So many people
forget that there is one very important role of themselves when they
are asking IT for support. The role of the end user is to explain
the problem that they are having and in some cases being the hands and
eyes for the IT person.
We ran into a
situation a while ago with an end user that would run into a problem
and as soon as she had notified us about it, would basically run
away. The person didn't want to help solve the problem and in a lot
of cases the words we got were “it doesn't work so fix it”. Now
the problem with that type of explanation is we have no clue what
they were doing or even what the problem really is.
If as an end user
you are experiencing an issue, be it with some software or something
else with regards to your computer, it's important to communicate
effectively with the IT person. It doesn't work makes it very hard
to figure out if the actual issue is a computer problem or if the end
user is doing something incorrectly. If there is an error message
that is popping up, make sure that you tell IT what you were doing
when the message popped up because that might help figure out what
the problem really is.
In our situation the
person just wouldn't be the hands and eyes for us as they had access
to the computer and we were not in the same location. It was “it
didn't work” and that was it which means that as an IT individual
you get frustrated because there really isn't a way to figure out
what the problem is without having to go on-site and deal with the
computer yourself. If you are asking for help from someone in IT make
sure that the problem is clearly explained and you are going to be
available to answer the questions that are going to arise.
IT does the best
that they can do and of course most IT individuals are not mind
readers so we can't know what you were doing when the problem
occurred. If remote access isn't part of what has been asked of us,
remember, we can't see the screen that you are referring to so some
communication is going to be very important. Making sure that as an
end user that you can help IT when you say “It doesn't work” will
mean that it will probably get fixed a lot faster than if you just
throw you hands up and run away.
Asking an IT person
for help can sometimes be frustrated because yes you are going to
lose a bit of work time but you asked for the help so you need to
remember that. IT individuals don't know how every piece of software
works even if they have installed it. The IT person is responsible
for installing the software and the end user is the one that needs to
know all the little bits that make the software work for them.
In our case we did
go to site and get the problem resolved which was wonderful. Having
the hands and eyes might have made it quicker but that we don't know.
Also before you scream that something isn't working do a bit of
checking yourself as you might solve the problem without ever calling
the IT person.
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