On the outside, I try to project an image of having it all together. But underneath that, I'm kind of a disaster. Hence... the name of the site: GlossyVeneer. I started writing this as a response to a comment from Cardine in my last post, but decided it was too long and it deserved an entire post.
My best (worst) experience with assisting a user came when another department at work called me, “I’ve got a person who is having troubles with the web site. I’m going to transfer them to you.”
So, the person is transferred to me and the first thing they blurt out is that the web site “isn’t working.” When I ask them if they can specifically tell me what’s not working, they tell me, “I don’t know. I’m not all techie. It’s just not working.” After begging and pleading and asking all kinds of questions to try determining the problem, I get this response, “Well, I can’t find anything I’m looking for.”
Oh good, a direction to go with this questioning!
“Okay, what are you looking for?”
“General contact information.” With this knowledge, I told them that they should be able to click on the link that says, “Contact” at the top of every page (all 80,000+ of them) in the site. They tell me that they don’t see this link. After explaining for a while where it is in relationship to other page elements, they say, “Yeah, I don’t see any of those things.”
Finally, I ask a question that starts getting me somewhere. “What do you see on your screen?”
“I see a picture of a pretty field full of flowers. There are some little pictures all over on the left side of the screen. The pictures are labeled. The first one says ‘My Computer’, the next one says…”
I interrupt, “You mean, you’re just looking at the desktop?”
“I don’t know. I told you. I’m not techie.”
“So, do you even have a web browser open?”
“Again, you’re using the techie talk. You need to simplify.”
I ended up spending about an hour on the phone with this person. I had to talk them through opening a web browser, “Double-click on the big blue ‘E’.” (Don’t even bring up alternative and better browsers, no way was I going to explain that one!) I have no idea what they were doing before they called trying to get assistance. Waving their hands in front of the screen? Yelling out commands?
Finally I helped them navigate to our web site and get the information they wanted. The person said, “This internet stuff is way too confusing. My kids always tell me it’s so fast and easy, but I don’t see that this was any better than the phone book.”
Nope, not when you’re not “techie” enough to know how to use a web browser.
