The essence of tech support?

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

After eight years in techsupport, I've found that 98% of the job can be squeezed into one question.

"What makes you think that [what the caller said]?"


"What makes you think your internet isn't working?"

"What makes you think you can't print?"

"What makes you think it's my problem?"


It's a hugely versatile question. Almost every single troubleshooting question can be reduced to a variant of this one metaquestion. You can keep asking it, or variations on it, until the caller coughs up something resembling actual data, allowing you to move on to the next stage of the problem.

The other 2% of the job, of course, is prompting the user to look at something "What does X look like?", and paperwork.

Comments

[tsutton.livejournal.com]

You forgot one more...

"Reboot the PC"

Always works.

[abstrak-tokatl.livejournal.com]

i thought it was: "what's wrong?"

So true.

[jazzmasterson.livejournal.com]

Other favorites...

"Are you certain it's plugged in?"

"Why don't we leave [incredibly dangerous thing user is poking at] alone for a bit while I check something else?"

And the perennial favorite:

"What did you do?!"

[ex-prunesnp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in my current job, which thankfully is over forever Thursday (yay, new job) you could just about find the root of any problem if you started with one of these two:

"What does the user see?"
"What do you see on the server?" (that makes you think that blah is happening)

[anivair.livejournal.com]

I use "in what way".

"In what way is your computer Broke?"
"In that way did your program crap out?"

[greeklady.livejournal.com]

Ha! I got a ferris bueller flash back when I read that,

In What WAAAAAAY...

local favorite

[knottie.livejournal.com]

Has it EVER worked?

followed by "Does it work for anyone else?" (makes sense for us since we support locations where all the users generally have similar equipment/software)

First thing we teach newbies to ask...

Re: local favorite

[megpie71.livejournal.com]

Oh don't worry, I use those ones too. They're useful to determine scope. Along with "does it work on a different PC?"

(The last is a sort of stealth "reboot, goodbye" - they log out of the PC they're in, log into a different one, find out that it works there, go back to their PC and nine times out of ten, hey, it works there too!)

[thatvoiceguy.livejournal.com]

Here ya go:

Me: "Is there an error message?"

Them: "I think so."

Me: "Please read the error message to me."

Them: "Well, there's something about 'generated errors' and 'illegal operation and --- "

Me: "Sir? I need you to read the error message exactly as it appears."

Them: "Okay. Um...'Outlook dot e ex e has generated errors..."