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Unfortunately, candidates aren’t judged on how well they do their jobs; they’re judged on how well they describe how they do their jobs.
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Rarely these days do I ever get a support call where a customer has attempted to find the answer to their question or problem before calling. It seems that the spirit of discovery and 'figuring things out on one's own are a thing of the past.  As programmers, we are supposed to alert users when something goes wrong, ideally in terms they can understand, and with some guidance on how to resolve the problem. We often take great pains to create effective alerts/prompts/messages/documentation for end users so they can resolve their own issues and not have to call the support line. The best documentation in the world is worthless if users don't read it, and that seems to be the case more and more these days. Once customers (or family members) have clicked the 'Easy' button (remote desktop) and been able to sit back and relax while I take over their systems, they seem to become hooked. It quickly becomes the first impulse when they have questions or don't understand something. While I try to use the situation to educate/train them/me, some users call with the same issues/requests repeatedly.
It makes me wonder which statements may be true.
a) People are becoming dumber. They really don't know how to find their own answers. Remember F1, you might, but most don't.
b) People are becoming apathetic. They really don't care if other help options are available. They have your number, and they know you have the answer. Besides, they have paid a support contract and support means training right?
c) People are becoming lazy. They see the Help buttons in your program, and know you have online resources, but can't be bothered with having to read a document! 
d) People are becoming smarter. Feign a) and you can get someone to do your thinking for you.
My brother in-law has asked for some time this weekend to help figure out why his 3 year old laptop is 'so slow' and shows 'not responding' all the time. Sounds like a job for 'CleanMyPC.com'!  This is the guy who was unhappy when he couldn't figure out how to set his email font to comic sans.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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I'll tell you a trick :
Do not create an easy button to contact you.
Seriously, put some barrier like a stupid waiting music when they are calling you that play during 5 minutes before you pick up the phone.
Remove the easy button and make them do a 10 steps process manually while you are on the phone so you can remotely connect.
By adding or removing frictions you can control habits.
For example, when I saw I spent to much time on Facebook, I stopped using the "remember my password" checkbox, and putted a password I can't remember buried in a file on my drive that I must open with another long pass phrase password I must correctly type from the first time.
I can always go on Facebook... but the habit to systematically do that disappeared because it's a pain to write the password. (Applied same technique for my mails)
Use that at your advantage on others, they will never notice it.
As developers we are pushed to create effective solution... but remember : if it is effective, people will use it 
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Thanks for the facebook tip will do that for my phone, as well twitter too and my phone charms for all those messages which have nothing to do with me. ha somebody tweeted something you might be interested in etc. Not too sure about skype though.
I know this off topic a bit but it would be nice to have an aggreator which just chimes for everything once a day or two.
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Yes, in other word a RSS feed of social medias, but the kids don't like RSS nowadays. 
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Nicolas Dorier wrote: they will never notice it.
Smart people will notice it. My cable company does this.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Sure every cable company does that.
The trick is that most of the time smart people fix the problem by themselves.
If smart people are in the mud, you can always give them the "fast line".
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It's not a new phenomenon - but don't go to QA, it'll only depress you further.
Years ago, I was technical manager (I.e. in charge of anything more complex than a mains plug) for a small-to-medium sized company, that sold overseas via a worldwide network of independent distributers. In charge of support and care for all these was our International Sales Manager, who took frequent trips round the world to see them and wave the flag. He naturally took his own sample of our kit with him, so it was set up to work at all times.
Except... He was forever complaining that the mains lead we fitted was far too short... So it was replaced - we fitted 3m as standard.
It was replaced, he complained, it was replaced...
Eventually we worked out what was happening: he'd arrive in a new country, find the mains plug didn't fit, cut it off, fit a new one, move on to the next country...
And he never resized that this shortened the lead by 10cm each time...
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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More than likely a combination of all of that. Additionally, today almost everyone is called on to do more in less amount of time with less resources. It could just be that your customers have learned that you're a quicker solution than poking at the problem themselves.
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Let me propose another hypothesis for your wonder-if-true list:
e) The entire demographic of those using computers has shifted in the last decade so the great majority of users, now, have not developed the specific cognitive faculties related to analyzing, abstracting into useful summary form, and communicating, technical problems while using their computers.
Further, perhaps in contrast to the techies, hackers, power-users, and gamers, whose aggregate cohorts may have represented a proportionally larger chunk of the user population, the majority, now, may have little motivation to develop these cognitive faculties.
“The best hope is that one of these days the Ground will get disgusted enough just to walk away ~ leaving people with nothing more to stand ON than what they have so bloody well stood FOR up to now.” Kenneth Patchen, Poet
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And I don't know that, as a developer I should be happy because I know there always will be enough of such people to support and thus pay us.
Or sad because such work is as brain killing, exhausting and none fulfilling than watching a TV reality show eating donuts all day.
I'm a .NET trainer, and I'm happy I don't have to deal with average users, but my trainees always have fun story to tell me about it.
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Nice addition to the list and nicely put! Thanks!
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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BillWoodruff wrote: the specific cognitive faculties related to analyzing, abstracting into useful summary form, and communicating, technical problems while using their computers.
The entire demographic has increased by orders of magnitude so of course they are not familiar with that. If they were then world would be falling apart because no one would be doing the actual work because everyone would be a software developer.
BillWoodruff wrote: may have little motivation to develop these cognitive faculties.
One might hope that developers now are being directed to make it easier for users. So they should be paying more attention to what users do and want rather than just dictating it.
Although that might be a vain hope.
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The solution to your problem is as it is in many other industries - triage.
Have the first point of contact someone or something that CANNOT help them beyond taking details of their problem and deciding on the urgency, and the best 'next step'.
We used to use a web front end for support, into which the user had to enter their details and then got allocated a job number.
someone monitored the requests in more-or-less real time, and the urgent ones got called back quickly.
Those that bypassed the system weren't turned away - rather they were asked to be patient while whoever took the call went to the web site, and entered the details (slowly.) on their behalf.
it is amazing when you do this how many returned calls are met with "it's OK now, I fixed it!"
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kmoorevs wrote: Rarely these days do I ever get a support call where a customer has attempted to find the answer to their question or problem before calling
Which time period previously did this happen? And what sort of product/company was it at?
kmoorevs wrote: d) People are becoming smarter. Feign a) and you can get someone to do your thinking for you.
e) People are more comfortable with communications and since there is no concern about long distance less likely to consider it bothersome.
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jschell wrote: Which time period previously did this happen? And what sort of product/company was it at?
I was mostly referring to the time before we started using remote desktop for customer support...the days when support sessions were surely as frustrating for customers as it was for the support team...doing our best to ask the right questions, and visualizing what they ought to be seeing on their end. Now, they don't really have to communicate at all. We connect (remote desktop) for the simplest of things...and that's OK, it means a paycheck. It also means that we have a steady line of communication with those customers and they are happy when their problems are dealt with swiftly and with minimal stress.
The product is a decision support system (reporting application) for school district administrators.
Now, I have to get online with my brother in-law who has just texted me another picture of his laptop screen (taken with the cell phone!) of a problem with avg and outlook...This is the second 'screen capture' text I have gotten this week. Is this what you mean by e)?
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
modified 24-Feb-14 15:53pm.
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The referees are going to be Canadians.
This will be a very interesting game.
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I am debating wether to get up at 4:00 am to watch it live or just PVR it.
Within you lies the power for good - Use it!
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It was a fair result, it doesn't help having the better keeper if everyone else is worse and the opposing keeper doesn't get shot at. 
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In most word processing programs, you must use Paste Special to paste plain text and use Paste to paste special text. I'm sure some programmer somewhere thought that was funny at the time.........
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In uSoftese this makes perfect sense.
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One man's plain is another man's special.
This space intentionally left blank.
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Some of you (in the UK) may have heard in the news that one of the private schools in Aberdeen has been closed by the school inspectors. Two of the staff, including the owner/manager, have been arrested for whatever reasons.
The report makes for interesting reading: http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/Images/HamiltonSchool210214_tcm4-826885.pdf[^]
A lot of the items in the report sound a lot like when my two kids went their for their nursery years (from 6months to reception year). I moved them to the school I went to for Primary 1 onwards.
My eldest is now 9, so that is probably at least 8 years of grumblings by parents for things to actually have happened.
A pretty clear case of management failure if you ask me. Interesting to see what happens next. The council have had to re-open a school that they closed to school the children for the time being.
More from Auntie: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-26294473[^]
modified 22-Feb-14 8:29am.
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All things look different with the benefit of hindsight, though.
I think the problem with this sort of situation is often with the staff fearing for their jobs if they rock the boat.
It will be interesting to find out what the arrests are for...
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