up a little experience before moving somewhere else, but it's the burger flipping job of the IT world. Most people don't stay on the lines for long and you really don't want to talk to the ones who have made a career out of it.
Despite the fact that these positions are the lowest-paid in the industry, they seem to be the ones that are also most frequently "best shored" to other countries. That's because the company doesn't really care what happens to you after you buy their product. If they could get away with no support line at all, they'd do that. If they "best shore" developers, they might not be able to get all of the shiny features that make you buy the product in the first place. See how it works?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I work in tech support. I actually don't mind helping old people learn to use computers, because I am fortunate enough to work without a time limit. Most people are friendly if you are patient and don't talk down to them.
Know what is 100 times more annoying than the computer illiterate? Computer experts. That's right, slashdot readers are the bane of my existence.
That fact that you can write software/build a network from paperclips and phone line/replace a hard drive does not mean you haven't forgotten your password. I have talked to hundreds of computer geniuses who wanted to go "Off script" only to realize that their password was l33thax0r3, not l33thax0r4. How about you just take two seconds and clear your browser cache instead of giveing me your resume?
Web designers are worse. Apparently, being a web designer means you don't have to read the most basic instructions on any website. If you can't login with your eyes closed, then they could have done a much better job with the site.
Keep in mind, no matter how many times you TELL me what a smart guy you are, I have no way of telling if you really know how to diagnose a bad hard drive, or if you're one of the many people who thinks "surge protector turned off" and "bad hard drive are the same thing. Save some time and answer a few simple questions.
Of course, if you really are the the genius you would have me beleive, do us both a favor and don't call. I'm sure you'll get it figured out.
I think ISPs should keep a record. When I tell them exactly what's wrong, and turn out to be right, they should put a star next to my name or something, designating that I have a clue. Until you've experienced it, you don't know how irritating it is to have to reconfigure your network so you're not behind a firewall/router just so they can see you were right in the first place.
There are some people who definitely need to be asked routine questions, but I'd be unbelievably happy if they'd pick up the phone and see, "Hey, this guy must know what he's talking about" and believe me when I tell them what router on their network is down.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Ding ding, thank you! And why is that? Because companies just expect people to know how to use computers. So, every time someone's printer "doesn't print", does the user stop and think/look around/check anything? No. They pick up the phone and pester IT.
Users a)get set in certain ways and become highly resistant to change because they are too lazy to try and learn, and b)don't know how to do anything except type in their login password in the morning, reply to emails, etc.
If only companies would sit their employees down for honest-to-go "here is how to use ____" training, productivity would be so much better(because they'd be able to take advantage of all the features their software offers, and they'd know how to handle little bumps in the road), and IT departments would get more infrastructure work done, instead of constantly answering "my printer won't print because it's out of paper" problems.
Oh, and did I mention that in internet/sofware/etc companies, you should be given a basic computer skills proficiency test?
Please help metamoderate.
The reason for that is there is a gap between novice and expert and people tend to think they are in the latter category.
Remember Columbo? Think Columbo. BE Columbo. Just don't demand to tell them the answer to the mystery...listen and ask and do.
The hardest calls to handle -- and please forgive me if human nature has changed over the past 10+ years -- are ones where both TS person and customer know just enough to arogantly think they have figured it out at first glance. The scripts handle the typical things first instead of the "obvious" ones since what seems to be the case often isn't. (After all, if the customer knew what the problem was they could usually solve it themselves, and if TS knew they would never have to go through diagnosing the same problem twice.)
While there are exceptions, it is not a good idea to jump to the conclusion that you (customer or TS) know what is actually going on.
*First* find out or describe what actually happens.
*Then* parrot it back to make sure.
*Only then* do you look for a similar or identical situation in a database (Google! would often qualify).
If nothing comes up or the suggestions don't pan out, start at the top again just to be absolutely certian that what is being said actually happend. If possible, walk the person through it (do this for the tech if they don't!).
I could ... talk to a REAL LIVE ENGINEER (in many cases, the guys and gals that actually designed the software or hardware in question)
This annoys me to no end. I perform sysadmin duties and mild developer duties for the company I work for. I LOATHE (with a passion) the time I have to spend having to answer the tech support line. (Techs work 9a-5p, Business open 8a-2a)
As the only sysadmin on duty at night, I now much stop what I'm doing, and weigh potential outcomes. a) Is the person on the phone more important than what I'm fixing now? b) Will the person call management if I rush them off the phone trying to fix the problem I'm currently working. The list goes on. Have you ever been broken out of a "coding session" and lost your train of thought?
And to be quite honest, I don't want to talk to everyone. I am not "trained" to talk to people (ask my friends). I have a short fuse with any one not even remotely close to my level. I refuse to help my parents. And I'm sure many engineers/developers/sysadmins are the same way. They spent their skills in making things work, not people skills.
--I-- get frustrated when a user tells me "I'm using Internet Explorer" to my Operating System question. I am paid good company money to develop software and keep hardware running, not be a "Computers for Dummies" interactive tutorial!
When modding "Informative", please make sure it both has a source and IS actually informative.
A few years back I had the VP of a department call because his laptop suddenly shut down. I went to look and found that the power supply wasn't plugged in. He turned red, looked at em and said "I should have known better". I replied by telling him not to worry about it, as long as he did his job of keeping the company running, I'd do mine of making sure his laptop worked.
Point is, end users aren't stupid, they simply have other things they do, and what we find intuitive, they may not. It's tech supports job to help them, and make them feel better about it when you walk off into the sunset.
However, when I know there is an issue on their end and call, I expect that they will realize I know what I am talking about, and escalate to somebody who can actually fix the problem, or it may be something they can actually fix themselves.
A competent help desk person can certainly deal with these situations, and my ISP's has on several occasions for me.
Yes, most of us here are proficient enough that when we call it's almost always a problem that can't be solved by following a script or tightening the plug.
But what about the times you've called and it was a stupid problem that a clueless user should have figured out. All of us have done this at some point I'm sure. Being a network uber geek I've been biten by overconfidence as well.
Reminds me of the time years ago when I had a new 8 port ISDN BRI module for a Cisco router that was giving me a helluva time bringing up. The interface just wouldn't show any line activity at all. Calling up Cisco I brush past first level support and report the problem, complaining that it's a hardware issue and that they need to ship me a new one. They shipped me the new one and when I'm installing it I look at the back at the ports. They're numbered 0-7 from right to left. Not left to right. I was plugging the ISDN line in to the wrong port. Duh. I felt like a real idiot.
Since then I've always been worried that I'm going to get bitten again. Sure I likely know more about networking than the telco's tech support department put together, but just maybe I'm being stupid that day.
There is no requirement for users to know a great amount about how their computer works. It is not their JOB, it is not what they get PAID for! Their computer is usually a tool, and they need to know enough about it to do their work--period.
Tech support are PAID to know how to fix things with the computer when they go wrong. It is their JOB, and if they don't like it, then they can leave, rather than blame the end user. Yeah, we all roll our eyes about being called out to turn off someone's caps lock key (same person two days in a row), but can I do the company accounting? No. Can I do the geophysical mapping/modelling for oil development? No.
So to the author of the rebuttal: don't blame the users for not knowing stuff they don't HAVE to know. Just do your job.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
For example, we have Dell servers where I work, that have RAID arrays. Sometimes a disk fails, so we grab our spare (we keep one spare for each type of RAID so that we can quickly rebuild in case of a failure) and pop it in, and it rebuilds and all is happy.
Then comes the hard part; convincing Dell support to send us a replacement disk, under warranty. Even though their own hardware reported the disk was bad, and the spare disk formatted and rebuilt fine, they insist that we run diagnostics on the disk. Running them, of course, would require that we down a production server! I once spent a good deal of time explaining this simple concept of not being able to down a production server to verify a disk is bad, when we already know it is.
Eventually we manage to convince them to give us an RMA and cross ship us a replacement disk, but not after a lot of hair-pulling and grinding. Speaking of grinding, sometimes we fib and tell them the disk was grinding to speed the process.
Tech support people: Stop ASSUMING your customers are idiots. Especially system administrators at your customer sites. We know when a disk is bad!
One reason that telephone support techs are so irritable is not just due to stupid users who won't listen -- its' due to power users who won't cooperate.
I've had more then my fair share of people who don't think they know more then me, they KNOW they do. They can't seem to get it in their head that I am sitting in the chair at the help desk and they are not -- they need to be patient and do as I ask in order to get any help, because for all I know, they are a raving lunatic who just likes to pretend they know a lot about computers.
I work for a large technical services company in the USA, and a large part of our internal phone support is in India. The difference in service is blaringly apparent when you spend half of the phone call overcoming communication issues. Its also more obvious when you are connected to an offshore tech that they're reading a script.
Also, I've witnessed how the management gages service in many a meeting, and its ALL ABOUT NUMBERS. While lately customer satisfaction has come up, they have no way to acurately judge it. They think if a call ends in under 10 minutes that its representative of a customer being satisfied. I work in deskside services and we are the only group that faces the costomer in person. I can tell you that people say a lot when they have a living body in front of them, and while management is patting themselves on the back for reaching their number goals and reducing costs, the customer is looking for a way out of their contract!
Sound waves should be free!
Once upon a time if you owned a computer you were a programmer. Want to balance your checkbook? Write the code yourself. Everybody was an expert. Everybody did their own tech support.
Today computers are mass-market products. Most computer owners cannot be expected to know how to troubleshoot their computer, just as most car owners do not know how to troubleshoot their car. Mom can't rebuild her car's engine, why would you expect her to fix a broken software configuration?
The mass-market computer industry has failed to setup an appropriate tech support structure. Microsoft tries to weasle their way around it at http://www.microsoft.com/security/home/ by saying "Cars need maintenance from time to time, and so do computers. Use these tools and tips to help keep your computer running smoothly."
OK, Microsoft, so you're telling me I need to maintain my computer just like I maintain my car. True story: I bought a new car last year. I've been faithfully taking it to the dealer for an oil change every 3000 miles. A few months ago it started having acceleration problems. I took it to the dealer, and they fixed it for me under warranty in 1.5 hours. I waited in the service lobby drinking free coffee. Cost me nothing but the inconvenience. It's worked perfectly ever since.
Let's say I bought a new computer last year. I've been faithfully applying the almost-weekly XP security updates. A few months ago it started launching programs slowly. The dealer I bought it from won't help, tells me to call the manufacturer. This isn't covered by any kind of warranty. The manufacturer tech support wants me to reinstall everything which will lose all my customized settings, maybe some data, and isn't guaranteed to fix the problem. Microsoft has me spend countless hours of my own time troubleshooting the startup programs through emails. This takes several days of trying things and exchanging emails with a low-level Microsoft tech support person who's copy/pasting from a script. If it does happen to isolate the problem to a particular program I installed, all they helped me do was to isolate the problem. What's the fix? Don't install that program!
Yep, that's a great comparision you make, Microsoft. Maintain my computer just like I maintain my car. I spend lots of time and do all the work, and you don't even help me fix the problem in your operating system! If my car service were like that, I guess I wouldn't be able to accelerate anymore because it's incompatible with my last oil change or something.
This is not a jab only at Microsoft. The entire industry gets an F.
Tech support has been useless to me since I was in middle school. I've actually been told to *reinstall Windows* by a couple of techs! How is that possibly a solution to anything?* And I'm sure half the people here have had to pretend to go to "My Network Places" while running ifconfig from their Linux box.** Techs are so completely clueless these days. I remember back in the day (early '90s :) techs would be able to sit and debug IRQ conflicts with you. These days, its IR-Qwho? Now, if I have a problem with hardware, I usually just get an RMA on the POS and ship it back to them. Some places have online RMA forms, which makes it so you never have to deal with a tech.
*> And on top of that, how do they know I'm running Linux?
**> MS is trying to trip me up, those bastards. I made the mistake of saying I was running XP, but unfortunately, they changed enough stuff from 2k that I couldn't remember where everything was...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I've had a directory full of 'typical' windows sounds in my homedir to make that seem more convincing. The tech was oblivious that I was running FreeBSD. Oh well, as long as I get what I want.
I think the whole idea of phone tech support is flawed. If your car doesn't work, are you gonna call a mechanic and have him try to fix it from remote by telling you what to do?
Most people know nothing about how cars work and their knowledge about PC is about the same. There's nothing wrong with that because the only thing that really matters is that the car or PC work, not how. But, on the other hand, people seem to believe that computers can't be that complex and any doofus should be able to figure out how they work. That's the real crux with tech support.
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
If he's making 10 times what you do he's got a skillset that's worth 10 times yours. And for the stuff outside his skillset he's got an army of trained ACs to do his bidding. Seems like he's not the dumbass in this equation.
I work for a hotel chain. We are entirely a resort hotel company, the people staying at our facilities are people on vacation.
Customer service is a big, giant issue for us. We aren't going to hassle our vacationers with grief over losing their room key while they had a drunken walk down the beach. We aren't going to berate someone for being so stupid as to allow their kids to ride the elevators just for fun while unsupervised.
The company exists to support these folks, make them happy and make them want to come back to us again and again. Some of them are clueless, some of them are mean, some of them are thieves. Then again, most of them are nice folks.
At the end of the day they have a choice on if they want to stay with us or not.
IT support departments have the luxury of having a captive audience. However in a business like ours, we work very hard to spread a customer focused culture throughout the organization.
If you can imagine what it's like to be an immigrant housekeeper working for a bit over minimum wage and having to do manual labor to clean up after folks who earn vast sums more than you and act like you don't exist, and do your job with a smile, then you can see that maybe working at the IT help desk isn't the most difficult thing in the company, talking people through how to get Word to print in landscape or something equally as silly.
The IT folks that I work with are fantastic, and just like the housekeepers, and the front desk staff, and the food & beverage folks, they realize that they too have customers to serve and the purpose of our company isn't to support the IT staff, to buy many l33t Sun boxen or to provide a rationale for a data center, it's to serve customers. And as far as we go in my firm, there's no difference between an internal and external customer.
I'm in the training department for my company. Mostly I develop multimedia CBTs to train reservation agents and front desk staff on how to use their systems. So my PC isn't the standard MS Office/Outlook setup. I have all kinds of weird multimedia programs and development tools that sometimes don't play nice together. Needless to say, I have to get IT help from time to time. (Even as a power user, some installs don't run and so on. Plus we have a training room with multimedia laptops set up as a CBT learning lab and the dongles break, the laptops are old and lousy and require lots of help since they get constant use and abuse.) When I told an IT staffer that I hate to submit lots of tickets he jumped up and down and got mad. "You should submit as many tickets as you need! We have some people that routinely put in 15 tickets every day! The more tickets I can close the more justification I have for IT staff and those are people's jobs! If you need something to get your job done or the laptops aren't working right or whatever it is, don't even hesitate to call us. If i catch you not submitting tickets, I will beat you up."
All I could think was "Wow!" Here is an IT help desk guy that has a customer focus, which is what the whole damn company is about!
So maybe the end users aren't so bright sometimes, or they don't know what OS they are using. Look on the upside. If they don't know what OS they have, it will be easier to transition them to Linux.
Never confuse feeling with thinking.
No company should be forcing people with your attitude (no offence implied) to work in tech support. But I bet there are still many sysadmins, developers and programmers who would be happy to spend some of the time answering users' questions. And of course, they should do it separately from their main job, not during their coding session.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
To be fair, there are multiple problems here:
1) The users -- they range from completely helpless with computers to grand masters, and there isn't a system yet by which helpdesk can sort them out quickly. This is compounded by people who think that just because they can install a new mouse, they're expert level and expect to be treated so.
2) Tech support personnel -- Ummm, putting this gently, tech support is a stepping stone on the career path. Support personnel either rise out of it to developers, admins, etc; sink below it to cashier at the fast food joint; or find a new job. It's a big hole in the company into which you shovel people. So, you may get a good tech support person, who eventually might be a very good developer or sysadmin; or you might get a loser whose next job will be reading "this end towards burger" in his training manual.
3) The companies. They're half the reason tech support is a big hole in the company, into which you shovel people. They see it as a giant cost center, and continously attempt to minimize it by hiring cheaply and getting rid of more expensive people. Eventually, they're at the bottom of the barrell, and in order to use their front line people, they create scripts for them to use before escalating them to 2nd tier. Which annoys the end users and annoys the tech support personnel. Then the companies decide on ticket quotas or time limits, in which the tech's job is dependant on how many tickets they close, not how well -- which annoys customers and tech support, further contributing to the problem.
I've had hororible experiences, including one company that insisted I reinstall windows 98 on their laptop, as obviously I was too clueless to install win2k and linux -- because the onboard mouse had died! (I called back after downloading their diagnostic utils and gave them the error output)
I've also had tolerable experiences, where the tech asked a basic question, and I responded with "no, I did not try $VENDOR diag utility, but I did do $X, $Y and $Z, which if the device was working, should have given me $A, $B and $C. Instead I got $SOS". One notable one, the tech shouted over the cube wall "Anyone know what ping and tcpdump are?" and a reply came back "The router's broken".
Kids nowadays grown up with computers all around, so it's going to be easier to solve stuff later on as the general population slowly becomes more tech-savvy.
Are they really more savvy, or just accostomed to executing a different set of tasks than the previous generation? As computers get more complex over time, is your average computer user today really equipped to handle learning the new tech?
I might actually propose that the opposite may be the case. As computers become more "appliance-like" for average users, all the scary configuration stuff will be even more mysterious to an average user than they are today.
Look at the history. It used to be that computers were very difficult to use: you had to be a qualified expert to use one. Typically, if you were dedicated enough to learn to use the thing, you also learned enough along the way to be able to fix it as well, or at least be helpful to someone supporting him/her. Today, the average user uses Windows, which is somewhat easy enough for non-savvy people to use, but the expectation is there that things will break and they will have to change some stuff around to "make it work" again. In the future, I would wager that the average user will be completely incapable of (or not permitted to) making any changes to a computer's workings.
The analogy is, once again, the automobile. Early on, old timers refused to have anything to do with cars, and if they tried they'd fail, while the early adopters had a steep learing curve on how to drive and maintain the car. Later (30's-40's), anyone who owned a car had a neighbour who was an expert on maintaining it, while the rest relied on just learning to drive. Now, it is very rare indeed that you can find anyone outside of the "customer service" ranks (a garage) who has any inkling on what to do if something breaks, or for that matter on what some of the technology under the hood is doing in the first place!
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
Group 1 users aren't too bad - they can usually be handled with the troubleshooting script. They will generally do what you tell them to do (within the limits of their understanding of your instructions). As long as you treat them reasonably well they will treat you reasonably well.
Group 2 users are a bit worse simply because their problems are NOT going to be handled by the script - if they were they wouldn't be calling you. However, once you identify them as being in group 2, you can "kick it up a notch" and use "the big words" to quickly find the problem (assuming the problem can quickly be found). However, the problem arises if they user is in Group 2 and the tech support person your standard Tier-1 meatware text-to-speech unit - the user will want to skip over the script (because he's already run it) and that leaves the meatpuppet floundering.
The group that causes the problems for ALL of us is group 3 - the luser who thinks he is a tech:god. Look at this guy from the tech support person's perspective:
In other words, to the tech support person Group 3 looks just like Group 2.
If a Tier-1 person passes one of these jokers on to Tier-2, when it comes out that the moron didn't have something plugged in (as step 4 of the script checks), the Tier-1 guy gets dinged for it. Now, if you were the Tier-1 guy, would you be really willing to transfer somebody like this to Tier-2?
Of course, these Group 3's make it harder for us Group 2's to get anything done. So how do we Group 2's work around this?
If you have a tech support group you need to work with on a regular basis, try to get to know them by name, and be known to them by name. IF you prove to the Tier-2 guys that you really are Group 2, they MAY give you a direct number to them. Example: I have just such a relationship with my ISP - they know that when I call them and say "router 3 is down", they need to fix it, not ask me to reboot Windows.
However, this is not always an option - if the organization is large, or you contact them infrequently you won't be able to do this, so:
Let Mr. Tier-1 drive the conversation. Play dumb. If he says to reboot Windows and you are running Linux, just say "OK, give me a minute" and lie. Follow his script. Remember, Group 2 and Group 3 look alike to him, so the only way to not be taken for a Group 3 blowhard is to look like a Group 1.
Accept the fact that you are going to have to run the rat's maze of Tier-1 support, take a deep breath, and get over it. Eventually, when you hit the end of the script you will be transferred to a Tier-2 support, and can start to "use the big words".
Them: "Did you reboot your modem?"
You: "Yes, I rebooted the modem, and tried to ping the gateway, and got no response."
That way, the guy on the other end slowly comes to the realization that you actually know what you are doing, and are NOT simply trying to impress him.
Yes, this is time consuming, even time wasting. But in the long run you are more likely to get your problem fixed this way then by coming across all arrogant.
Final story: I've been on both sides of the phone - I frequently have to do Tier-3 type support on my projects (and sometimes Tier-1, before I cracked the whip over the service manager and told him in no uncertain terms that I would NOT accept his people dropping calls on me cold
www.eFax.com are spammers
Half the users on /. are out of a job.
At an ISP I used to work for, after that customers first two lines, we were allowed to return:
;)
"I'm sorry sir, being an Internet Provider we are only authorized to provide technical support for your internet connection. It is outside of our scope to provide support for Windows or your Computer itself. I would suggest contacting [insert contact info for either the local computer hardware shop, or the local 'basic classes' at MicroCenter, depending on the problem.]"
If they did not know what a desktop was or how to right click, we would out right tell them we will not explain how to use a computer, they need to learn that elsewhere or have someone else call who knows and can be in front of their computer, or they could bring the computer out to our offices if they desired.
Only once or twice (out of hundreds upon hundreds) of times we did this did any customer get pissed off for us basically calling them stupid.
And trust me, those arnt the type of people you want as a customer anyway, so your better off with them canceling and going to your competition to cost them man hours
People calling tech support lines have bought a product which is meant to do something. The fact that they can't work it out even when everything is working is the fault of a bad UI - not the users.
There is a major point you're overlooking that even the best UI will never fix. Photoshop will not make someone who can't draw an artist. Cakewalk will not make a musician out of a tin ear. CAD/CAM software won't make instant engineers and DTP software does not create instant pro magazine publishers.
Many users are basically expecting the computer to do all of the thinking for them when in reality all they can do is automate drudgery. Non-trivial tasks have skillsets and computers can't always paper that over.
Me: Please put the disk in the drive and close the door.
Him: Okay, wait a minute. (sound of walking and a door closing) Okay, the door is closed.
I got a letter from a customer which explains that another tech had asked her to send a copy of her data disk so we could fix it. Enclosed was a photocopy of said disk.
I got a letter from another customer. Enclosed was a floppy disk with "Bad Disk" scrawled over the label. The handwritten letter explained that he was furious because this was the third disk that he had received that had bad sectors on it. The paper on which the letter was written was a printout of chkdsk, which had clearly been run on his 20MB hard drive. After showing everyone, I wrote back and explained that his floppy was fine. Then I sent him back Bad Disk.
The longest call I ever took was from a guy who could run his programs, could back them up, could see his data in the list in his backup program, but couldn't find the data on his disk. I had him cd here and cd there, all to no avail. I finally caught on to his use of the phrase "I installed the program to my DOS" and had him look in his C:\DOS directory. Sure enough, he had installed all his software in the same folder.
So, my theory is that proficient use of a computer requires not only seeing what's in front of you, but also maintaining a model in your head of what's going on. In all these cases, the person misunderstood something fundamental about what they thought they were trying to do and consequently could not work out a correct sequence of actions.
I'm sure most slashdotters would recognize the experience of "seeing where you're going" (a folder, a dialog box, a menu in an application) before your fingers make it happen. If you are generally proficient with your tools, you probably are really irked by the experience of, for example, navigating up and down the menus of a new program (or an MS-Office upgrade where the menu items have been pointlessly shuffled); and you feel like you're getting somewhere with your new app/tool/whatever when you start memorizing the keystrokes to get where you're going, and you no longer actually read the menus most of the time.
This is where I think most "technically illiterate" people differ. They don't have that model, don't really think that way, and can't understand it if you try to explain it to them. For instance, my dad used to insist he couldn't use a computer because he didn't learn the New Math in school. He simply would not hear differently until his company made him use a browser to access his reports; he changed his tune pretty quickly, after that. :-) But if he hadn't
been forced, he never would have made what seems a pretty simple leap to most
of us. Whether it's biological or cultural, some people don't "get it" at a
deeper level than I think is generally realized.
Hopefully, the tech guy you get will be a moron.
Because I know that we aren't responsible for viruses that you download. Nor are we responsible for damage caused by port scans, system attacks, or anything of that nature, but generally, we'll take your logs and try to see if we can't null route the IP that's doing it. When you connect with your ISP, you are paying for one thing and one thing only: direct connection from my network to yours. I get paid $12.00/hr, and a network configuration specialist makes 5 times that. So, if you need advanced network configuration, realize that even though *I* might know it, most of the people sitting next to me probably don't, and probably no one does short of the engineers we pay to maintain the network, who we pay far too much and employ far too few of to help you out.
I'm not arguing that some support isn't bad, but lying to technical support, or intimidating them, is the most likely route to getting HORRIBLE assistance, and to be honest, every company I've ever worked for would rather tell a problem customer to go away and not buy our products than to jump through unreasonable hoops from people who think that THEY should be allowed to bypass the process.
--- I'm going sane in a crazy world.
Your post shows the amount of experience you have. It's very low.
Here's what I do:
Me: Hello, helpdesk.
user: I can't get on the internet.
Me: Okay, what happens when you try to get on the internet?
###
Notice I don't try to ask anything technical here, about anything the user probably doesn't know, like the operating system they use. My response gives much better results.
###
user: Um, it gives me an error
###
Responses vary. Sometimes they'll actually give me the error. If I wanted to know what the operating system was, I would know from the error. Like if they said "It says 'error 691'" I would know right away both that they're using windows, and that their password is wrong.
###
Me: What does the error say? I'd need that information to find out the problem.
### again, no technical knowledge required.
user: I don't have it in front of me right now, I closed that window.
Me: Okay, can you try to connect to the internet right now, or do you have to hang up the phone first?
user: I've got a second phone line. Lemme try this again.
###
It's not always this way, but I want to be somewhat brief. If the user answers that he has to hang up first, then I tell him that he should write down any error message he gets and call us back. Sometimes this is where he reveals he has ADSL, which again, is very helpful.
###
user: it says "The computer you are dialing is not answering" And I can hear a voice coming from the computer. Oh, it's starting to dial again.
###
Here we see why we didn't get the error message earlier. Oftentimes, the user will leave the error message on the screen before calling us, because they know they'll need it.
###
Me: Okay, click cancel, we don't need this window anymore. Can you see your "My Computer" icon?
###
Notice I said "your 'my computer' icon" not "my computer." Microsoft has always irritated me with that little naming convention.
###
user: No, I just see "This page cannot be displayed."
Me: Okay, close this window. Umm, for that matter, close anything you have open right now.
user: okay, all I can see now is my icons.
Me: Okay, double-click on the My Computer icon, and then open Dial up networking.
###
Two steps at a time, max. Even YOU couldn't follow instructions much more complex than that unless they were written down.
###
user: Okay. Now I've got "Make new connection," and "Internet Foo"
###
See, we've just established that the user has windows 95 or windows 98. If he had Me or XP, he wouldn't get this, and I would ask him what he *does* have in this window, and I could figure it out from there. At any rate, I now have the information in our database so we don't have to guess next time.
###
Me: Okay, now right-click on the "Internet Foo" icon...
user: right click?
Me: click with the button on the right side of the mouse. It should pop up a menu.
user: Okay, it says 'connect', blah blah blah
Me: Alright, now click properties at the bottom.
user: right click or left click?
Me: Unless I say otherwise, I always mean left click.
user: okay...
Me: we should see the phone number here. More than likely, we've got the area code in the area code box. Windows will just assume you don't need to dial that unless you're dialling long distance. Just type '604' at the beginning of the phone number in the phone number box.
###
Finish up the call, various troubles getting user to edit text snipped, close windows, haveaniceday.
The user I just walked through here is pretty typical, although perhaps a bit on the slow side and certainly not clued when it comes to computers. You'll notice there's no yelling, no frustration on my part, and most of all, it's not that hard.
I hope this helps.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I have seen alot of people here telling techs that they shouldn't blame end users for not knowing any better.
I'm sorry, but I just don't see it that way.
ONLY when it comes to tech products can people believe that it is alright to be uninformed and ill prepared to function.
If I worked for Ford Motor Company and I got a call from some idiot who didn't know that you had to use a key to unlock the door or start the engine on his brand new Mustang, I'd be highly upset.
If I worked for Nike, I'd be pissed off if I was expected to take calls from idiots who couldn't figure out how to lace their new Air Force One's.
Peoplw who work for BMG aren't expected to take calls from clueless fucks who don't know which side faces up when they play their new Backstreet Boys CD.
I've worked tech support in several industries, and the attitudes of idiots are universal. It is MY fault because THEY don't know what the fuck they're doing.
In addition to computers. I have done tech support of a Satellite TV providor. I couldn't tell you the number of people who have to call in EVERY TIME their power goes out and their TV gets reset to channel 2. You read the 80 notes in the account and the first thing you try is to have them press the buttons "0" and then "3" on their remote control, because that's what they were instructed to do 80 times before and guess what, it works!
Sure, some companies force techs to follow a scripts that cripple their ability to help customers, but the larger problem is that it is too easy for people to live out their lives in ignorance.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Because I paid money for their product and I expect them to support it.
This tech vs. user problem stems from the fact that computers are still too hard to use and understand. The usability hasn't "settled in" yet.
Regular home telephones and family cars have been fairly straightforward user experiences for some time now. People can approach them easily, consistently, and the pedagogy for them is well established.
New model copy and fax machines have been getting better in recent years, though they can still be a bit bewildering. If these technologies aren't obsoleted they may very well get away from their early confusing usages. Similarly video players and game consoles.
But desktop computers have been go go go. They haven't stopped changing, simplified, or settled, but instead are doing the opposite. There are more and more options, they do more and more things, and there are more conventions than ever. This may never change, because computers are virtual machines, meaning they can be anything, and this particular feat makes them so damn useful, but at the same time often makes them less than usable.
But, for consumers, desktop computers probably will settle someday (hopefully soon). Email, web browsing and word processing don't have to be hard. Those little email-only machines never took off, but maybe they were before their time. My mother would be a lot happier with one. Ask yourself, how much about computing should someone have to know just to use a browser or send an email? The correct answer: almost none.
Of course, eventually, my mom would want to email someone a picture she took, or put up her own web page, and she'd be right back in the awful fray.
Personally, I wish those little email & word processor machines had taken off. There are people who _want_ to do cool things with computers, and those people should buy them. But there are lots of people who simply want to browse the web, send email, and print letters - and those people are ill served by being tricked into buying a computer.
Fortunately, cell phones, PDAs, and console game machines seems to be cannibalizing a lot of the regular home computer sphere of service. Maybe in the future families will just buy these devices (which still need some "settling") and forego a home computer.
It can't happen too soon.
It seemes to me that both sides are partially to blame.
The computer makers are more than likely underpaying and undertraining staff for what is, obviously, a very difficult job. Much like teachers, they are underpaid and a good one makes a big difference.
Many users like my parents (don't get me started) refuse to take responsibility for educating themselves on the basics of the machine. My parents still don't understand the difference between hard drive storage space and RAM. Computers are complicated - you have to take some time to read and experiment until you understand the vocabulary and basic methodology.
So, here is one idea for a partial solution - have levels of support based on the users grasp of the OS. So, when a user wants to buy a support package, he or she is directed to a short multiple choice quiz on the Web that ranks the user based on their skill. The higher they rank, the cheaper their support package.
This may seem a little harsh, but it makes logical sense.
* Users like you and I might not have to jump through so many hoops to actually get to a crux of the problem becuase the person on the other end of the line would know that we have a clue.
* People who know their computers better are less likely to need tech support and should, therefore, pay less. Conversly, people who don't bother to learn the lingo and basic operation of their machine would be fairly penalized.
* Joe and Jane would have more incentive to pick up that Windows XP for idiots book and give it a read.
* Users who don't understand such basic terms as "right-click" and "hard drive" could be forced to learn those terms prior to callinng tech support.
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
I've asked for a simple test to be included with the products we sell at work, but marketing doesn't seem to agree with me...I think we need to make marketing answer some tech support calls :P
Often enough they're considered "literate" if not even "power users". Why? Because someplace along the road they learned how to use MS Word or Excel.
To complicate things, they're usually considered computer "literate" by someone - completely on the basis of having once put together a tiny spreadsheet in Excel and changed a font or two in Word.
To me this is literacy in the small - about fourth grade level in literacy-as-reading terms.
The analogy is always made with cars. Many people drive and drive well - but they are often said to be "car illiterate" because they don'tunderstand the internal combustion engine and can not adjust a cars timing with a yardstick and an alarm clock. So, the argument then goes, why should anyone need to know anything more about computing?
I find this analogy unpersuasive. Think about it - almost everyone who drives is "driving literate" in some sense. They know the basics of how to drive a car (not entirely simple) and how a car works (enough anyway to know that you need to put gas in it and change the oil ) and usually things like how to change tires. They also know the basic mechanics/physics of driving, the general rules of the road, basic road etiquette, how to read a map (well, mostly) and so on. "Driving literacy" is really pretty complicated. A good driver who's had some years of driving experience in a variety of conditions knows a whole lot. (Admittedly, much of this is not usually taught - Driver's Ed notwithstanding.)
But even so, a car is a pretty simple device compared to a computer. Cars do one basic thing - carry their contents from one place to another (serious reductionism here!). Computers are complex and very flexible in comparison to cars. Most computers can run software that does many different (and sometimes very different) kinds of things (think Word vs Excel vs Blender vs Mozilla vs Big Complicated Game).
So, counting someone as "computer literate" because they can turn on a windows machine and use a specific version of word (or whatever) just doesn't work for me.
Computer literacy for me is much more. I'm not sure what I'd consider computer literate, but at a minimum it would involve :
The most important parts for me are the meta knowledge. Not knowing how to change a font, but knowing how to approach finding the information about how to change a font. This can not be taught simply by teaching a couple simple applications.
I've proposed "computer literacy" requirements in a couple of different universities that would at least go a step or two beyond MS Word (even if not to the meta-knowledge I mentioned above) and the bulk of the faculty have responded predictably. Most common is the attitude of "We dont know that. Our students don't need to.", next is "But why? All anyone ever needs to know
I don't think a car is the right comparition. A Car is moble. Even when broke you can normally get it to the mechanic under its own power. If not you can tow it in. It is rare for a car to be broke in such a way that you can forget a part at home.
Compare that to my computer. Assume for a moment it is broke and I'm the idiot who is going to bring it in. Perhaps the harddrive crashed. Should I bring the in the mouse, keyboard, joystick, printer, monitor, speakers? Not to mention 3 power cords, the printer cable, a keyboard extention cable, a USB cable (I no longer have a usb device connected, but the cable is still connected...), network cable, phone cable. Whatever, I do or I don't, you fix it, and I get it home again, now what. All those cables and devies have to be plgued in again. Many places to forget something and them I'm calling you on the phone because after you finished with my computer the screen is blank, and how much effort before you discover I forgot to plug the monitor cable in?
Is that really the same thing?