So do you think

The nature of my job is such that I am usually unable to talk the end user through the fix and must go to the site. Since I am responsible for 18 different sites and respond on a call-by-call basis, I don't know from day to day which site(s) I will go to. Because of this and the distances involved (my territory is I-20 wide and 240 miles long), each time I visit a site I make a quick walk-around to make sure the equipment is all functioning. The easiest way to do this is to talk to the people using the equipment and ask if they are having any problems.

I find the biggest failures are with the person to help desk interface. Too often the help desk person doesn't really understand what the user is trying to describe as an indication of a failure. Fortunatly I spend a lot of time in the immediate area of most users I service, and in some cases tell the user the correct terms to use when calling in a trouble. I work in an area of over 50 buildings and make daily visits to most areas. Some users will tell me of a problem they called in, or ask me about a fault and if it really is a problem. The help desk problem is two fold, the user calls the corporate help desk, and they in turn call the service help desk. Descriptions can really get twisted around and often seldom match the real trouble.

a large number of them have minor autistic syndromes, and are very good with technical things and poor with human interactions - thus they end up in industries like IT. Some, like my son, have problems udnerstanding what is said to them as most people talk faster than they can comprehend things. Thus the need to have it all given to them in writting, they then have time to think about it and respond.

it's about 60% in person, 39% through the computer and 1% on the phone.

I really do prefer to ber face to face, body language is such an important part of communication.

For years, people have been all doom and gloom about technology making people less social and more isolated.

I am betting that most of us communicate (whether in-person, email, IM or the good ol' phone) with *more* people thanks to technology than we did before. And I wonder if face-to-face communication is really shrinking. It could be that the other types are just growing faster and make f2f a smaller percentage of the whole.

CNET has offices all over the world and I regularly exchange email or IM or have a conference call with people in New York, San Francisco and, occasionally, the UK and China. I would rarely see most of these people in person.

So I am able to keep in touch with many, many more people with technology like IM and email. Sure, it is a different experience; however, I've found that most of the things we used to use face-to-face meetings for are much easier and more efficient with something like IM or email.

And let's not forget how busy the average IT person is. Usually IT people get more tasks dumped on them over time, so using the most efficient communication method is often the only way to get everything done.

I prefer to email people, but to help someone, I prefer to talk them on how to do things over the phone. Like SMS on the mobile phones, I have become more reliant on that service instead of just calling my friends and that. But business wise I will always call or email.

Kind Regards,
Jim

Seems to me departments or companies should walk to there IT professionals to interact more with the customers or office buddies. For me i don't like to see a lazy tech. I?m sure once i get into the field I?ll try not to be this lazy.

especially when you are the IT person, and they chat you up, not because they want to know you, but because they are hoping to cultivate you as a contact so that whent hey have problems they don't have to go through the process, they can jsut call you direectly because you're their "friend".

I hate that crap.

I tend to stick with email and voicemail, unless it's soemthign i really have to fix at your desk. This allows me to multitask, and do my other duties at the same time.

I work to train my users that they should send me an email describing the problem, along with any screen shots. No matter what. Even if they see me walking by their cube. This allows ME to document when they noticed the problem, as well as giving me a place to compile my efforts, time and resolution. But I prefer to actually be there to fix something. Many times, a problem is the result of a user doing something in the wrong order, or being click happy, and that's hard to catch over the phone. Remoting in is a great second choice for situations where an immediate fix is needed and the distance can't be reasonably traveled--and I tend to want to be on the phone with the user at the same time.

More than one person I've worked with has had that attitude. Luckily, I've always had real AV people to work on the projectors.

(I can do it, but I'm not good at it. You wouldn't want to see the results from my re-aiming the rear projection guns on the large screen. <-/

Often the need to get back to you is the cover story for needing to research the issue or conference with a coworker that may me the subject matter expert in that area. I am a people person and have high socialization needs. The plus is it has been great in building repor with customers. The negative is the senior manager says to talk less - get in, do the job, and get out. Sometimes I think if we did it managements way we would rarely say good day to a customer or do anything other than directly respnd to the customers question or demand. Follow-up questions would be viewed as needless socialization.