Everyone who works with computers has run into a problem and asked for help. But few people realize that how you ask for help can have a big impact on how quickly you receive a solution. Here are three guidelines to follow that will make the technical guru in your life happier, and help him or her help you:

1. Describe what happens, not what doesn’t happen. The vast majority of problem reports I receive begin with “I can’t ______,” as in, “I can’t log in” or “I can’t send an email.” Unfortunately, this says very little about the problem you’re experiencing. You wouldn’t tell your auto mechanic, “I can’t start my car,” or tell your doctor, “I don’t feel well” and expect them to diagnose your problem. Instead, you would say something like, “When I turn the ignition, I hear a rrr-rrr sound and the check engine light comes on,” or, “When I stand up quickly after a meal, I feel dizzy.” You can do the same thing with computers: “When I enter my username and password and click Submit, the login page reloads,” or “When I click the Send button on an email message, the window closes and a moment later I see the following error message: [copy and paste].”
2. Provide specific details. When you’re describing what happened, go ahead and be as specific as you can. If you’re having a problem logging into an account, be sure to mention the username you’re using. If you can’t send an email, what email address are you sending to? If you have trouble viewing a web page, what is its complete URL? (Just copy and paste it!) If you can’t add a product to your shopping cart, what product did you try? Any of these details could be the essential clue that helps find the problem.
3. Don’t assume everyone else can see the problem. If the problem you’ve encountered were obvious or consistent, it probably wouldn’t exist because the software developers themselves would have seen it and fixed it. That’s why the details in step 2 are so important. Logins probably work with most usernames, and most products can probably be added to shopping carts … it may be the particular data you’re working with that triggers the problem. The goal is to put someone else in your shoes so he or she can see the problem, too.

These guidelines are valid whether you’re asking a friend for help, calling tech support or hiring a programmer to build custom software for you. If you’re that programmer, you know what I’m talking about, and I have a tool that can help your clients: check out Betaboard, which asks all the right questions to gather this key information for you.

But even if you’re just making a phone call or sending an email message, keeping these guidelines in mind will help get the job done faster.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 at 12:30 am and is filed under Computer Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.