For The Love of Gord, People, At Least Pretend You're Trying!

[Dips]

I know I've ranted about this before, but we are shorthanded and busy today and did not have time for excessive hand-holding. So it would be ever so helpful if customers would at least try to do the very simple things themselves.

For example, when subscribing to our email newsletter, all customers get an automated confirmation email which looks like this [for privacy reasons, I've edited out the user's actual email address and the name of my company]:

# [user's email address] has requested that you be subscribed [company newsletter] mailing
list.
#
# To subscribe, reply to this message, leaving the message body # intact

So what does the user do? She forwards the entire automated message to me and asks, "I want to subscribe to [company newsletter] and got this. What do I do?"

How hard is it to read a message, hit reply and hit send? Harder than hitting forward, typing in my address, hitting send, then waiting for a reply where I tell her to open the first message, hit reply, then send? [By the way she still managed to screw it up by changing the subject to " I want to subscribe please" when she sent her reply to Ecartis]

Oh, and this one. This user had actually figured out how to capture a screen shot and attach it to an email. She wanted to activate, but was stuck at that screen and didn't know what to do next.

Right at the bottom of the screen shot was a button labelled "Activate."

Yup. Emailing tech support and waiting for a reply is sooooo much faster and easier than trying the Activate button and seeing if, maybe, that button might, you know, activate the product.

Gah.

[phillippbo]

My little theory on this is that most users/customers are afraid of technology. Deathly afraid. So afraid that when they sit down to pound out an email or turn on the TV, they freeze when something unexpected happens and ask for help.

For some, it's because way back in the day (which was a Wednesday in 1970, if memory serves), they were using one of the ancient punch-card systems, messed up the order of the cards, locked the system, and got yelled at for 20 minutes by the 1970 equivelant of the IT guy.

For others, it's because they are usually so confounded by all those new-fangled gadgets the kids are going on about that they expect to not know what to do. Therefore, when an error comes up or a button has to be pressed, they are convinced already they won't know what to do, so they don't try anything.

There are still other issues, like laziness, apathy, lethary, or dormancy (love thesaurus.com) that cause this, but I think that the two most forgiveable (and frequently more common) are the two I mentioned above.

[Dips]

Yeah. I can't stay mad about these things. After all there's always something new to get mad about.

So I help them. But I have a triage system. A customer who needs my intervention for a genuine problem is going to get helped before somebody who has the means and knowledge to solve their own problem, but doesn't choose to use it.

It's actually not as heartless as it sounds. By them time I get back to them (and it's never too long; at most a business day when we're extremely busy and shorthanded), they may have already solved the problem themselves and now have a valid reason to feel good about themsleves and their ability to figure out technology.

As for the ones who would rather wait for my permission to follow instructions than just follow them, we get to have a nice teaching moment and next time, hopefully, they'll be more confident.