Do users think tech support guys are psychics?

I sell software I made online and I do my own tech support by email, and every now and then I get emails that say:

"I get an error, how do I fix this?"

Or worst

"The program doesn't work, what's wrong?"

How the hell do they expect me to help with an email like that?

I'll be updating my online support form to say to mention what the problem is and what errors if any appear.

The worst thing is it happened maybe once or more per month that users would put my email address instead of theirs in the email feild so I got emails appearing to come from myself which I couldnt know who they were sent from or reply to them.

I had to change the email field label from "Email:" to "Your email: (The reply will be sent to the email address entered above)" and programmed so that if a user enters my email it says "You must enter your email address, the address entered here is where the response to your message will be sent".

Not surprisingly most of these users are AOL users, I've seriously considered banning AOL users from purchasing my software, they tend (with exceptions of course) to lack the knowledge require to use a PC and the fact that AOL erases all original messages when they reply makes it literally impossible for me to provide support to AOL users because I get replies that say only "Yes" or "That's right" with nothing else, I then have to reply to ask what in the world they are talking about, I can't run an email history search for every AOL user that replies especially considering the hundrerds of emails I get and the 10k+ emails I have which means running a search can take a minute or more.

may take on users is that they should consider what their doctor lst told them.

im my expreinece its been, "well lets try this drug and come back in 10 days" if only It could get away with that.

but what say do I have im only the guy that fixes it.

to answer your question yes.

Actually there are a lot of people like that. My brother works in an auto parts store and has literally had people call him and then hold the phone down by their car and then say.. " did you hear that? what part do I need for my car? "

LOL... I've got all sorts of stories about idiot customers... You deal with them anywhere and everywhere. Being a Canadian on a border town I always get the best reactions after asking "What are you? American?" after they've asked me something profoundly dumb. It usually makes them realize how dumb they sound... :) But seriously, considering it's been said that "There is a sucker born every second , and two to take advantage of him". I believe that "There is an idiot born every second, and two to laugh at him." Like some guy actually today comes in with his tower and tells me all about how his printer is messing up and it won't print or scan properly.... so I ask him where the printer is. "Oh, you need the printer too?" So I said, "do you expect to get your brakes on yer car fixed without bringing in the car?" It took him a few seconds to realize what I meant and he laughed and went to get the printer. I also had a customer come in complaining that his USB ports didn't work. They work. I told him, I even showed him how to install the drivers properly. Yet he comes back the next day and say they're not working. So I tell him to bring me everything and he does and I setup his devices for him. This may not seem funny at first... but he's a local IT guy... who by the way was the one responsible for destroying a power supply another time that I already mentioned on this site before they closed the tech tales section I believe.

Now I have a wrong user telling me he's right:

I get an email from a user saying he's mad that my email address is invalid and that the emails bounce back (that's already funny by itself). He pasted the undeliverable mail error message which said could not deliver to my email at auctionbuilder ĐŏŤ ČǾΜ (yes, I am paranoid about getting added to spam lists, even though that isnt even my domain), but my email is at auctionautobidder ĐŏŤ ČǾΜ.

I tell him that he had sent it to the wrong email and told him my correct email address. He then replies and says the email he sent it to was the one that he saw in the program, but I obviously have the correct email address in the program, and I have never even heard of auctionbuilder before.

I frequently get calls like:
User: I get an error message sometimes when i go into (...)
Me: What does it say?
User: I don't know, I just click OK few times and it goes away.

I often don't know whether to feel flattered or simple amused at our customers. On the one hand, they assume we have divine pyschic powers and abilities far beyond the reach of mere mortals. On the other hand, it is ridiculous to hear some of the things they expect us to deliver.

We test their ISP when their PC is in the shop, and so we normally get their userID and password. People will come in months/years later, having forgotten their password and expecting us to remember it. We also have people who expect us to remember a comment we made on the phone three weeks ago or who had their PC fixed from us two years ago and they expect us to remember all the little quirks on their system.

We also get all sorts of people calling on a cell-phone in traffic because their kid's computer had some sort of error (no specifics), what should they do to fix it? Most of the people who come into our store have no idea what the components are called - the PC tower itself is {modium, hard drive, tower, box, engine, putah, brain, Plentium, Centurion} - but when they come in and ask for a new modem, we were supposed to divine they meant a new computer, not a new 56k. Silly us.

We had to tell one customer over the phone "don't bring everything, just bring the box-part, not the TV-part" (having to dumb things down that far should say something). Guess what - they brought the cardboard box (empty) in which the PC had originally been packed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ShadowWynd

We test their ISP when their PC is in the shop, and so we normally get their userID and password. People will come in months/years later, having forgotten their password and expecting us to remember it. We also have people who expect us to remember a comment we made on the phone three weeks ago or who had their PC fixed from us two years ago and they expect us to remember all the little quirks on their system.

We also get all sorts of people calling on a cell-phone in traffic because their kid's computer had some sort of error (no specifics), what should they do to fix it? Most of the people who come into our store have no idea what the components are called - the PC tower itself is {modium, hard drive, tower, box, engine, putah, brain, Plentium, Centurion} - but when they come in and ask for a new modem, we were supposed to divine they meant a new computer, not a new 56k. Silly us.

We had to tell one customer over the phone "don't bring everything, just bring the box-part, not the TV-part" (having to dumb things down that far should say something). Guess what - they brought the cardboard box (empty) in which the PC had originally been packed.

---

ROFLMAO that is soooooo my week!

This is turning out to be a swell user-bashing thread. And I like it! :D

I work in technical support as well, and am very happy to find others in similar predicaments as I am.

Have you ever trained people who had never used a computer before? It can be a funny and enlightening experience. Many things that we usually take for granted, you see them struggling so hard to learn. Like using the mouse.

I sometimes cringe when I see the strange and "unnatural" movements hands begin to adopt when maneuvering the mouse. They twist their wrist awkwardly, move their entire arm abnormally, and even move their entire body, just to get the mouse to go where they want it to go. And most of the time, the mouse doesn't go there anyway.

And the concept of left and right click, that can be an ordeal! I sometimes tell my users to "Right click the so-and-so icon and click Properties...", and they almost always ends up doing something else. Some left click anyway, and nothing happens, and they keep insisting that they're clicking the "right" (meaning correct) button.

And the most difficult operation of all, the double-click.

This is why I tell my colleagues, technical support is not for everyone. It takes a lot of patience and creativity to make users understand what you want them to do, and make them do it.

That being said, during those frustrating times when I encounter a really, really novice user, I just take a deep breath, (note, I don't sigh, especially on the phone, because some can actually detect the resentment in the action) remind myself that I was a novice as well not too long ago, and take them through the steps, "Click Start, Settings, Control Panel..." ;)

Breaking News! Just now!

An irate user just complained that they could not use their system for the past hour, and they have a lot of customers who are upset at the delay, yadi-yada.

I asked the guy, "I've been in the office for the past 1 and a half hour. Why didn't you call earlier?"

He replied, "I'm busy..." :D

I worked with my dad for a year or so at an engineering firm. He's a mechanical engineer... I remember walking into his office one day and finding him typing out some stuff. He had decided to move one of the paragraphs to another area and was typing out a long a$$ paragraph by retyping it. I was like "What are you doing?" and he explained the situation. I was like "Dad." and shook my head. I psuhed him out of the way gently and copied and pasted the paragraph to where he wanted it. His eyes were as big as dinner plates. He demanded to know how to do that... so I show him again... ended up taking 45 minutes out of my day to get him comfortable enough to use it quickly. So as I'm leaving he asks, does this work in other programs too.... and I replied yes. And he asks "Even autocad?" and I had done it lots of times in autocad and replied yes. So he loads up a drawing and I show him again how to do it in autocad and he's like "You just saved me an hours worth of work a day probably." I just laughed my a$$ off for the rest of the day and he went merrily on with his reduced workload all to the thanks of a minor second long procedure we call "copy and paste"...

A guy just called me up at the ISP I work for. and asks if he doesn't have a phone line can he get highspeed. I paused for a second holding my laughter back, and I inform him no we do not offer highspeed through anything other than the phone line. I suggest cable to him (which we don't have but I figure at least letting him know may make him think of us again later). And he's like "oh we don't have cable either". so out of curiousity I asked him where he was calling from and he says from the corner store's pay phone. And he goes on to tell me about a big conspiracy of companies are ganging up against him by raising the bills of which he has no money to pay. I just sat there listening to him and eventually I cut into his sob story and said "I'm sorry sir I have to go, I have paying customers waiting for me"... talk about your bizarre people...

A hobbo wanting an internet connection perhaps? :D

In my office, I have people that would rather endure flakey computer behaviour for months instead of taking 30 seconds to write down the exact error message so I can try to help them.

Yes... But I knew you would ask that :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Archer

A hobbo wanting an internet connection perhaps? :D

---

Yes, those are the ones that come to my library! Fortunately for me, the library staff does not call the IT staff to help with patrons (the staff is bad enough!)


I do training for the new hires and my favorite part is when I get to troubleshooting. I have 2 different slides with error messages from dribbleglass.com. http://dribbleglass.com/computer-messages.htm

Anytime someone who's been through training calls and reports an error message, they know if they don't have the exact verbiage, I will ask them if the computer said they need to get a life!

I can't find a page displaying my favourite "error message" but if you watch this quick flash cartoon you'll see it at the end:

http://www.homestarrunner.com/systemisdown.html

I had that as the background of my tech machine and a lot of people would tell me, you've got an error up on your screen....