[aclug-L] Re: Freelance Technical Support

[Carl D Cravens <raven@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, Jonathan Hall wrote:

> I've done enough telephone support (at SouthWind and elsewhere) that I've
> become very proficient at doing telephone technical support.  To the point
> that sometimes that's my preference... or I try to do that automatically
> when someone calls me.

If it's something you _know_ how to fix and it's relatively simple to step
someone through it, sure... that's the kind of thing I'd fix over the
phone.

But when it's something like, "My printer only prints the first job I send
it, and then it stops working.  Rebooting fixes it, though," I'm not going
to want to tackle that over the phone.

I'll step people through a process I already know, or do initial
diagnostics on something I'm familiar with, but I don't want to do serious
troubleshooting over the phone.  (Helping my father-in-law, who'd never
seen the inside of his case before, install a new CD-ROM drive over the
phone, when he was switching from a SoundBlaster SCSI drive to an IDE, not
realizing the old drive wasn't IDE, calling long distance, was a real
PITA.)

> There's no point in doing someone else's work for free.

A very good point.  Unless it's your step-dad, and you know he called you
because he doesn't want to spend an hour on the phone trying to find
someone at his ISP who can help him. :)  (I have a pretty good
relationship with my step-dad in this area... he's learned a lot and
probably read more Windows books than I've ever seen.  So when he does
call me, he usually has a real problem.)

--
Carl D Cravens (raven@xxxxxxxxxxx)
If I want your opinion, I'll take you out of my killfile.
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