What I wish support people would stop asking me to do - and why
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, you could call a helpdesk or customer support and actually get help and feel supported.
Sure, exceptions. Always exceptions. Usually the big companies with loads of products.
Offshoring and outsourcing support to low wage countries turned the tables. Ticking off tickets1 became more important than actually helping out customers. And, unfortunately, it rubbed off on onshore helpdesks and support departments.
Calling customer service or a helpdesk became an exercise in suffering through checklists and protocols and now bots rule the roost and you don’t even get to converse with a human until miles into the process.
Absolutely sensible when dealing with not-so-tech-savvy people.
You wouldn’t believe the number of people I helped in minutes by asking them to check whether a cable was actually plugged in.
This was back in late 80’s when I was seconded to do a stint in the internal IT department of a large software consultancy/body shop firm. Checking the basics was still the fastest way to help people in the 00’s when I supported my own software and sometimes helped out my brother in his internet provider business.
It is still true today.
And not only with the not-so-tech-savvy.
Even, or maybe especially, as a seasoned (former) software developer of desktop and web apps (sites), I can, and do, forget to check the basics and try the easy fixes.
It happens most often when an app gets up my nose.
For example, by making it excessively hard to figure out how to accomplish what I think should be an extremely simple task. More so by lacking basic international support or having bugs that are as annoying and obvious as a throbbing infected wound but have not been found or, 10x worse, not been addressed for years. And trumping it all: inconsistent behavior like showing me I’ve bought access to something and then not giving it to me, or only partly.
Happened to me as recently as this week.
Fun part is that the obviously largely canned response I received, triggered an idea-ball, and made a couple of quarters (pennies) drop. It led me to the actual solution in seconds. One I’d forgotten to try before I reached out for help and was decidedly missing from the vendor’s suggestions.
But I digress.
I have ranted about poor customer service in public before and could do it again.
But not now.
Even though what I wish they’d stop asking me to do makes more sense to them than it does to me. And even though they quite often ask me to do what I’ve told them I’ve already done.
This rant is about the blatant disregard for the effect that complying with what they’re asking me to do, would have.
Not in terms of time. The suggested actions would take seconds only.
But the fallout, oh, the fallout.
The #1 canned suggestion
Take the #1 canned suggestion when asking for support using web app:
I know it’s coming. I know it.
Still, the eternal optimist in me hopes it won’t. Hopes whoever responds to me has actually read my request, has the wherewithal to notice and understand what I’ve already tried, and knows their app and its support history well enough to offer relevant suggestions.
I know it’s foolish and will make reading yet another canned response feel like jumping into ice cold polar waters.
And yes, there it is:
Please delete your browser’s history, cache, and cookies.
And then this happens:
At least it warms me back up.
Why does asking me this, set my brain alight?
That’s because:
Any idea how many sites and apps it would mess up for me?2
For one, I’d have to log in again everywhere.3
For another, I’d have to rebuild the history that allows me to go to my most used sites by typing only a few characters in the address bar.
I’d have to reset my preferences and any progress — for example, through a course —I’ve made in all apps that do not require an account because cookies and local storage are then their only options to remember anything between sessions4.
I’d have to do the same with apps for which I do have an account if the developers chose to use cookies or local storage on my machine instead of their servers5.
It fries my brain to even think of putting myself through this.
I've had to do it a couple of times after a machine crashed and I can tell you: it's a royal pain in the behind. It slows you down for days and weeks.
Sure, the sites and apps I use most will be back to normal quite quickly.
But that’s just the thing. I’m not as familiar with the ones I use infrequently. And I definitely don’t remember what settings I might have changed to fit my needs. So, I’m doomed to repeat finding out what doesn’t fit, figuring out whether there is a setting I can tweak, and what to tweak it to.
It. All. Takes. Time.
A. Lot. Of. It.
And:
COMPLETELY UNNECESSARILY!
What should be the #1 suggestion
Unfortunately, it’s usually #2. Why, I have no clue. It should be #1.
Please try incognito mode.
Aka private mode.
It takes (other) browser extensions out of the equation.6
It’s how you figure out whether any of them clash with the app showing a problem.
Why should it be the #1 canned suggestion?
Because it also eliminates history, cache, and cookies in one fell swoop without messing up my browser’s and my own productivity.
Please comment if you are in support and incognito mode is not your first suggestion.
It’s a quick non-destructive (!) way to determine whether you’re seeing ghosts or there’s more investigative work ahead.
When the behavior does show in incognito mode, it’s definitely a bug as there are no extensions that can cause it. (You might have to double check after disabling any extensions you gave permission to run in incognito.) And it’s a bug that can’t be caused by outdated or corrupted cookies and cached files.
When the behavior does not show in incognito mode, there’s no bug but there might be interference.
When I report this immediately, the (#3 by now) canned response usually instructs me to identify the misbehaving extension and disable it7.
That gets up my nose because misbehavior is hardly ever caused by interference.
Sure, it happens.
But in all the years I’ve used browsers to do my work and with all the apps and extensions I use on a daily basis, I’ve only seen it a couple of times. And then it was immediately obvious that an app and one or more extensions were in a boxing match. For example over who got to say what to do with some text I selected.
The thing is, there’s plenty more that could be going on to cause whatever misbehavior you’re seeing. And it’s easy and quick to check.
Especially if you haven’t added any extensions recently. If you have, turn those off in normal mode and see whether it restores normalcy.
What should be the #2 and #3 suggestions
Before sending me on a wild goose hunt for a misbehaving extension, please give suggestions that eliminate most other causes and make it more likely interference is to blame.
What are they?
For web apps, the #2 suggestion should always be:
Restart your browser.
For desktop apps it, obviously, would be: restart the app.
Admittedly, it’s no fun doing that. Especially, when — like me — you tend to have many browser windows open at the same time, each with a gazillion tabs8.
But if you — like me — hardly every restart your browser or — no, no, please no — your machine, then it’s often the easiest and most effective cure for any trouble.
That’s because software, including the operating system (Windows, iOS, etc.), can be a smithen lax in their housekeeping — cleaning up after themselves. The garbage builds up over time9, which can lead to all sorts of inexplicable behavior.
Like a few days ago, when my external display monitors went dark and both reported not getting a signal. As if my laptop had crashed.
It hadn’t. It was in fine shape when I opened the lid.
And yes, the cables to the monitors were firmly plugged in.
But Windows didn’t know about them anymore.
With the chance of both monitors failing at exactly the same second being very slim, I took the obvious action that would fix this.
Which is what should be every helpdesk’s #3 suggestion:
Restart your machine.
Yep. No fun either.
Therefore often neglected as a quick fix. (Used to be #1 back in the old, old days).
Why should restarting be the #2 and #3 suggestions?
Because they’re quick and easy, non-destructive and more often than not highly effective. They sure take a lot less time than recovering from deleting your browser’s history, cache, and cookies!
So give yourself a break and try the restarts when things go strangely awry.
Alternative for creating a pristine environment
A couple of weeks ago, in another quest to avoid deleting everything that keeps my browser a positive force in my productiveness, I found something that makes incognito mode look like a poor man’s solution.
I knew about it, sort of, but as I am the sole user of my machines, I had no need for it.
So I forgot about it. To the point where I wondered why anyone would use it whenever I happen to see it.
You can add separate profiles to Chrome. And I’d expect other browsers to offer a similar feature. Very useful if you want to let someone else use Chrome on you machine without having to log out of it yourself. More importantly, they can customize ‘their’ Chrome to their liking without messing up yours.
It accomplishes exactly what support people want: a clean, pristine environment.
When you’re done figuring out whether it is or is not their software, it’s your choice whether to keep the profile around. I tend to keep it for a bit in case they’d like me to test another few things to help them diagnose and fix whatever’s wrong.
And that points to another advantage of this method.
You can continue your productive work in your normal profile. Without messing up the pristine environment you’ve just created.
Enjoy!
Live long and prosper!
Marjan
Performance measurement gone haywire by measuring the wrong things because they’re easy to measure and what really matters was perceived as immeasurable.
I virtually live online, hardly use any desktop apps anymore.
Thank goodness for password vaults.
Actually, between any page loads, but modern online apps employ techniques that avoid these.
There is no best choice when it comes to storing preferences and progress through an app — for example, a course. It’s always a trade off. And when an app can be customized separately for different devices, cookies and local storage offer a solution that saves quite a bit of development work.
Apart from extensions you have given permission to run in incognito mode. Like I do with my password vault, for example.
Identifying the culprit involves disabling all extensions followed by the tedium of re-enabling one and checking whether the app still works. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam. It takes a lot of time.
Fortunately, browser history helps re-open the windows and tabs I had open before. Another reason never to delete my browser’s history.
Garbage collectors in some development frameworks help, but you know what? They’re software too.
All so true Marjan!! Love the illustrations too as they really capture the emotions. And don't those emotions just rage when you can't get the support you need. Or when you watch 10 Youtube videos that don't work because you have a slightly different model and the thing they tell you to click doesn't exist on your version. And then you cannot find a support number. It wastes so much time. The only saving grace is that sometimes, just sometimes, you find a wonderful support person who knows exactly how to solve your problem and then you can bow down to the tech gods and goddesses and be grateful and rejoice in doing that job that only takes 5 minutes when the tech is working properly.