Discussion on:

10 things end users do that drive me crazy

Falls into multiple categories, freaking iTunes!!!

LimeWire and Kazaa...

Add to that freaking i anything, iPhones in particular

I went off on this one in another discussion recently. They click on any 'Yes' or 'OK' that appears, regardless of whether it's innocuous or guarantees to steal their identity and transfer all their porn to Grandma.

I have the opposite at home. When your anti-virus software asks you politely to allow it to update itself, I would like my family to click "Yes." Instead, they usually just dismiss it or leave it flashing in the task bar!

That usually happens in my kids computers. Then the antivirus shuts down for non renewal and they then go out on the internet unprotected. They then tell me when at a gathering "My dad the IT guy cant keep our home computers running fine" because her system is filled with viruses and spyware.

If "dad the IT guy" really had a clue, dad the IT guy would have the expiration alerts sent to HIS email. Decent anti-malware programs like Trend use email alerts rather than pop-ups. Might want to consider this int he future, as well as using something like OpenDNS to block certain activities.

Actually i have them using avast. It is the free version. When they gave them their computers i sat with them and showed them how to maintain their computers. It is my wish that they become users that know how to look after there own systems. My daughter is 26. I have enough work with my own things then to micromanage them.
The only one I don't have any problems with is my 16 year old. She runs Linux on her laptop.

.."Actually i have them using avast."!!! Good Grief! Avast??? Talk about slowing your pc down. No disrespect to the avast makers but AVAST REALLY uses a lot of memory on your pc. Might want to use a far less memory intensive antivirus software.

If the program or control doesn't react fast enough to suit them, they double- and triple-click away, stacking clicks into the buffer, causing some programs to hang or behave bizarrely. Then they blame the program, computer, and/or tech for messing up.

Or print a document 17 times before calling me to fix the printer--compounded by the fact that they don't bother remembering how to check the queue.

I have to deal with this almost on a daily basis. I manage the paid printing system of a University and one time I had 2 students flood the queue with over 100 print jobs each, of the same document no less. It locked everyone else out of the queue until I deleted them all because the server wasn't set to spool that many at 1 time.

I got a call to a remote office once, "All printers down." Walked in, logged in to the server, checked the print queue and found 65,536 jobs (OS/2 Warp 4—awesome server OS!). Killed print services, purged the queue, and went to check on the printers. Eight Lexmark 4029 printers, every one of them flashing "LOAD LETTER."

The office manager asked "Why is that our job?"

My response? "Because it's in the User Manual, not the Service Manual."

When the office manager of the law firm I did support for asked me to start checking the paper (and loading it if it was low or empty) on printers (we had at least 50), I put my resume' on Monster that day.

We have everything locked down so tight that we get a popup warning requiring us to confirm almost anything we do. Most actions therefore require 2 clicks - one to start it an one to click OK to confirm it. So clicking Yes or OK is a habit. No one even reads the warnings anymore.

Your computer isn't popping up a dialog to be annoying or to be obstructive, it's notifying you of something that may be about to go very, very wrong, or asking permission to perform a task that alters it in some way and may interrupt your work.

When your car's Low Fuel light flashes, you don't get annoyed and tell it to go away and keep going. You go get some freaking gas, or get the oil changed, or whatever it happens to be signaling that it needs. I don't understand this mentality that a computer should just work all the time at any time through any problem without proper maintenance.

It's not an excuse, but to make the analogy fair, it would be like having the car give you the same flashing light for everything, weather it's a problem or not. Turning on turn signal, wipers, opening doors, low fuel, check engine, pressing gas, pressing brake, picking your nose, looking in the mirror, etc... If car manufacturers did that, more people would be ignoring critical warnings like low fuel.

I'd think it was me if I didn't see Donovan do it too earlier in the week.

These ten things are right on the money. I own a electronics retail/computer repair store and i've experienced every item on the list.

I also get at least 3 to 4 times a day, Customer: I got an error. Can you fix it? Me: What was the error? Customer: Oh I don't remember. **smacks head into desk**

I tell them that. Then I say: "Even Sherlock Holms needs clues. When it happens again, write down the steps that were needed to recreate the problem. Then we can look into it."

My biggest peeve is being told "there was an error message" came up. "something to do with the computer ... probably". With absolutely no clue as to what had happened, I am expected to read their faulty mind memorys and then undertake a total re-program of commercial software to solve a problem I've never seen or even had described properly.

I work in the petroleum industry as engineering tech; I've taught myself how to program in Visual Basic and have ended up developing my own programs, as well as maintaining previously built applications, to help our engineers analyze over 40 years' worth of production data. On occasion I've had to assist our understaffed IT department by helping them out whenever users need to establish or restore their ODBC connections, and by no means do I consider myself an IT professional. However, many of the experiences vented here are laughably similar to my own, and the one-line "I saw an error message" email (with no background story preceding the error message) is all too common. It's as if they expect me to telepathically know what their problem is. And don't get me started on people ignoring popup messages, the practice which causes many of the "error messages" to occur in the first place!

We could try, "Oh, yes, THAT error. No problem, don't worry about it. Totally harmless. UNLESS it comes up again. If it does THAT, it will erase your Hard Drive, steal your car, and kill your pets. That is, UNLESS you send me a screenshot IMMEDIATELY."

Once I've asked a user over the phone to send me a screenshot and was met with total silence for maybe 10 seconds...realizing what just happened I had to compose myself before tactfully asking her, "Have you done a screenshot before?" Of course the answer came back, "No," so gulping back any verbal abuse I know was about to come out of my mouth, I calmly proceeded to tell her to hit the Alt + Print Scr keys (all the while praying that she could locate them on the keyboard, which she mercifully did).

She called you for help--and paid part of your salary. Why should she know all YOUR jargon? If you had asked her to print the screen she might have known what you wanted. You have a "help" job; if you wanted a "just sit around, drink coffee and cash paycheck" job quit this one and apply for retirement.

when users try to bypass the support policies and procedures and email me directly. Then their email says nothing about the problem like "I can't get to this website" at the very least they could do is provide the information... I often simply delete these emails until they call or submit a work order.

I simply reply to them with the following:
"Thank you for your help desk request. Forwarding this message to the help desk email address as I have done will automatically create a help desk ticket and ensure that your request is assigned to someone on my staff. A help desk technician will contact you as soon as possible." (save this as a template)
Ignoring their original request for help only results in a disgruntled client who will "bad mouth" you and your staff to others.

What they've done is try to bypass 'the system', because they have a personal connection with you and of course you'll do them a special favour or move their issue to the head of the list. When you group them with everyone else, they'll still be disgruntled.

No-win situation.

Although I only have internal clients. we have a Service Level Agreement that says that we will acknowledge all help desk requests with a call or visit within one hour of the ticket being generated.
This relatively quick acknowledgement keeps our clients happy. So for the most part, they don't feel a strong need to call someone directly but I don't discourage it either.
I am not a big fan of bureaucracy (oddly enough, I work for the government) so I wouldn't call it "bypassing the system" when they contact you directly. The "system" as I see it is receiving a request for help, providing the help, and documenting that it was done. How it gets into the help desk database is not as important as providing the service.

JJ your attitude is right on.If you accept the job that you have and put aside the technical arrogance for awhile, provide some good old fashion customer service and exude care and concern for your customers, treating them like you would want to be treated, then you can have a successful career in tech support. Thirty years in the business has taught and re-taught this lesson to me and the awards I have received document this attitude - care for your customers. It's not that I don't get my fair share of "Eye Dee Ten Tee" users or the "College educated that refuse to read the screen instructions" - I take it on a different level - seeming silly and stupid support requests are my work-a-day enterntainment, more importantly it is an opportunity to help, and to train our users to be more efficient and effective rather than to see how cleverly I can berate them without their knowledge or other displays of Dilbert-ish Techno-Arrogant superiority. They are people too, and even thought you are capable of almost anything Taxes, Auto Mechanics, Programming your VCR, the user community at large has resources that you need - they need you - thank them from your heart for the opportunity to serve their needs rather than to display your snide side.You will go farther in the business world and continue to be their champion on more than one level. Anyone can update a software system or remove malware - a professional helps the user understand the system better and assists them in not creating the same problem time after time.

I have some clients that have to give me a complete over view of how important they are and all of the things for which they are responsible. I am almost on the verge of asking them to just attach their resume/CV to their tickets.

What is interesting is that they are smart people and in technical scientific fields, but are totally baffled by their computer, even for simple things.

If they feel compelled to tell you how important they are, they are probably uncomfortable with the fact that they require help or they think somehow this information will put them at the top of the help desk queue.
I say kill them with kindness.
Lastly, it is not surprising that someone can be an expert in quantum physics and not understand computer troubleshooting / repair. Afterall, I know very little about the former and quite a bit about the latter.

This is 2011. Not knowing the basics of how a computer works is like not knowing how to use a phone. I accept that my parents can't debug kernel errors or bootup issues. If my mother, however, ever came to me saying "My internet is gone!" and I found she had simply deleted the Firefox icon, I'd make no small noise in lecturing her about standard operations.

Seriously, computers went mainstream in what, 2002? Not knowing the basics is unacceptable at this point. You're either trying to not learn, or are living under a rock.

I'm still trying to figure out what I expect my clients to know and what not to know. What's basic seems to be changing all the time. The bigger problem is those who have a basic knowledge but seem to think they are experts because they are comparing themselves to grandma .

I start out with the assumption they know nothing and go from there. If, in the course of conversation I find enough queues to suggest they know more, I may use that to my advantage in helping to solve the problem and show them how not to re-create the problem in the future.

Computers are a strange field. I can't say how often I've seen kids be billed as experts simply because they grew up with and work with computers all the time. In a field that is in a state of perpetual change, experience is all the more important.

Wanting to do it, that is. Some of my calls require that I contact customer support for assistance because they don't give the field techs permissions for certain actions (even though it would speed things up). It's all I can do not to take control when I watch the remote tech trying to find his way to something he should know off the top of his head, and that I can do in three or four clicks. At times like those, I'll make suggestions like "Why don't you go in through ...?"

Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don't. And one tech even told me not to tell him how to do his job as it took him 15 minutes to change a user's assigned printer.

You don't want to come off as a know-it-all but you know a quicker way to do what the other person is trying to do.
It is a true art to be able to direct another person without questioning their expertise.
"Why don't you go in through...?" Is too close to asking them, "Why don't you know this?"
I would suggest saying things like, "Did you know if you go in through... you can save yourself some steps? Yeah. Pretty cool, huh?"
I know it's not much different from your question but it sounds a little less challenging to the other guy.

Despite my skillset, I had a hard time finding work in the early 00's, so I was working as an inbound call center sales rep for awhile. One day, a junior tech was working on the station beside mine, and having a bit of trouble. I even used the format of the previous 'suggestion' to help him along and solve the issue more quickly, while helping him learn in the process. He seemed grateful, and I felt better for being able to help someone out.

Until two days later. Apparently he told his manager about it, who promptly brought me up in front of 'HR', where I was bluntly instructed to never engage 'my superiors' in the IT department directly in conversation ever again. I don't think I've ever laughed so hard as I walked out the door of the office, and the company...

If the IT manager had a lick of sense, he would have thanked you and talked to you about your experience. I run IT of an inbound call center. We have some college students that work for us, they like the off hour shifts.Some of them are CS / MIS students. My IT operations has been partly or fully staffed by people that started in the call center for years. They understand exactly what is going on with the systems. IT is there to support company operations, when we understand the operations we do the best job.

...I would love to know what co. this was, so I will know to avoid them like the plague!

As an IT professional who previously worked in large companies with help desks, I have had the reverse happen.
I would call our help(less) desk with a problem. Because you start with level 1, you get someone who can only help in a limited way. When they ask to take over my desktop, I always cringe as they usually start looking around for clues.
Eventually, they reach the end of their knowledge which is usually less than mine. When I am eventually transferred to level 2, I can count on the fact that a) I will have to give all the information over again, and b) they will repeat all the steps done by level 1.
Now that I work for a small company, I actually have level 1/2/3 sitting next to me.

If they're on ITIL framework your experience at a "big company" in the above scenario probably would've been different

I've never understood that, why not have 1 level, when you call you get someone who has the knowledge to solve the problem, not a high school student who can't find the control panel.

...to get snarky right away, refuse to play the script game, and demand a manager or Level 2. Works every time, and prevents to dolts from causing more damage.