What are some things you think tech people presume others know, and know how to do?
It's helpful to take a few steps back from time to time to reassess where we're each coming from on our knowledge of tech (or anything) to better communicate.
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I have worked in IT for 10+ years, IT support is 90% psycology, especially over the phone.
True that. I got tired of the tech support theatre. Fix a problem in two minutes = unhappy user. Fix a problem in a quarter hour and make it look difficult = happy user. I just want to do my job and leave without any human interaction, y'know?
I have only worked at internal IT helpdesks, and they have been very good with regards to that, but I get you.
Then why do you have that job?
I don't, any more. I switched to supply chain.
How do you like it?
The work's not exciting but the money's better and I'm sharing an office with people I like. So I think it was worthwhile.
Glad to hear it. Excitement’s for kids anyway. I’d rather have the most boring job the in the world at this stage of life. People I like and good money’s just about perfect. Also, so long as I’m not doing anything wrong on the job: lying to people, screwing people over, etc.
Agreed. For me personally, I've got 3 things I do to which helps me figure out the problem most of the time without demeaning the customer or implying that they don't have the knowledge.
1: Asking the right questions. My two most important and first ones are "What is it doing?", and/or "What is it not doing?". I find the question "what's wrong with it?" to be almost entirely ineffective.
2: Talking in an appropriate technical level to the person you're talking to. Eg, a 80 year old vs a 50 year old.
3: Using simple analogies. Eg. A CPU is like a brain, a motherboard like a body, a video card like legs to run really fast etc.
I have also found that admitting to making the same misstake yourself from time to time really helps, unlocking their account? It's fine, it happens plenty of times for myself as well, especially since we at the IT team have four different personal accounts with different uses and passwords.
Regarding passwords, depending on what the user works with and if they use exterbal services they need to logon to, I will also offer to install a password manager for them, and set up the initial database while giving them a tour of it and how to use it, many users really liked it and used it ever since.
Not official IT, but computer repair but I insist that the T in IT stands for therapist.