A thought

[hoffman-log.livejournal.com]

The following crossed my mind when I was reading about how our customers can chew us out.  Now, everybody in this community can get off their high horse (if on it) and just outright confess that while we may be smart with computers, we don't know everything.

But everything is what our customers expect us to know, right?  Has anybody else been chastised by a caller because you didn't have the answer or solution for them right off the bat?  Show of hands, please.

That's what I thought.  Not pleasant, eh?

Then it occurred to me.

There's an old story about two men hiking through the woods and accidentally come across a hungry and angry bear.  Fearing for their lives, the men wonder how they'll escape death.  One of the men kneels down and proceeds to tighten his shoe laces.

"You don't actually think you'll out run the bear, do you?" asked the other hiker.

"Nope", he responded.  "I just have to out-run you."

Isn't that the case with tech support?  It bothers me how a customer chews me out for not knowing anything, when he's the schmuck who called me for help!  Ironic, but not like they notice.  So in a way, the situation is the same.

"I don't have to be smart enough to fix the problem to be tech support, I just have to be smarter than you."

I'm going to use that the next time I'm getting chewed.

_MaH

Comments

[geekgrrl-ca.livejournal.com]

I had a customer get upset that I couldn't remember an obscure part number off the top of my head (we literally have hundreds of thousands of parts, some physical, some for things like extended care). I had no qualms about passing her off to a supervisor.