Thats what a friend told me just a few minutes ago when I was telling her about a situation I ran into (I’ll talk about that later). But in her case, she was complaining about the IT dept at her workplace. As we got into the conversation, I was thinking of some of my experiences with IT people…and being in that IT role myself.

Honestly, I don’t think that IT people suck. its just that when it comes to helping someone, especially when your doing it over the phone, Theres more of a communication problem than anything else.

One problem is that most of the time, the IT person is looking for information that will help in troubleshooting. While the person that needs the help may not necessarily know what to tell him (or her) that will be helpful.

Example, there have been tons of time when someone has asked me for help because some program they were trying to use "will not work". When I go about asking what happens when they try to use the program, the only answer is "it doesn’t work". Then I’ll say what does it do when you try to run the program, and they’ll be like "nothing". I ask those questions because I’m trying to get a better idea when exactly in the process of using the program does it stop working, If its getting an error message, if its just closing out, if its locking up… any number of things. Depending on the answers to those questions, I will get an idea where to start looking.

The person needing help doesn’t know that. They may be frustrated. They may be embarrased or anything. So IT people have to have patients, and keep hammering away, or explaining what your looking for to help them solve the situation.

Sometimes IT people can get to where they just have a bad attitude towards dealing with people’s problems. You see that in just about every service offering business. Sort of like they are annoyed that you have your problem. Or they treat you like you are the dumbest person on earth. Its easy to get in that mode when your in the business of offering a service, but you have to realize that you are there for that reason, its your job, and just because someone may not know as much as you about their computer doesn’t mean that they are any dumber than you or deserved to be treated like they are.

You have to be patient.

You have to listen.

And most of all, you have to be honest. Theres nothing I hate more than someone not being able to fix something and throw out some outrageous, unnecessary suggestion because they are stumped