“Never mind Should – we’ve moved on to Can’t”

We spent a long weekend away in NSW and caught up with my cousin, a successful business owner who has spent his career doing battle with numerous IT suppliers.

When I told him about my “Should” post from last week he responded with the sentence above. When things go wrong with his IT systems his support organisation telephone staff now, usually, start by telling him that whatever it was he thought happened could never happen.

One has to be impressed with the speed at which they come to such dramatic conclusions but I have to question whether this is the best way to maintain true customer satisfaction. Purchasers of IT support services contracts don’t want to be told that they're wrong – it’s just not a good way to start off a problem solving dialogue!

Anyone who calls a help desk obviously has a problem, trust me – nobody ever calls just to while away their time. Generally it is a last resort! If they do ring and a problem is to be solved it is vital that the customer support agent has a positive rapport with their caller - they are their eyes and ears. 

The real issue is IT installations are so complex nowadays it is very simple for victims of problems to misinterpret the symptoms available to them. They may not have the knowledge and experience to interpret what they see effectively. To respond to this evidence with a “can’t happen” is, I'm afraid, atrocious. 

What the agent should be doing is carefully filtering these perceptions and get through to the real diagnostic evidence. This has to be a skillful process of human psychological manipulation and is generally far from the skill-sets used to select technical support staff. And there definitely are no courses available from the multi-nationals on how to answer help desk calls properly.

I spent many years “on the phones” and would have traded 20 full on techies for a considerate, understanding, slightly technical persuader with a good customer focus. Until those skills become more recognised calling help desks will continue to be a war of technical attrition that most business people have neither the time nor energy to put up with.

They will also, more importantly, not continue to pay for it!