Oh dear God... The people on IRC know I have quite the several-work related stories to tell on this front.
NewClassic's Guide to Calling Him For Tech Support
People have problems that they need to learn how to fix. I'm cool with that. People have new technology which needs a little bit of debugging. I, too, am fine with that. What a majority of my callers fail to understand is that Tech Support isn't a panacea, nor is it magic. All tech support lines rely on two things to be productive and successful: Effort/Patience and Capability.
A few good tips to brush up on before calling my help line are as follows:
[li]Though an in-born knowledge of all technology is not required, a little bit of elementary understanding is necessary. I will no expect you to know what I mean when I say "Kill NAVs using the Task Manager, and reboot using CMD_Prompt." I will, however, expect you to realize that "window" is a word that means more than just a transparent sheet of glass affixed to the sides of buildings.[/li]
[li]If you have computer-related problems, such as faulty hardware, illegal software, or inability to maintain a reasonable standard, please refrain from personally attributing the problem to my action.[/li]
[li]Questions do not always have simple answers. There's no way I can over-simplify spoofing your MAC Address through a router. Especially if you had trouble with the concept of multiple windows.[/li]
[li]Lastly, I do not know everything. Problems will arise that I simply have no fixes for. Trying to run a piece of software that requires Windows Media Player 11 when you are running MS-DOS has no solution. There is simply no way to adjust the problem to your specific hardware, and you must upgrade your computer if you intend on using our service.[/li]
That explained, let's get to the nitty-gritty of it.
Story 1:
I grew up around computers. I'm okay to admit that. We were forced to use them in elementary school, and I learned everything I know through trial-and-error, baptism by fire, or asking the smart questions. This is a nurture thing. Receiving a call from someone who has not done this is more difficult that most people give it credit for. It's difficult to explain to someone who is operating highly technical and entirely mysterious new technology what "Right-Click" is if they are not at all open to learning.
That said, I am professionally obligated to keep them on the line until it's determined that there are exactly no possible solutions to this "issue", or everyone is clocking out and I'm still on the phone. So no matter your inability with computers, I must regress my understanding so that I can help direct you the most efficiently possible.
To start, Hitchhiker's got it right when they said "Don't Panic." I know you have no conceivable idea what happened to the window that was just open and downloading, but it's a pretty simple fix. Minimize the window, please. ... Minimize, upper-right of the screen. See the three boxes? The one with the Underscore.
What do you mean you don't know what an "underscore" is? Of the three boxes, it's the left-most. Yes, I know the window went away, that's what it was supposed to do. What's on screen now? E-mail window? Minimize that too. Yeah, same box as before. Alright, it says "Open"? Cool, open that for me, please. Wait, what did the error box say again?
"Unable to save to Drive D:/, please insert disk."? Ah, okay, please change the save location. No, the other window. Yeah, the small one. Right, that one. Click the Address Bar... You don't know wha-
See where it says File, Edit, View, and such? Below that, do you see a white box that reads "D:/ Disk Drive" or something to that effect? Click it. Yeah, now look for "My Documents" or "My Desktop", either one will do.
Awesome. Click "Save." Yes, the window was supposed to go away. No, nothing bad happened. Please calm down, sir. Alright, minimize the window for me please. Same box as before, with the little line? Good, are you on your desktop now? Yeah, that's the screen with all the icons.
Sir, an icon is the little graphic that explains what a program is. Yeah, see the one that looks like a TV? Reads "AF2" on it? Yeah, click that one. Is it open? Yeah, I know the registration window came up. Fill out your information there, please. Sure, I'll wait.
Done? Alright, now click "Channels," then "Broadcast," then "Milwaukee". Yep, that's it, the video should load momentarily. Yes sir. Thank you so much for you call, and please don't hesitate to contact us again.
Click.
Good, now never call again. Total time: 2 hours, 14 minutes.
Processes finished: Clicked a single download link, downloaded a 4 MB file, saved file onto desktop, and ran program.
Total Time for me to complete the same process: 2 minutes.
Dear God, I hate tech support...
More stories to come as I get more patience for for writing. Watch this space.
