sc302 Veteran Posted February 27, 2015 Author Veteran Share Posted February 27, 2015 #1 - I (inadvertently I guess) admit I am an idiot to patients fairly often. I tell them that I'm going to get the relevant consultant/reg and then go and run off and get someone who can actually fix the problem. Sometimes the problem that needs fixing is within my scope of practice, but I can't (or would rather not) perform the procedure, and it's best for the patient that I recognise that I'm not competent in an area - so that the correct care can be delivered by the correct person. #3 - The customer is actually wrong quite often and will get angry when I/another person disagrees. Therefore we approach all patients the same way - we never promise things/speak in absolutes; we simplify things to almost absurd levels; and we follow our procedures at all times. Bad doctor much? Asking them to get a second opinion or sending them up to see a specialist is hardly the same as what I posted. God has not trained you nor has he given the specs of human design or an any understanding of the trouble codes he put in. Something that we have created from nothing vs something that we don't have a full understanding of because we did not design it....yea that is totally the same. When we can take the raw materials that make up a human and create a human, let me know. That isn't the same as changing genetic code in an egg and sperm, it is taking the oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen, calcium, and the rest them mixing them together and creating a human that can talk, walk, breathe and think on their own...That is when I will say we have a full understanding and we should have no excuse not to be able to fix someone from any ailment. We are very far away from being able to do that. playing with the genetic code is like having a chocolate chip cookie, surgically removing the chocolate chips and replacing them with raisins, we can even alter the cookie to make it better. We know what the cookie is made out of, we know how to replace the chocolate chips, we know how to change the way the cookie tastes, but we can't make the cookie from scratch. It must be delivered to us in a chips ahoy package, then we can modify it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooky560 Veteran Posted February 28, 2015 Veteran Share Posted February 28, 2015 Well, to be fair, powering off and on some modems works for most problems with them. Factory might be a bit harsh, but... Yes but I happened to learn there was a network outage and instead of apologising they still suggested resetting it to factory settings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrynalyne Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 I don't see the problem with a developer saying "I've never seen that error before". Some of the software I have worked on is so complex that there isn't a person on earth who would know it all. If I ever got fired for saying that then that probably wasn't somewhere I wanted to work in the first place. Indeed. There is nothing wrong with honesty. The only time admitting this is a problem is if you aren't willing to fix it or find out the cause. 99% of the time I run into this and tell them that (yes I tell them Ive never seen it before) is because I know it is an outside factor causing it. Then I help find the true cause, which is almost never related to my code. If it was, I would have seen that error before Not all customers are complete and utter morons. I once had an "engineer" at my ISP tell me the only way to fix my connection problems was to reinstall Windows... on all the affected devices... even the Android phones... I just hung up on the prat and called back later, to get a different engineer; one that hopefully had a brain. You already knew how that was going to go when someone on phone support for an ISP called themselves an engineer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FloatingFatMan Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 You already knew how that was going to go when someone on phone support for an ISP called themselves an engineer. Believe it or not, this was already level 2 support. I'd already wasted an hour on the usual "cough n drop" circuit... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xendrome Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Rule #3 The customer is not wrong until proven wrong, and even then is not wrong. I totally disagree with this, there are always instances where the customer is wrong. It's all about how you handle/word it. There's always a nice way to point out a mistake, and provide education on how to do it properly and not do it again. However if the mistake is the customers fault and a GROSSLY wrong or negligent and their attitude sucks, then sometimes the truth has to be said. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
123456789A Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Hulk Hogan services your copiers? You're gonna need some 11x17" sheets of paper loaded in tray 3 when Hulkamania comes bustin' through this machine, brother. T3X4S, Dick Montage and The Evil Overlord 3 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooky560 Veteran Posted March 1, 2015 Veteran Share Posted March 1, 2015 The customer is NEVER right, you just word it properly and let them down gently Zok-StaR, Dick Montage and T3X4S 3 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Evil Overlord Posted March 1, 2015 Share Posted March 1, 2015 The customer is NEVER right, you just word it properly and let them down gently You may very well be right. But this is also the reasons openarkets and real good deals are disappearing, and advertisers play on this "You need this 'branded item', otherwise you're going to go into a coma and die from rotting genitals" I don't have a problem with being wrong if proved wrong, I just feel consumers have lost their power and will pay whatever we're told to pay, even if it's support, or fuel, (hell, insert any medium here) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zeke009 Posted March 1, 2015 Share Posted March 1, 2015 ... Most people (the general populous) don't care, don't understand, or don't want to understand ... Everyone in IT needs to remember this! You can't talk tech to someone who really doesn't give a hoot. When I'm looking for contractors to fill support roles, I've stated my number one requirement is the candidate MUST be able to talk to anyone on top of a well rounded support skillset. The roles I'm filling are not engineers, they are end users who don't time or the patience to learn IT. Dick Montage and The Evil Overlord 2 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T3X4S Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 Everyone in IT needs to remember this! You can't talk tech to someone who really doesn't give a hoot. When I'm looking for contractors to fill support roles, I've stated my number one requirement is the candidate MUST be able to talk to anyone on top of a well rounded support skillset. The roles I'm filling are not engineers, they are end users who don't time or the patience to learn IT. I have mentioned this 2 times in here and used this example 10x - I had a technician working for me a while back. He thought he was so clever when he would purposely speak way above someone's understanding. I tried explaining to him on more than 2 occasions that someone who was truly knowledgeable could make technical things easy for anyone to understand. I would use quotes from famous people: "I think it was Socrates who said 'the true genius knows he dumb he really is' " or, "Richard Feynman once said when someone is explaining something and they are using all the big words and confusing the audience - its because that person doesnt know the information well enough to be able to explain it in simple terms anyone could understand - and he was the master at this" - but none of it set in. It finally came to him getting fired when he started telling an old grandmother who said her 6 year old laptop was too slow - he decided to talk to her about overclocking - yeah - he was that kind of asshat Anyway - we told him he would be better somewhere else - and that was the end of him - but whenever I hear someone using alot of techno jargon and getting into real detailed stuff when talking to non-techies - I always try to bring the conversation back down to earth - because just like you said - they dont care, dont want to understand, and possibly cant understand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firey Posted March 5, 2015 Share Posted March 5, 2015 As a programmer.. I see plenty of errors pop up that I have never seen before. Usually if I get them enough I can work out troubleshooting steps. I have seen the same error appear for multiple problems.. this isn't a code fault.. 90% of the time it's windows runtime messages. I've also seen software break due to not having the right versions of DLLs or windows updates that break some level of compatibility. There have been times where literally I have never seen an error before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick H. Supervisor Posted March 5, 2015 Supervisor Share Posted March 5, 2015 I've never done sales (thank god, I wouldn't last a day) so all I can offer is ideas that work when trying to fix something for a client. "How did you manage that?" "How did I manage this?" "I've made it worse than when you called me." "I can fix this, I swear!" "I'm going to escalate this." Escalate is one of the worst words to hear. It's supposed to be reassuring, but no one - not even myself - can explain why that's supposed to be reassuring. It's basically a way of saying, "I have no clue, I'm passing this issue to someone else." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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