Did a Tech Just Say That?
There’s a moment in almost every consultation I have where the client’s expression shifts. Not because I’ve solved their problem. That comes later. It shifts because I’ve said something they didn’t expect to hear from a professional tech.
It might happen early in the visit. We’re about to dig into the issue and I say, “I want you to know before we begin. I’m caffeinated, and I tend to blast through explanations. So at any point, please interrupt me and say, ‘Slow down, nerd boy.’ I am more than happy to revisit or re-explain things to make it clearer for you.” Their eyes change. That’s not a tech checking whether they’re keeping up. That’s a tech taking responsibility for his own pace.
It might happen in the middle. We’ve been at it for twenty minutes, deep in settings and menus, and I pause. “How are you doing?” Not “does that make sense?” I never ask that. It always gets a reflexive yes, and a reflexive yes tells me nothing. “How are you doing?” is a different question entirely. It’s checking on the person, not their comprehension. Most of my clients have never had a tech ask them that. You can see it register.
It might happen after we’ve resolved the issue they came in for. Instead of wrapping up, I ask, “What else is bugging you about your Canvas courses... or your office computer?” An open door, right when they expected a closed one. And they walk through it every time. Because they’ve just spent over a half-hour with someone patient and kind, and they have a backlog of small frustrations they never felt safe enough to mention to a tech before.
And sometimes it happens after I’ve answered a laundry list of their questions, they’ll say in a genuinely mystified tone, “How do you keep track of all this information?” Now please listen carefully to this part: If I have a good rapport with the client, and they know me as a consummate professional, I will smile wryly, lift my clearly labeled can of seltzer, and say, “I drink heavily.” They laugh. Hard. Because they know me well enough to know I’m joking, and because no tech has ever made them laugh like that in the middle of a support session. If the client is more reserved, I’ll say, “I do this forty-plus hours a week. After nine years, these procedures just stick.” Same question, two answers. The difference is that I’ve been reading the room since they walked in, and I know which version fits.
That calibration, knowing when to be funny and when to be steady, when to push and when to stay quiet, isn’t something you learn from a training manual. It’s something you learn from paying attention to a few thousand people, one at a time, over thirty years.
None of my clients think of these moments as technique. They experience them as personality. But every one of them is a deliberate choice. To take the blame instead of testing their comprehension. To check on the person instead of the progress. To open a door instead of closing a ticket. And occasionally, to make someone laugh so hard they forget they were ever nervous about asking for help.
Did a tech just say that? Yes! And I meant every word.
More later…