What lousy service!
Okay, this didn’t really happen. I completely made it up to highlight a point. I wouldn’t be able to leave the mechanic without a barrage of questions – simply saying “it’s broken” wouldn’t give him any direction – he just wouldn’t know where to start looking. What’s broken? The brakes? The transmission? The engine? The automatic windows? That little thingy on the dashboard that tells you how much gas you’ve got? And for the mechanic to try to diagnose a problem not knowing where to begin would require checking everything, resulting in much wasted time (and expense).
But we’re about computers and websites, not cars, so it’s different, right? Nope, it’s exactly the same. And, with the advent of email, it’s entirely possible for someone to come out of the woodwork, dump an “it’s broken” message on the doorstep and then disappear, only to be disgruntled later when they find that the problem has not been resolved.
I’ve done technical support and it is, at times, crucial to hold the person’s hand and walk them step by step through the program to try to resolve the issue. In fact, it’s a necessary part of the whole support process. I’ve never come across the “too stupid to own a computer” scenario (http://www.snopes.com/humor/business/wordperfect.asp – for a little light humor at a pervasive tech support myth) but I have received my fair share of customers complaining “it’s broken” and then promptly leaving the shop.
My first response to an “it’s broken” message (apart from a cynical “how sad for you” muttering under my breath) is “what’s broken?” Remember that many of our clients have come to us with pre-existing sites and I don’t know the ins and outs of these sites like I do with the ones that I’ve developed (and even then it may have been months or even years since I looked at that particular part of the site – do you remember what you had for lunch on the 21st of May, 2002?). Sometimes the site has a third party component (like an Ecommerce add-in, for example) that I don’t know back to front, either. So sometimes I need a little hand holding. Here are a couple of tips for reporting problems to help us to help you (after all, that’s what we’re about: we make time for small business).
I was in a seminar recently and I mentioned that you could have a free listing on google with a map to your location. Everyone was dying to know how! It’s really simple, just follow these steps and, best of all, it’s free!
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