phyllostachys 54 - Minute Tech 39 show notes

39 - What are the Three Most Important Parts of a Help Desk Call?

Good morning, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 39 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Tuesday, November 27th , 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- Black Friday and Cyber Monday;
- What are the Three Most Important Parts of a Help Desk Call?
- my apology for audio quality, and more on short podcasts.

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Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Wu Style Taiji - 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA.
"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.

And:

Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207@alltel.net.


Tech News:

Amazon's Kindle is amassing more and more commentary. Peter Brantley of O'Reilly Radar presents reviews by two reviewers, Jason Epstein, co-founder of On-Demand Books, and Mike Shatzkin, CEO of the Idea Logical Company and BaseballLibrary.com. Both views are well-written...and as usual, the comments at the bottom of Peter's O'Reilly page are very to the point.

Last friday was Black Friday, the first official shopping day of the 2007 holiday season, kicked off by 5 am sales around the US for those souls who weren't knocked out by the previous day's festivities. My family thought about getting out of the house....by noon. Then yesterday, Monday, was known as Cyber Monday, presumably the day when holiday revelers would be getting in to work and surfing the web for hot deals. Both Black Friday and Cyber Monday provided a nice little boost to the retail sector of the US stock market...which is a good thing...too much bad new lately has been taxing.

Have you heard of Solid-state hard drives? these are flash-ram based hard-disk replacements, with capacities ranging from 4 to 64 Gigabytes, which are purportedly going to allow Apple to release a flash-based notebook computer at MacWorld 2008, coming up in January. This is the primary bit of technology that most web pundits are blogging about as upcoming, since Leopard has been released, the iPods have been well refreshed and Macs are selling like hotcakes.


Tech Question:

The tech question for today, related to the Help Desk call theme this week, is: "Help Desk Call - What Three Things?".

In the previous show, we walked through a sample support call. We greeted the caller, we found out the rough details of the problem, we replicated the problem, in this case by opening a copy of the document in question and seeing what the issue that the caller was calling about, and then reached into our personal store of information to answer the question based on observed phenomena.

There are three things about answering a Help Desk call you must do:

(1) be polite to the caller;
(2) provide some sort of answer or solution;
(3) Identify yourself and your organization, and provide contact information.

So, number 1. Be polite. Generally, a caller is calling because he or she has exhausted his/her capacity to solve the problems and must rely upon somebody else to solve the problem, so by being polite you're helping to support the caller's self-esteem, which may have taken a hit by having to rely upon us. Of course, the people may just be calling as they're used to delegating certain informational tasks...so being polite just makes the conversation roll more easily.

Number 2 - provide some sort of information. You may not have a ready answer, so make sure to do something that will get the caller to the next level, such as provide the name and number of the person whom you will ask to call the user back. If you do have a ready answer, allow the caller to know that you have an inkling, and either answer it right away, or a request access to the item with which they're having a problem so that you can clarify and demonstrate the answer. This could be as simple as asking them to email a current copy of their document to you, or as moderately complex...but infinitely more useful...of remotely connecting to their desktop and showing them how to resolve the issue.

Number 3 - make sure that your name and contact information is always present for the caller. There is nothing quite so frustrating in the use of technology than to be partway through the resolution of a problem...and realize that you don't know who you spoke with, and what his or her name is. When you answer the call, identify yourself. When you send an email, even if internally, make sure you have a signature with name and phone number. When you complete the call, invite the caller to call again.


Podcasting - Blogging News:

First, I apologize to listeners...something was up with the audio on my system Sunday...Episode 36 on Sunday morning sounded awful due to some sort of electrical interference. Was I running a microwave? Something was jamming the audio recording signal...so I shall re-record that session this week, so that at least iTunes searchers don't come up with awful copies. Unfortunately, with my production schedule, I don't leave much time for troubleshooting shows: they get recorded, converted to .m4a and .mp3, and pushed out to the website immediately so that I can get on with the day.

Then, yesterday, Monday, the show didn't get out. But we're here now!

Okay....listened to my first five John C. Dvorak Tech 5 podcasts on Monday...along with the most recent Marketing Over Coffee and The M Show podcasts, with John Wall and Christopher Penn. I'll have to re-listen to the Marketing Over Coffee...I just remember that Christopher Penn was saying some awesome things....but that was Monday morning. Last week I listened to several of his Financial Aid Podcasts to see how they flowed...and he has such a natural voice. I'll have to ask...but can he possibly be going sans script? whoa! He can really talk up a show. Well, actually, see his podcasting 101 video on iTunes...very well done presentation on podcasting.

Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com

"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"

- Black Friday and Cyber Monday;
- What are the Three Most Important Parts of a Help Desk Call?
- my apology for audio quality, and more on short podcasts.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.