It’s good to see that some things don’t change. Throughout my work activity in Information Technology I worked with many company user communities whose IT “support” was too often characterized by stone-eared listening. A user team would identify a tech problem. The IT staff then would respond, too often, in one of two ways: blame the user; or solve another “problem.”
So we come to the present. I read my newspaper on my Android tablet. When I scroll back up in an article, the app restarts, though it does take me back to the article, not to the first page. This is a clear bug. I know from bugs.
I wrote to the tech staff at the paper, with details, noting that it happens across numerous Android devices, not just one. In a version of “blame the user,” the response was “restart your device.” That was one of the actions I had specified I had taken.
Tech person, did you locate an Android device and try it yourself? Did you restart your device? How did that work for you?
At least I got a response. There is that. But the stone-eared listening I noted from years back seems to have crossed generations. It’s probably genetic.
There is, though, an “on the other hand.” Or two.
In the past few years my experience with live help (whether by chat or by phone) has been excellent. Despite what I’ve heard from others, I’ve gotten great help from Comcast, AT&T, and a few app development companies. What’s characterized the assistance has been immediate understanding of the issue I’m presenting. I can recall one instance in which the tech helper realized that a first shot at solving the problem wasn’t going to work. She did not give up. She dug deeper. It took time, but she got there. I recommended that there be an entry in their user manual that detailed the steps we had to take to fix things, and she promised to note that. I never did check to see if that happened, but at least she listened.
I guess the moral of the story is that one should not be dismissive. Why do I understand that? Confession time.
I have a real knack for solving tech problems – cell phones, tablets, computers, smart TVs, doesn’t much matter. I’ve always said I don’t quite know how I get to where I get, but I get there, and usually quickly. So when someone presents me with a tech problem, my tendency is to be impatient – to solve it myself rather than to show the other person how to diagnose and solve it. I do listen. I don’t solve the wrong problem. But I can be abrupt and, therefore, annoying. One reason for this tendency is that the steps I take to solve a problem are not obvious or necessarily linear. Logical leaps occur often. So trying to take someone else step by step through a process is, sometimes, a struggle.
However, when I take the time to put myself in the other person’s stuck moment, “helping” can actually bring both a solution and the switching on of a light bulb.
It’s been a life-long lesson, learning to do what I tell other people to do. Maybe by the time I grow up I’ll have it down.
© Edmund J. McDevitt
June, 2019