Problem Solving Skills

Can you solve a simple problem? Are you capable of independent thought? Can you… deviate from a script at not so much as a moment’s notice? If so, I know of a software vendor that could use your skills on their software support team.

I know as well as anyone that tech support is not easy. It’s not a fun job. I’m sure there are a lot of folks out there doing tech support who are not being utilized to the fullest of their potential. However, there are a lot more out there whose world falls to pieces the minute something doesn’t go as scripted.

I give you, my fair readers, a completely hypothetical example that did not happen to me this morning. I swear to Paris. Yesterday I got a hypothetical email from our business license department saying that their software vendor needed to do an upgrade. It was supposed to start at 9:00am and the duration of this upgrade was to be two hours. Hypothetically, I responded and asked if I needed to be in at 9:00 because typically I come in closer to 10:00. She said I didn’t and that the tech support for the fictitious company could do it all no problem.

Fast forward to this morning when I strolled in at 10:00… my voicemail light was blinking. I had a (hypothetical) voicemail saying that they couldn’t get the file to copy from FTP to the computer and asking if we had some sort of “special security” preventing that. Apparently the hypothetical support rep… let’s call her Stacey Sam… was browsing to the file on the FTP Server in Internet Explorer and right clicking on it and choosing “Copy”. Then she’d minimize, and right click on the desktop hoping to hit “Paste.” This did not work (for whatever reason). As opposed to trying other options, they decided to upload it via dialup. When I got to work, I was called down to look and see if I could figure out what was going on. Sam demonstrated what she was trying to do and how it wasn’t working.

Using my god-like technical skills I perceived a menu option (obviously hidden to mere mortals) which said “Copy to folder…” when She right-clicked on the file. It is obvious why she might not have noticed it, though — it was two entire menu options away from “Copy” and was hiding, quite skillfully, on the other side of a little divider line. It was a very sneaky little menu option.

With my superbly tuned perceptual capacity, we got the file moved to where it needed to be. Hypothetically, that is.

Virtually all of our software vendors are like this. Why? Because we’re a slave to price and don’t care at all about the quality of the software or support. Though, with the amount that we’re hypothetically paying these hypothetical people, I don’t know what price it is that we’re a slave to.