Rant: How the Help Desk Earns its Bad Reputation
In a recent TechRepublic piece, writer Jeff Dray lists his top 10 favorite help desk calls. All of Dray’s faves include callers asking “stupid” questions — stupid, that is, to someone who works in tech for a living. Instead of being funny, the piece is haughty, and illuminates the contempt many help desk techs have for their “customers.”
To be fair, Dray has written pieces in the past that stress the need for better understanding across all company departments. That’s partly why this post miffed me so.
Would you ridicule a CPA because he couldn’t hold his own on the trapeze?
Some people may find poking fun at hapless end-users amusing, but the joke’s getting a little old. It widens the divide between the help desk and company employees, and only serves to further diminish the help desk’s level of respect.
One of Dray’s top 10 is a user forgetting that he changed his password. People forget passwords all the time, especially when they must recall dozens of them on a regular basis. Come on, Dray — cut the caller a break; he’s probably doing the job of two employees now that we’re in a recession.
If Dray treated that caller the way I suspect he did, by reminding him that he changed his password on Friday last and maybe even throwing in a sigh, the employee probably will think twice about calling when he has another issue. Instead, he’ll ask his colleagues for help, and they might not know the solution. He might even devise a clunky workaround, one that puts company systems at risk, or takes him twice as long to complete. How much is that costing the company in the end?
Dray cites another favorite: Once, an employee asked “Are you updating the Internet? I can’t get into my e-mail.”
This may seem inane, but not everyone knows what an exchange server is, or even exactly how the Internet works. All they know is that if e-mail is down, Internet access may also be down and vice versa. They know this for sure: They need to get their work done, and they need e-mail to accomplish the task.
Think about it this way: Would you ridicule a CPA because he couldn’t hold his own on the trapeze? I don’t think so. (Jen Darr)
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I’m sorry Jen but you’re way off. Your post is pretty childish and doesn’t really make sense.
In your first example, Jeff was making fun of the fact the user had forgotten they had CHANGED their password. Not that they couldn’t remember their password.
Your other examples also are completely ridiculous. I’m sorry, but we live in a world where people need to have at least passing computer knowledge to perform their jobs. This is not like trapeze expertise at all.
People post crazy 911 calls, does this offend people who really really wanted chicken nuggets? Possibly. Jeff’s post was aimed at IT professionals, who no doubt were amused by it, and was posted on techrepublic.com. If you think ‘the internet is down’ you’re most likely not frequenting sites like this, and not likely to be offended by the post.