On Sun, 17 Oct 2010 16:46:37 +0000, john gilmore wrote: >Paul Gilmartin wrote: > ><begin snippet> >Tech support, however, has a different responsibility: to analyze and repair >any reported defect, and never to question the users' choice of method, >regardless of however inefficient or bizarre. ></end snippet> > >I disagree too. > And in a further ply, I stated comsiderable agreement with Ted's position, implying some disagreement with my unqualified assertion you quoted.
>I find it helpful to serve a stint at clients' help desks from time to time. >Nothing else is quite so informative about the kinds of technology currently >being used in a shop and what its people know. > There's a nice distinction between tech support and help desk, as IBM customers mqy learn with dismay when they have paid for the former but not the latter, but attempt to misuse the latter in lieu of the former. >Some version of the doctrine of de minimis is clearly required here: it is not >the job of a help desk to redesign bad systems. A bad or inadequate technique >need not, however, be perpetuated in the frequent situations in which a better >alternative can be communicated to a helpee readily and, if there is a queue, >briefly. > >[not to do so] wastes a training opportunity: people are most willing to learn >a new way to do something when the way in which they have been doing it is not >working for them. > Agreed. But in the stress of a malfunctioning facility, I'd be much soothed if tech support said, first that my defect report was being pursued, and only then suggested a circumvention or even a permanent better alternative. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
