How to handle End Users

I’ve been on a customer site today, working in an office where a lot of staff are first line support for end users - council users, not particularly IT savvy people. Everyone has their own story about how stupid end users are, how tickets are being opened without any information, etc. etc. Rather than being dismissive of users who raise support tickets, I much prefer to shame then into thinking before they raise a ticket again themselves.

Case in point - I look after an SBS network for a small organisation in my spare time (I use the term ’spare’ loosely). One particular user was having some problems sending emails every 2 months. After the 3rd occurrence, I decided to reply to his email thus :

Hi there,

If you cast your mind back some time ago (a week or two), when X’s email had the same problem, I think I mentioned this in technical language, so I’m going to use an analogy to help explain the concept :
 
Imagine you are sitting in your nice comfy office, and - because of a heavy workload - every day you ate your lunch at your desk. When you finish your lunch you casually toss the packaging into the bin. Every so often, you get a bit more peckish than normal and eat a bit more than normal, or have a few bevvys on a Friday afternoon to celebrate finishing a job - so you throw the empty cans in the bin too (!). Chances are you could fill the bin up pretty quickly. Eventually though, the bin would become full, so you would go out and buy a bigger bin. And then a bigger one again. And then you fill some some bin bags - you could hide them behind the sofa for a while and no-one might notice. But at some point you will be unable to get into the office because of the stench and quantity of rubbish. So what you need to do, just occassionally, is ‘Empty’ the bin.
 
In the ‘virtual world’ of computers, we have a similar concept - in Entourage it is called ‘Deleted Items’. You have 225 deleted items at the minute. To empty these, right click on deleted items in the left pane and select ‘Empty Deleted Items’. It will say ‘Are you sure you want to empty the deleted items folder?’. Click Empty.
 
If you need anything else, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Thanks,

——

Did I add enough ‘quotes’ there? This only works with customers with a sense of humour, but funnily enough he hasn’t had the same problem since.

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Tags: End Users, sbs, stupid, Work

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