Talk > Rants, Raves, and Praise > Idiot users...

reply to Kearnstd

Re: Idiot users...

reply to Aranarth
To all those saying "if you are tech support you gotta take it" I'm sorry but what gives the people calling in for HELP the right to abuse someone who is trying to provide service?

I agree a certain amount of patience for idiotic people who expect us to magically correct the issue when they aren't in front of the computer IS required, however if I informe someone "I'm sorry I cannot help you when you're not in front of your computer" and they decide to rant about it?

I don't have to take abuse for doing my job correctly. you called ME for help not the other way around.

I hear your pain. Although I was supporting for a Telco ISP, towards the end of my time there, I kept track of my calls during the day. This was in the days of Dialup. DSL was just being deployed.

35 to 40% were password issues, depending upon the day. Or so it seemed.

Would usually give them the call letters of the local classic rock station. So a lot had 923kgon for a password.

reply to Aranarth
I do tech support for counties for a CAMA/RP/PP tax system. Some of our customers, who have full IT depts, more than a few times I have asked them to test fixes and they ask me - is the patch in production?

I even had a customer ask our companies the project manager, if a patch was in production - a patch from a 3rd party. They don't seem to understand that we don't know what they do with the patches. It is up to them to get, test, and then load the patches in their production environment and up to them to know what they have done.

The fact it is IT depts who don't know their jobs is even scarier.
--
Brian

"It drops into your stomach like a Abrams's tank.... driven by Rosanne Barr..." A. Bourdain

reply to Aranarth
I have had several people who have called up stating that they are "programmers" or "technicians" and just need a patch to fix their issue. (Geek Squad techs can be really bad.)

I then have to explain that the issue is not in the software it is with their machine and then offer to email them the directions which usually requires replacing a system file with the correct version of the .dll or .ocx file. (Obviously if it was a bug in the software better than 50% of users would have that issue and my phone would be ringing off the hook.)

Not only do not know how to follow a directory path, they also cannot seem to find their command window. If I am REALLY lucky they actually do know how to copy a file.

It becomes very obvious that they have a grossly inflated view of their ability to use a computer.

If you tell me you know how to fix a computer I'm going to assume you know:

How to use a mouse (left and right click)
How to use keyboard shortcuts
How to follow a directory path
You know how to copy files.
How to open a command window and how to open it as a an admin
You know how to enter commands into the command prompt and know a basic list of common commands. (cd, dir, etc.)

If you don't know any of this basic stuff, you do not know how to properly use a computer.

reply to Aranarth
"Alright go ahead and log off and back on"

"Can you reboot the system?"

It's 2012. Computers are in what, 90% of households? 95%? The fact that people don't know the difference between reboot / shut down / log off baffles me every single day.

Some days you can't help but wonder if the users are just trolling. :]

I would say that's been 'shopped.

reply to Aranarth
No, I think that is win nt 4 or 2000.

The difference was shutdown would just turn windows off but the machine was still actually running, you could then shut it off once you were sure the disks had spun down or some such.
There was something important about raid arrays over scsi on servers that made this important.

The other one just shut the machine down as long as you were using a machine with an atx power supply (rather than AT).

Damn that has been that 15 years or so the last time I saw those options?! Its a little bit fuzzy..

Novell on WinXP

reply to Aranarth
I'm a programmer at my job. While I'm not tech support, sometimes I have to troubleshoot something for a user if they were using one of our programs and it blew up on them. Most of them aren't a problem to deal with, but I had this one winner who just would not give me a straight answer. The first thing I always try to do is recreate the problem they were having. If I can't figure out how to get there, I ask them what they were doing when it happened. Again, most of the users are helpful, and if anything, give me more info than I needed. But this particular idiot just gave me a vague answer, basically giving me a general description of what the program she was using was used for, which I already knew. I emailed her back telling her that I needed a little more detail, i.e. what data she entered in which fields, what path she took to get to the program that had the problem, etc. I never heard back from her. My supervisor even told me not to worry about it if the user wasn't going to meet us halfway and actually give us some useful information.

At least I don't deal with customers, like my one friend at our company does. The worst part is, she's not allowed to ever hang up on a customer, no matter how abusive they get, or how much profanity they use. The one day, she told me she had five different people tell her to "shove those interest rates up her ass."

oooooooohhhh.. .sounds dirty

reply to TheWickerMan

reply to TheWickerMan
You're friends with Rachel? »Rachel's BAAACK

reply to hortnut

reply to carpetshark3
I am referring to the public calling in to get technical issues fixed. A high volume call center. Their expectations and reality were/are sometimes quite a ways apart.

In that situation one has to use psychology and call control to attempt to fix the customer's issue's. And some callers were/are their own worst enemy. I was pretty adept in calming them down and fixing their problems, but there were always a few that were unreachable. If they became abusive I was not required to end the call, but had the "option, at my discretion" to do so.

My strategy was usually to move the earpiece off my ear and let them vent until they quieted down, then just calmly continue on. Worked fairly well for me.

Glad those days are long gone though.
--
Think Outside the Fox.