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.

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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