The people who built and designed the machines were the primary users of the machines so they supported themselves. The times have now changed as have the users. The only problem with this change in the user base is that techs have not changed their attitudes.
In the past, when a tech asked another tech for help, they were usually greeted with a wise guy remark and something to the effect of "shouldn't you know how to do that?" That was fine and dandy when it was tech to tech, because after the snide remark the techs would usually help each other in their own jargon. As the new user evolved however, (I am speaking of Prodigy, CompuServe, and then AOL) techs had to start supporting those who were computer illiterate.
Before I continue, let me give you some personal background. I am currently in a technical support field and work with numerous other technicians to fix desktop issues. The issues can range from something as simple as a password reset to the imaging of a computer that has software issues beyond repair. I remember one time where I got a normal ticket for a password reset. We reset user's passwords to the at sign (@) and the word password with a capital P and the rest of the word lower case. After resetting a password for a nice older lady, she asked "Is the at sign capitalized?" I simply replied, "Yes ma'am, it is." She thanked me and hung up. I then told the story to some of the other techs I work with and they were quick to make fun and ridicule the woman for her inability to understand how a simple password reset works. I had spoken to the woman in the past and knew her history. She was a Brown University graduate and had a Master's degree in Biology. This was not a stupid woman.
Technicians today seem to take an elitist approach to the way they solve problems. They tend to think that they are more intelligent than the users they support. The only problem with this philosophy is they forget that these users do not specialize in the IT field just as information technology technicians do not specialize in the user's field. Techs would be out of their league in other fields (lawyer, doctor, chemist, etc) just the same as our users are out of their league in our field.
Here is another example for you. I got a ticket from a gentleman who was having trouble logging into one of his applications. I gave him a call and asked him to send me a screenshot of the error. I made the mistake of assuming he knew how to take a screenshot and disconnected the call when he told me he would send it in a few minutes. About 15 minutes went by and I finally got the email. It turns out the gentleman had pulled out his digital camera and snapped a picture (using the flash) of his computer monitor with the error displayed. After a few minutes of shock I called him back and educated him on how to take a proper screenshot without making him feel like he was stupid. It turns out he was a manager for one of our engineering groups and he sent a rather nice note of thanks to my manager for teaching him something new.
I am led to another point. When techs do discover that a user does not know something, we should take the opportunity to educate them instead of making them feel like they messed up. Snide comments and laughing should be saved for private moments. Make the users feel intelligent and you will see that you hear a lot less from them and when you do hear from them, they are generally more informed and are a better help to you.
My point for this article is simple. Technicians need to loose the elitist attitude and adopt a more caring and informative side. We only have jobs for two reasons; technology is not perfect and it breaks from time to time and users are not very informed on how to use their computers. There is no need for us to bite the hand that feeds us. We should make the most of our users and our technology. You will notice that if you become a teacher, you will earn the respect of your superiors and your users.
This article was originally published by CyberArmy.net in the CyberArmy Library.
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