IV - Ask the Client What Didn't Make Sense
Back in the 80s, I usually ignored commercial breaks during TV shows, but I always stopped to marvel at a series of commercials by Federal Express, known nowadays as FedEx:
For those of you who have been on the receiving end, do you ever feel your Tech Support Professional (TSP) is talking 100 miles per hour, using jargon, acronyms, and phrases that go right over your head? Do you have a tough time keeping up with what they’re attempting to explain as the issue to your computer problem?
I’m a TSP. I know the answers to my client’s computer issues. I also am thinking about the pile of email waiting for me when I get back to my desk. I’m also thinking about a project my boss delegated to me that will require a lot of time and research to complete. I’m also thinking about a dear friend of mine that is battling a tough sickness. All this is rattling around in my head while I try to be efficient with my time in solving my client’s problem. And in some cases, my communication is pretty…caffeinated.
Not only am I a TSP, but I’m a Relational TSP. I observe a lot when meeting with my client. This includes facial expressions. When I see observe someone like this:
…I know I’ve lost them. It’s common practice for a presenter to ask, “Did that make sense?” to one or a group of people and not wait for the nodding-head response before continuing with their speech. Sometimes listeners just nod their heads to keep the person talking and may not be fully understanding what is said. When I see my client not fully tracking with me, I often stop my explanation and ask something like the following:
[First Name], is there something that I just rattled off that can be better articulated or re-explained? I want to make sure we are on the same page with what was going on with your computer.
Or…
You know, [First Name] I’m pretty caffeinated today. I’m afraid I might have blasted through my explanation of what your issue was. Would it help if I gave my explanation another try?
Slow, thought-out conversation is a lost art, especially in the modern workplace. We all are very busy, and we all don’t have time to contend with roadblocks to getting our work done. When it comes to technology support, I believe the client needs to completely understand what the TSP is sharing with them. This also includes explaining those acronyms so common in the tech realm:
It seems the VPN, which means Virtual Private Network, was down this morning, which is most likely why you weren’t able to access your files on the office shared volume.
Or…
The reason why you couldn’t get to your files was due to a forced level-one patching of on-prem, that means on premesis, servers in our datacenter. The TL;DR, which means “Too Long Didn’t Read,” summary was IT exceutives chose to run updates on our servers at 8 am this morning, which made everything inaccessible for us, because the network files were unavailable.