On Tue, 10 Feb 2015 22:42:42 -0500, Stan Brown wrote:
> I do tech support in my day job, and probably half the
> trouble reports I get are "does not work", with not a single detail.
>
> Just once I'd like to write, "Sorry, you moron, my crystal ball is in
> the shop. In exactly which way does it not work?
Hi, Stan. For most users, "doesn't work" is the invitation to start a
conversation in which you extract the information most helpful to you in
sorting out the user's difficulties. Actual user has no idea which of the
myriad bits and pieces of circumstances surround the "not working" will be
of use to you, or would you rather be overwhelmed with all sorts of trivia,
most of them likely irrelevant to the problem at hand :-) ?
Case in point: my kitchen sink's garbage disposal recently stopped working.
Turn on the power to it, no disposal action. More details? Sure: it worked
just fine every time I needed it the day before. Of no interest? OK, maybe:
But water flows through it just fine, the sink isn't stopped up. No use
either? How about: the little hex wrench the OEM supplied turns the motor
rotor freely, with no binding or resistance, a full 360 degrees in either
direction. Power? Yes, when I throws the power switch on, I can hear a
quiet 60 cycle hum from the body of the disposal unit, it just doesn't do
anything.
Now more than half of that was utterly beside the point, and a waste of any
CS rep's time. But how's a user to know *which* part is beside the point?
That's for the CS rep to fish out, as erfficiently as possible, without any
angry "You moron, give me more details!" :-) .
But you knew that, I'm sure, and were just venting because good CS is hard.
Sorry if I've offended -- wasn't meant to happen that way. Cheers, -- tlvp
[PS: new garbage disposal unit is now installed to replace the dead one --
likely, given the hum, a damaged motor winding, or a fried condenser :-) .]