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Asked about "Encouraging users to read online help"
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Michelle:
I think that you have done all the reasonable things. Now you have to work
with the tech support people to retrain the lazy customers out of their bad
habits.
First, are your tech support people familiar witn the new Help system? If
not, go through it with them so they are familiar with it, and can then
train the users.
Then, when a user calls in for something simple that the Help covers, have
the first question from Tech support be "Did you follow the instructions in
the Help?" If the answer is "No", then the tech support person should walk
the user through the steps: 1. "Click Help." 2. "Select Whatever it is." 3.
" Read it to me." 4. "Does that answer your question?"
Only then should the tech support person offer additional assistance: "What
don't you understand?"
Once the users know that they will not get additional info from tech support
until they have gone (willingly or not) through the appropriate help steps,
they will do it first, so they can answer "Yes" to "Did you follow the
instructions in the Help?"
And in doing so, they may not need to make the call, after all.
And by requiring tech support to use the help first on every call, they will
get very experienced with it, and will recommend it enthusiastically to the
users (to keep from doing it forever)and that will also help cut down the
nuisance calls. Then maybe the remaining calls to tech support will be more
interesting for them to handle.
Margaret Cekis
Margaret -at- mediaocean -dot- com
Atlanta GA
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