As a tech support consultant, I rely on Internet access for many things, including, most importantly, remotely connecting to my customers’ machines and being able to search for information about the problems they are having.

(For the record: Our other office in Ohio was not affected, so our customers were fine.)

For a good part of the morning, I had to provide tech support using some innate intelligence I didn’t think I had.

After the initial shock of not being able to see my customers’ desktops and find external knowledgebase articles, I righted myself and successfully made it through the calls.

But the experience stuck with me, and, at the time, got me thinking about how PC Helps functioned almost 20 years ago, when it first switched on its phone lines.

The way it has been told to me, back then, our consultants had to use that same innate intelligence all the time. Everything just took a little longer. For example, before e-mail, customers had to FedEx a file on a floppy for us to work on it.

Can you imagine that now? Not just the floppy (gasp!), but using a shipping service to send data. Today, we answer calls in two rings or less, can view a desktop within a minute, and resolve average issues in just a few minutes.

That’s better for our customers, whose needs dictate how tech support functions. They are the ones using smartphones and iPads on trains, in hotel lobbies and in airports. The ones who are tied to their BlackBerrys and Androids 24-7. I don’t think they would have it any other way.

I wonder where we will be in another 20 years.

Over the past 11 months, the piece has received a smattering of comments, many of which are tinged with vitriol. Office 2007 doesn’t just suck, according to CIO’s readers; it’s reviled, despised, detested, loathed.

Taking a stand by sticking with an earlier version of Office is hardly a political move.

Here’s a sampling of the comments:

“I’m a longtime Office user (since its inception). Office 2007 is an abomination and shows just how out of touch those developers are with real world use and workflow.”

“Thought my suckage meter was just already broken or something, it being beyond the warranty period, but as the 10 or so days went by from having installed this step backwards in software development, and having not latched onto what I had assumed was some kind of groundbreaking innovation in GUI, I started to suspect that Microsoft’s product itself had gone beyond the limits of my suckage meter and broken it… and everyone here has affirmed that.”

(That previous commenter called Office 2007 an “emotional disappointment” and offered an SAT-style analogy: “MS Office is to ‘misunderstood’ what Charles Manson was to ‘goofy.’”)

The readers are angry with Microsoft, and used the comments section to vent. They took umbrage with what they perceived was my defense of the Ribbon. And I’m OK with that.

Here’s my take (you can retract your claws for a moment): There are plenty of things wrong with Microsoft’s Office 2007 product. We could create an entire social community focused on sharing what we think is unintuitive about its software. (They may already exist.) However, a large portion of businesses uses Microsoft, and many people learned basic computing skills on Microsoft software. (Personally, I dropped out of a FORTRAN class in college because I didn’t see its practicality. I opted to study Spanish too, instead of the languages I really wanted to learn — Icelandic and Swahili.)

So they are stuck, for now at least. I think Office 2007 was a much-needed slap on the back of the head for IT leaders. Complacency is not an option anymore, not in this economy.

If they have migrated or are about to migrate to Office 2007, they cannot treat it like any other upgrade. Employees will need assistance in order to keep productivity at pre-migration levels.

Taking a stand by sticking with an earlier version is hardly a political move. It’s like not paying your AT&T bill because you think their 3G sucks. Nothing will change — except your service, which will be shut off.

Likewise, taking the martyr approach (We can do it alone! We’ll face the learning curve together!) will get companies nowhere.

If you really despise Microsoft, take a actual stand and find an alternative.

Just be sure to call us when you need software support.

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How many times have you avoided a problem or simply “made do” because the thought of calling the help desk was just too painful?

Unfinished business renders me uneasy, and one lingering task in particular – calling my VoIP service provider – has been giving me heartburn lately.

I do not want to call because I know I will spend too much time getting nowhere. And I’m speaking from experience.

A few weeks back, I called the company to set up the service. It was a Saturday morning, and I had about an hour to kill before I was set to begin making pumpkin pancakes for guests. Plenty of time to fit in a call. Or so I thought.

The resulting hour-long phone conversation was one of the most painful I have ever experienced. The customer service rep had good intentions (I think), but he just did everything wrong.

In response to that experience, I’ve created this list of guidelines for customer service/help desk staff.

1. Let the customer speak and don’t interrupt. If I have an issue and you do not allow me to explain the nuances, you will not get the whole story, and thus will not be able to help me.
2. Don’t offer empty, scripted promises such as “No need to worry, Ms. Darr. We will have you taken care of in no time.” My perception of time is different from another person’s. “No time” to me is less than 10 minutes.
3. If you and I do not share the same mother tongue, please speak slowly. I promise to do the same. Even if we do speak the same language, go slowly anyway.
4. Don’t assume I know what a V-Portal is or what VoIP stands for — even if I sound tech-savvy. Explain it to me in terms I can understand.
5. If you have to put me on hold, give me an idea of how long it will take. It tells me that you think my time is valuable, at least a little bit. And if it’s going to be a lengthy wait, check in with me periodically so I know you haven’t forgotten about me.

Here’s my point: As of today, I still haven’t made the call. I’ve wasted time and money putting it off. Think about your own experiences: How many times have you avoided a problem or simply “made do” because the thought of calling the help desk was just too painful?

It happens often in business, especially at firms that deem help desk support and customer service to be luxuries. And it’s costing companies heaps of money, and countless hours of lost productivity.

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Make it OK to not know something — allow your employees to get their work done with minimal downtime and frustration.

According to Godin, managers have two choices in dealing with this errant 2 percent:

“Design systems that have the good sense and gracefulness to permit the 2% to proceed; or annoy, demonize or lose these people.”

Unfortunately, most companies today opt for the latter. In a recession, quality desktop application support usually is the first to go when budgets are cut. It’s hard to quantify its return on investment, and the demand for such support is often hidden.

Companies annoy, demonize or lose employees by making them figure out software problems on their own, but hold them accountable if their workarounds fail. Figuring it out on their own can mean fruitlessly scouring Microsoft help files for solutions, asking for assistance from colleagues who know a little more about software, finding flawed workarounds, or doing nothing at all. That’s the hidden demand, and it wastes heaps of time and money. It also creates frustrated employees.

A smarter solution is to acknowledge that the 2 percent is inevitable and take steps to minimize the effect. Offer software support and training; make it OK to not know something; allow your employees to get their work done with minimal downtime and frustration.

Read Godin’s blog here.

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When the economy rebounds, if your employees aren’t happy, they will leave.

That’s right — offer them challenges, enhance their skills, expand their networks.

Perhaps that would have made perfect sense 30 years ago, when taking a job often meant staying with a company for the duration of your career. But today, when job-hopping is standard and one-company careers are a relic, grooming employees just doesn’t seem prudent.

But it is, and even more so in an economic recession. (When the economy rebounds, if your employees aren’t happy, they will leave.) Consider the article’s points, and apply them to employees at any career stage, from entry-level to C-suite.

Offer challenges: In the WSJ survey, the opportunity to work on challenging tasks and to take on new responsibilities ranked as the most important factor in career satisfaction. It’s no wonder: Any employee worth keeping will not find contentment in stasis.

Build skills: Taking on new responsibilities usually requires some level of technical training and support. Employees cannot thrive if they aren’t given the tools.

Encourage networking: In the survey, researchers asked respondents which opportunities on the job were the most important and if they were satisfied with what their employers were giving them. Out of all the questions, “expanding professional network” ranked the lowest in satisfaction.

In other words, if you go by what this survey’s respondents say, workers today are not being given the opportunity to share knowledge with their peers.

The researchers add that “… Executives intend to stay the longest with those companies that offer the greatest opportunities to enhance their employability.”

Keep that in mind when you are thinking twice about whether to include training in your IT budget.

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It’s QWERTY versus Dvorak and the fight is getting ugly.

It’s QWERTY versus Dvorak and the fight is getting ugly. That is, as ugly as a keyboard layout melee can get.

A little background: The first typewriter’s keyboard was arranged in alphabetical order, which proved to be poor design when two keys near each other were pressed in succession. The keys would jam. So inventor Christopher Sholes shuffled the letters around, placing the most commonly used keys away from each other. Thus, the QWERTY keyboard was born.

But there’s another keyboard layout, the Dvorak, which is not widely used. The Dvorak has been around since the 1930s, when an efficiency-minded inventor named August Dvorak placed the most commonly used letters, like vowels, on the “home row” (on a QWERTY, the home row starts with ASDF… and ends at single and double quotes).

Dvorak users contend that this arrangement enables users to type much faster. According to the WSJ article, one user said on a QWERTY he types 40 WPM; on a Dvorak, he types 110. Still, it took 46 years (in 1982) after the layout was patented for the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to designate it as an official alternative to QWERTY.

Back to the present.

With the proliferation of full-keyboard mobile phones, Dvorak disciples are getting angrier and angrier. See, most computer operating systems allow you to change your keyboard layout to Dvorak. You just need to modify your keyboard to match (either by switching buttons or by adding labels). But with smart phones, the few ways to get an alternate layout are with extensions, third-party utilities or jailbreaking.

So here’s the “awfully relevant” part. The Dvorak keyboard isn’t just a snake oil keyboard making outrageous typing-speed claims; it’s the result of years of scientific research including letter frequencies and hand physiology. It’s also the only other keyboard layout besides QWERTY that’s been approved by ANSI.

If it delivers such a high level of efficiency, why isn’t it the standard, or at least close to it?

There are many factors keeping Dvorak down, and chief among them is the cost and effort it would require to train and retrain. And with the said proliferation of smart phones, it’s only going to stay that way.

That’s what I call legacy inefficiency. (Jen Darr)

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I thought to myself, “Where do you think all that mail goes? The great .pst in the sky?”

I thought to myself, “Where do you think all that mail goes? The great .pst in the sky?”

That was the bad-mannered former software consultant in me, and I quickly reminded myself everyone has their own areas of expertise — some technical, some not.

Case in point: I know someone who is a carpenter and general contractor. He had very little formal education; most of it has been on-the-job. If you need to know what kind of wood something is made of — whether it’s a common type like Spanish cedar or an exotic species such as Bubinga (African rosewood) — he’ll tell you in a second. That’s his specialty, and he knows it well.

But when he tries to work with document templates and database files for his business, he’s not so nimble. For that, he brings in help.

All this got me thinking about recession, shrinking IT budgets, productivity, and a mess of other unpleasant business stuff. In particular, it led me to wonder why companies cut employee software training and support in an effort to save money.

The current corporate culture views training as a necessary evil, and expects workers to function as experts upon completion. That is unrealistic.

Instruction is important, practice is necessary, and assistance along the way is vital.

Let’s go back to the issue of Outlook folders reaching capacity. My initial reaction was harsh, and I’m thankful it was just a thought that ran through my head and not a comment uttered aloud. In that particular case, a consultant explained the .pst size limits, and showed the caller how to keep folders manageable using Outlook’s AutoArchive and Rules features.

The customer didn’t know that information before he called us, and he may have spent an hour trying to figure it out on his own or with the help of a colleague. (Think of the double downtime.)

The next time he is mysteriously unable to save to his .pst, he may remember how he fixed it last time, or he may not. This time, however, he knows where to find answer quickly.

Less downtime, more knowledge.

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Chances are one of those stereotypes will bother you. And they should.

A recent post in TechRepublic titled “10 Habits of Superstitious Users,” which lists the most common irrational behaviors of average help desk callers, reinforces those stereotypes.

It’s like turning a hamburger back into a cow.

(Maybe I’m a crazy liberal, but I don’t think jeering at people who know less than I do is fun. It does nothing but widen the divide between the help desk and its customers.)

TechRepublic’s article includes a host of behaviors, including refusing to reboot, excessive fear of upgrades, kneejerk repetition of commands, magical thinking, attributing personality to a machine, believing that computers are possessed, and more.

The issue of rebooting is probably the most irritating — for both consultants and callers. While a consultant may perceive a caller’s refusal to reboot as laziness or irrational fear, the caller may think it’s a consultant cop-out, that he cannot think of anything better to try. If a consultant takes a moment to explain why rebooting can solve a problem, the caller may follow his advice.

The point here is that a concept that may seem clear to one may not be to another. For example, based on the universe of data mining we conduct here at PC Helps, a common request is to convert PDF files back into their original formats (Excel, PowerPoint, Word, etc.). Callers believe it’s as simple as clicking a button, but it’s not quite so easy.

One of my colleagues explains the process to his customers this way: It’s like turning a hamburger back into a cow. Using humor and layman’s terms, the consultant gets his point across in less than a dozen words, none of which are tech jargon. The result is a more pleasant exchange, and a caller who just learned something new. (Jen Darr)

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Why do we settle for “good enough”?

But the history wasn’t what really left a lasting impression with me. Rather, it was these two words: good enough.

According to Jensen, “good enough” was the impetus for Office 2007′s redesign. Over the years, as more tool- and taskbars were added, the software had become bloated and confusing. But, still, users didn’t think it would ever change. It was “good enough.”

Which begs the question: Why do we settle for “good enough”?

In my field, software support, people settle for or dish out “good enough” all the time. Waiting hours to get help for a pressing problem is frustrating, but it’s part of life. It’s “good enough.” Ditto for customer service. Friendliness and patience are above and beyond. Frostiness will suffice, as long as the computer is (eventually) fixed. That’s “good enough.”

We shouldn’t settle for good enough. It doesn’t work.

Consider this example:

An employee calls the IT desk asking for help formatting messy data they imported into Excel. A “good enough” resolution would be for the tech to quickly run a formula or two and a little format painting. Maybe even a text-to-columns.

Better than “good enough,” however, would be to ask a few questions first, as the tech may find that the caller will be importing similar data on a regular basis. He can then write a macro for him, perhaps, and walk him through the steps, so the employee will not have to call the help desk each time he attempts to complete the task. (Jen Darr)

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Today – more so than in the past – companies should not be afraid to ask their outsourcing partners for updated SLAs, and more data, both qualitative and quantitative.

It’s the data that really matters – data such as:

• Abandonment rate
• Queue times, hold times
• Call duration
• Estimated hard-dollar savings
• Customer satisfaction and feedback
• Downtime analysis
• Call complexity

Using qualitative and quantitative reporting methods can provide IT leaders with proof of ROI and show value behind dollars spent.

This should be a focal point for every IT department, when many end-users (or customers) operate under the incorrect assumption that the IT help or service desks serve just a few purposes: resetting passwords, maintaining network connectivity, or putting out computers that are on fire.

Choosing the right outsourcing partner and putting strong SLAs in place can rejuvenate the image of the help desk in no time, which, in turn, makes for a better bottom line.

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