MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
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MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
| MY GLASS HOUSE | THE PREVIOUS EVENT | THE ANNIVERSARY EVENT | THE WRITERS/GUIDELINES | |
| [EDITOR's NOTE: The following is the transcript of an electronic mail sent to The World's Magazine's editor this week. --- Ed.]
Subject: Tennis, Rod? Rod, You'll never learn. A user advocate that prints Tech Support clueless user stories? Wow! Welcome to the tennis match. And, you! are the ball that will be volleyed back and forth and back and forth. *grin* I too am a user advocate. Big Time! Since I work in Manufacturing doing programming and helping run an HP that our MRP software resides on, I am also a customer/user of our local IT network troops and help desk. (I really work in a skunk works that's sole reason for being is to get around the bottlenecks of the official IT organization.) I am not a clueless user - I've been fixing, programming and playing with computers since 1965. I am fed up with clueless network troops and powerless, unhelpful help desks. |
"Thank you for calling the Technical Support Help Desk. For our convenience, you have been placed on Terminal Hold. We may never pick up. Hahahahh!"
"Yeah, I could easily solve that problem for you... But what's in it for me?" |
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"Can't you see I'm busy? .... Sorry about that, Pauline, just another jerk with a computer problem he can't figure out on his own."
dubya-dubya-dubya WeKnowWhoYouAre dot com 
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Story #1: We moved to a new manufacturing facility last August. Our computer remained at the other plant. It took 8 weeks for them to figure out how to connect our DTC (a box with a direct connection to the HP; it is not a network connection) so that we could have our system printer and a dumb terminal (for console backup) hooked up. Two weeks later, the printer and terminal stopped working. It took three weeks to find the problem -- someone had noticed that the box in the cable closet wasn't connected to the network, so they "fixed" it!
Story #2: Four months ago, we requested a second printer and terminal be placed in an area adjacent to ours for one of our users. The main reason for this is that the network troops have been playing a nasty game of changing the IP addresses frequently on the network printers - without telling us so we can keep our printer list on the HP up-to-date. They still have not been installed, despite at least weekly phone calls to the help desk. Story #3: Our printer and terminal quit working Monday. They still are not working. Surprise, they are working on it though. Seems that Monday, the network in the plant manager's office also went kaput during a customer presentation and he is NOT a happy camper about it. The tech working the problem today, said, "Hmmmm, things in the closet look different than they did a week ago when I was up here." We have helped them confirm that it is not our equipment. Don't get me wrong. I have met my share of new users. They can be a challenge. But every one of them that I have helped has been most appreciative. We're moving to a new MRP system and I'm involved in the training. I've been putting bunches of stuff on the intranet for the newbies. Know what? They like that info and the fact that they can fix things themselves. They keep asking, "Why hasn't anyone else ever taken the time to furnish us with that basic-level type of training materials?" Put the FAQs up on the intranet and they will come and read and learn. Each of us had to sit down to a computer for the first time at some time or other. Remember that humbling experience damn it! |
| Give the users a break. Put two techies together and what do they complain about? (Besides users, that is.) They complain about the tech support calls they have to make to Microsoft, Compaq or whomever. They complain about the hold times. They complain about the icky music they have to endure. They complain about the push button hell of the voice mail and queueing system. Then what do they do at work? They laugh at the poor users in their company that have to do the same damn thing on the company help desk.
Want to quit getting dumb questions on the phone? Set up a special email account of help@yourcompany.com. Publish it and make sure that someone is monitoring it. Shoot for a 10 minute max response time to the help emails. You can make a list of canned answers to frequent questions that you can cut and paste. Most Help Desk calls are not "I'm completely dead" -- they are questions that can be asked and answered via email. Get them out of push button hell. Users are customers. And the plain fact of life is that if you have no customers, you have no business. If you have no business, you ain't got a job Charley. Hope you have a decent sized trust fund to support you.
Darhl Stultz
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