Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

itsupport.grammable.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 226 posts

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#181

Post by mcherm »

k__ wrote: post #168
StavrosK wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple did that on the iPod manuals. They wouldn't say "make sure the lock button is unlocked" (because duh, of course it's unlocked), they would say "turn the button to the lock and then the unlock position".

Yes, onboarding is a pain. Once I thought it's because software is too complicated, but it seems every time I lower the entry barrier, people lower their opinion about what is a problem. What I don't understand is, that even professionals turn their brain out when setting up a system of any kind. When I have to go to a customer and need to set some stuff up, I ensure that I can complete that task without the help of…

> it seems every time I lower the entry barrier, people lower their opinion about what is a problem.

Exactly as they ought to! Rising standards are a much-to-be-desired effect. Of course, that doesn't always mean contacting the support staff to solve problems, but it DOES mean no longer accepting minor problems that used be a normal part of how we operated but which now can be eliminated with minor effort.

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#182

Post by Noseshine »

arethuza wrote: post #175
koliber wrote: post #115

Regarding the "is it plugged in?" question. A great anecdote I heard was that the support person on the phone asked if the power plug was clean. The user was confused. The support person told them to unplug it, blow the dust out of the holes, and plug it back in. This fixed the problem! The issue was that the power plug was in the socket, but too loose to connect. Somehow, the support person figured this was the case…

Many years ago in my first job (1988) I was diagnosing a Unix printing problem on a machine remotely (dialed in via modems). There was an IBM engineer on site who insisted it was a software problem - I was on the phone to him and he was getting rather annoyed with me and I asked the inevitable "Is it actually plugged into the power?" which got him very angry that I would have the cheek to suggest that he hadn't check…

To give a story from a different field so that it's not all IT stories here:

When I served in the German army as a battle tank weapons systems front line mechanic I didn't know all the tricks of the tank crews from the start (obviously) - nor that they did have tricks that they used to get out of training exercises and to (our) fresh coffee.

One common trick was to turn all the dials for brightness and contrast for the passive heat-sensor (night vision) all the way down. Then they told their commanding officer they had to go to the "Inst" (German "Instandhaltung" = maintenance depmt., in our case right behind the battle field - with power generator and attached coffee maker) because their screen had gone out. Which was quite important

The first time I went to such a tank I fumbled around for a few minutes, not finding anything, before admitting defeat. I called in a more senior colleague of mine. He went in, turned up the dials and that was all, case closed.

It was sooo embarrassing (to me, I don't think the other people gave it much thought) - that's the reason I still remember it even though it's been 16 years or so by now.

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#183

Post by mcherm »

coroxout wrote: post #152
nathancahill wrote: post #3

So the first 2 are rebooting and making sure it has power. The third is "up to date". I do quite a bit of tech support for my family and neither of those issues are really issues. The #1 issue for me is "this free app I installed wanted to install a browser addon and now I see ads everywhere". The #2 is "this free app I installed hijacks everything on my Mac to show ads". I've spent countless hours educating them abo…

I had the opposite problem recently: how can they know that things are not malware? My dad complained that his laptop would pop up "strange pictures" and ask if he "liked what he saw" and that they kept coming up even though he always said no. I thought he'd acquired some sort of malware popping up fake dating site ads, but it turned out that he had upgraded to Windows 10 and was referring to the scenic photos it now…

That is actually one of the better stories of family tech support that I have heard. I laughed out loud, but in sympathy, not maliciously. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#184

Post by hectormalot »

MaulingMonkey wrote: post #178
sspiff wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. They just want their problem solved, they don't care about understanding the underlying system. It's not even about not wanting to listen, it's about the amount of information they have to absorb to understand the problem. Also, most of us are not Feinmann-level teachers who can explain complicated systems in simple terms.

It's not even about them failing to learn, necessarily - it's them failing to internalize deeply enough to recall how to solve their problems the next time they crop up. They're being handed answers from up high instead of experimenting - no practice, no wonder they can't solve it the next time either. Even techies can run into this problem - the only reason we might do better, on average, is that we experiment with…

Lack of experimentation might also be because they are afraid to break something. I remember my (completely non digital) parents being unusually good with their car navigation system. Turns out the sales rep had told them: "its impossible to break this system, just try and it will be ok", and so they had trial and errorred their way to understanding how it worked.

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#185

Post by k__ »

mcherm wrote: post #181
k__ wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, onboarding is a pain. Once I thought it's because software is too complicated, but it seems every time I lower the entry barrier, people lower their opinion about what is a problem. What I don't understand is, that even professionals turn their brain out when setting up a system of any kind. When I have to go to a customer and need to set some stuff up, I ensure that I can complete that task without the help of…

> it seems every time I lower the entry barrier, people lower their opinion about what is a problem. Exactly as they ought to! Rising standards are a much-to-be-desired effect. Of course, that doesn't always mean contacting the support staff to solve problems, but it DOES mean no longer accepting minor problems that used be a normal part of how we operated but which now can be eliminated with minor effort.

I'm totally with you on the rising standards.

But some people are just... I don't know, you just can't catch up with them.

I few days ago a friend of mine quoted something that sums it all up: "Imagine the average person. Now imagine that 50% of the population is dumber"

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#186

Post by asdfasdfa11112 »

howderek wrote: post #8

I think this needs a "I don't know" option that leads to links to support pages. I've certainly dealt with friends and family who don't know how to check if their software is up to date and update it if it's not. I also think the "Did this fix your problem?" prompts after saying "Yes" are redundant.

Depending on the device, I would say. Maybe if it were phrased, "Do you regularly see annoying popups that ask you to update your software?"

Shoot, I guess even that is a poor wording. I do know, however, that every time Apple pushes an iOS update, I get a text from my mom to see if she should accept the update. (She got an iphone last summer for the first time, and does not know how to install apps.)

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#187

Post by debaserab2 »

k__ wrote: post #185
mcherm wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems every time I lower the entry barrier, people lower their opinion about what is a problem. Exactly as they ought to! Rising standards are a much-to-be-desired effect. Of course, that doesn't always mean contacting the support staff to solve problems, but it DOES mean no longer accepting minor problems that used be a normal part of how we operated but which now can be eliminated with minor effort.

I'm totally with you on the rising standards. But some people are just... I don't know, you just can't catch up with them. I few days ago a friend of mine quoted something that sums it all up: "Imagine the average person. Now imagine that 50% of the population is dumber"

When you start looking at the world with that kind of bleakness, it makes it hard to gain empathy for the people who use the things you build.

What you don't see on the other side is the guy using your software that was just stuck in a traffic jam for an hour, or hasn't had a solid night of sleep in three weeks due to his newborn, etc. The last thing they want to do is sit down and learn how to use your software that so-and-so from that other department insisted be rolled out across the company.

You have to excuse your customers for not learning things in earnest. It's part of your job to make that as easy as possible for them.

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#188

Post by webmaven »

klibertp wrote: post #139
4ndr3vv wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See "The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think" https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/

Quoting from the article: > That one quarter of the population can’t use a computer at all is the most serious element of the digital divide. Frightening... but why? > To a great extent, this problem is caused by computers still being much too complicated for many people. Ok, but this doesn't answer my other question - is it possible to educate these people to use the current computers, or do computers really need to…

> is it possible to educate these people to use the current computers[?]

Some can be taught, but not all of them.

There is a significant fraction of the population that simply can't "get" certain concepts in a usable form. These are the same folks that are only capable of solving an algebra problem by rote, don't see the difference between making a word bold & italic and doing it indirectly by applying a custom style, etc.

It is important to note that this doesn't have anything to do with a lack of intelligence. Many smart developers struggle in an analogous way with pointers and pointer arithmetic, for example. Some people's brains just don't easily bend very far in certain directions.

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#190

Post by mnx »

ekianjo wrote: post #90
MichaelApproved wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm commuter savvy and tried to get HBO Now to play on Ubuntu. Searched Google and found many different commands to try and run but had no luck. How could something so simple be so difficult?

The problem is DRM - it has nothing to do with Linux.

Doesn't matter whose fault it is. Works on Windows, doesn't on linux. That's all that matters for the user.
Post reply on HN