[HN Gopher] Want quick answers? Ask questions well ___________________________________________________________________ Want quick answers? Ask questions well Author : KronisLV Score : 163 points Date : 2022-08-31 18:08 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (quick-answers.kronis.dev) (TXT) w3m dump (quick-answers.kronis.dev) | MarkLowenstein wrote: | Great article. Hits the best points without wasting time on | minutia. | | That is the _other_ heuristic when describing a problem and | reporting what you already learned, that makes the whole process | an art: keep it short! | mfrw wrote: | I think a passing mention of: | | - https://xyproblem.info | | - http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html | | might be of some help as well :) | KronisLV wrote: | Thanks, that's a good idea! Added these as "further reading" at | the bottom. | mdaniel wrote: | and https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask along with its | sub-section https://stackoverflow.com/help/minimal- | reproducible-example | | While those lean toward SO-specific usage, they also contain | some very good guidance IMHO | svnpenn wrote: | > The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to | ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer. | | https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#%22Cunningham's_L... | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | This is true. | | I think it's frowned upon, here. | | I won't do it deliberately, but, if I'm unsure of the answer, | posting what I _think_ is the answer, in a confident way, tends | to get results. ;) | | I've also learned to ask fairly detailed, well-researched | questions, from StackOverflow. | | They bitch at you, if you ask a "stupid" question (but usually | answer it, anyway), but I have found, if I ask a detailed, | well-researched question, crickets chirp. | | I have basically given up on SO for anything useful, these | days. I'm sad, because it used to be a great place to learn. | | If I ask the kinds of questions they'll answer, I get sneered | at. If I ask the kinds of questions they _say_ they want, I get | ignored. | svnpenn wrote: | > If I ask the kinds of questions they'll answer, I get | sneered at. If I ask the kinds of questions they say they | want, I get ignored. | | Damn that is true. I actually have 94,000 rep on Stack | Overflow, but I got banned for no reason. I appealed 9 times | with no response, and finally they said someone was upvoting | my stuff as a scam. I tried to cooperate to clear my name, | but they are just ignoring me now for weeks. | chihuahua wrote: | I found that when I'm about to ask someone a question, in the | process of writing down all the details of what I want to do, | what I've tried, what happened, which alternatives I've tried, | and why it can't possibly be the fault of my own code, at least | half the time I find the answer on my own. | | So these days, I start writing down all this stuff as I'm | exploring the problem, and much of the time it helps discover the | solution and I don't need to send the message. | SilasX wrote: | Great stuff. One related hack I have for oral communication: if | you mishear/aren't sure about part of what someone said, repeat | back everything you _did_ hear as part of your question, so they | only have to repeat that one part. (Bonus: It validates that you | were listening!) | | Examples: | | "We saw <garbled> and so we left." | | 'You left because you saw what?' | | "I collect samples with <garbled> at the beach." | | 'You used what to collect samples at the beach?' | | Otherwise, they will repeat the whole thing, or rephrase it, or | even worse, start by appending detail that assumes you heard the | original part correctly. | elicash wrote: | Person 1 wanted to have a video call and was using messaging as a | way to facilitate that call. | | For situations where it's a complicated problem, this can be | reasonable. That said, there's little excuse for "isn't working" | or being vague about the error message. | coldblues wrote: | https://dontasktoask.com/ | | https://nohello.net/en/ | lxe wrote: | I don't care if you say hello as long as you follow up with a | detailed question. What grinds my gears is developers not linking | to tickets or error logs, or not pasting the error messages into | the question. I'm not going to play detective and investigate | your failing CI logs -- provide me with the exact line where the | error occurred. | avg_dev wrote: | I've been working from home for most of the past 15 years, and | I've worked at some companies that had remote-first development | teams and some where development started in-the-office and then | branched off into remote. I believe in the former there was more | understanding of: | | 1. Providing useful context up-front | | 2. No "hello" message sent while waiting for further input to be | typed in | | 3. More emphasis on written communication | | 4. Less of a need to jump on a video conference | | 5. Use of headsets for video conferences | | In some of the latter cases, the "office-first teams" still had | management working out of the office and I believe that remote | employees are kind of second-class citizens in these cases, and I | found it less enjoyable and less productive to be a remote dev in | that sort of situation. | | I believe also that headsets for video conferences allows for | full-duplex conversations where one or more people can talk at | once and be heard, but I've not seen anybody else talk about this | and may be wrong. | guelo wrote: | > headsets for video conferences allows for full-duplex | conversations | | That makes since most video conferencing services have complex | audio feedback canceling algorithms. If the mic can't hear the | speakers then there is no feedback to cancel. | silisili wrote: | > In some of the latter cases, the "office-first teams" still | had management working out of the office and I believe that | remote employees are kind of second-class citizens in these | cases | | 100% agreed. For a long time, I think I was the only remote | employee, and always felt forgotten unless I bothered people. | | Even after it became more balanced after COVID, it became clear | to me that in office people were given far preferential | treatment. Ultimately, it's that that caused me to leave for a | remote first company. | overthemoon wrote: | Nothing makes me more fucking annoyed than the singular "hey". I | will always, always ignore it. If it's important, fill in more | detail, we're not on a phone call. | macintux wrote: | I'd like to come up with a series of interview questions to | evaluate whether someone can interpret error messages and ask | reasonable questions regarding them. | | Too many technicians seem to freeze up as soon as they seem an | error message. | mdaniel wrote: | And the opposite bank of questions: | | > given this code, how would you return errors to an internal | audience? How would you change the errors if you knew the error | was going to be presented to the end user? | | Because for sure crafting actionable errors is a life-skill | | I want to rage close PRs that contain throw | new Exception("cannot query") | zasdffaa wrote: | I try to write good questions for stackoverflow (which I'm | certainly not dissing, I think it;s a great resource used | properly) and I usually miss something out and have to throw in | an edit. | | Fair enough, but it amazes me the number of people who pile in, | clearly without reading what I wrote, seemingly unable to | readjust when I point out "no, that's not what asked" | | A while back I asked a question. Let's say it was about | destructors (it wasn't but for example). People started answering | about constructors. Repeatedly. One of the SO editors came in and | pointed out that there was plenty about constructors on SO | already so he was closing the question. I rather lost it at that | point, spelt out DEE-STRUCT-ORRS I was asking about. He wiped all | the comments (his own included), reopened the question and today | it remains unanswered. | | That was an extreme case of this phenomenon but stone the bladdy | crows, it's not rare. | BlargMcLarg wrote: | It's a little ironic how the field which continuously talks about | the importance of communication doesn't understand the basics of | communication, and how synchronous communication made them a | luxury. | | Being cooperative, specific and transparent is really all you | need to start with. Even synchronous communication benefits from | this. | werdnapk wrote: | I find when I ask questions in public forums and provide a lot of | detail about the issue, it seems to get ignored because there's | too much information compared to other people who ask more basic | questions that require follow up questions. | | Also with a detailed message, people don't seem to read (or | grasp) the entire thing and get fixated on parts that aren't the | issue or ask questions that I already answered in my initial | question. | | I guess you need to know your audience and adjust your question | style based on that. | EvanAnderson wrote: | What's daunting is when you don't know the audience-- like | opening a new tech support case. | | I could write a thorough narrative with a good description of | my environment and details of all the things I tried to do. | Then I get dismissed by a technician who says (this actually | happened): "Your issue is to complicated to be solved over | email. We need to have a call." The call lasted less than 5 | minutes. It consisted of me reading my email (verbatim, because | I'm an asshole and took being dismissed personally), the | technician telling me what I needed to do, and me doing it. | | I could go with the whole "quick question" route and spend more | time than it would take to write having a back-and-forth with a | technician who can't let me speak and keeps interrupting with | suggestions (for things I've already tried or aren't | applicable), repeated questions( because they aren't keeping | written notes), or out-right confusion (because they have | preconceived ideas about my situation and haven't validated | them with questions). | | I find it easiest to just grind away on a problem myself, | reverse engineering, referring to source code, etc. Then I | don't have to feel bad or make someone else feel bad. I loathe | having to involve an unknown third-party. My confirmation bias | says that it'll usually be bad. | semireg wrote: | I've been looking for "how to ask questions the smart way" for | years! I kept googling the wrong title ... I love how thorough it | is, in the style of a Linux how-to or RFC. | | I'm a solo developer and receive maybe 10 emails a day from end | users. I can answer 90% of the questions with a few characters on | my phone via "text replacement" so if I type: lllic it'll | automatically insert https://label.live/faqs/licensing/can-i-use- | a-license-on-mor... | | You know, as an example... | | A few other favorites: | | Llty "Thank you for the email." Lllmk "Let me know if this | helps." | | I should really invest in Text Expander or similar. Although, | maybe ZenDesk will come out with some wild AI integration that | allows me to piece together a response based on my prior | responses. Surely that's coming. | gumby wrote: | Sharing what you've tried already helps in two ways. The | respondent can tell if you're barking up the wrong tree or not | and give a better, sometimes briefer answer. | | Second, the respondent can tell if you're really trying to fix | the problem and are stuck, or if you aren't bothering and are | instead simply asking. I,e, if you're worth helping. | bena wrote: | I like to ask "Do you have a problem or do you have a complaint?" | | A problem has three distinct parts: 1) What you tried. 2) What | you expected. 3) What you got instead. | | Anything else is just complaining and I don't deal with | complaints. | | Usually there's enough information in the triad to begin | troubleshooting. I will roughly know the steps to reproduce, what | that reproduction returns, and what the user thinks they should | have got. | | If I get told "Hey, the calculation is wrong." I'm going to check | the calculation. And if the math is solid, and passes all of the | cases I can send it, that's the information I will give back. | Usually while also asking why they think it is wrong. Sometimes, | the only thing that is wrong is user expectation. | hankchinaski wrote: | I see this often with very junior engineers. They just haggle | around before getting to the point. But something that rarely see | in more seasoned people. | sacrosancty wrote: | I help people with tech problem all the time and I don't like it | when they tell me what they tried in too much detail. It means I | have to read through it all and be sure I'm considering | everything they said even when the likely problem and solution is | already obvious. I'd rather they just say "I did this and then | that happened." and if my obvious answer is wrong, then we can | dig into the details. Perhaps that serves my interests more than | theirs, but if you're trying to help the tech support guy, then | why not? | jimkleiber wrote: | I've noticed how much I write tends to depend on how long I | think it will take to get a response. If I think it will be a | live chat, I'll say just a sentence or two. If I think it'll be | maybe a few hours to reply, maybe a paragraph or two. If a day | or more, then often multiple paragraphs. | | If it's a day or more, do you still prefer they share just a | little info or would you also prefer more info if a longer | response time? | sacrosancty wrote: | It's mostly over email with a day turnaround and I don't mind | it dragging on. But I worry the customer won't like that! | SilverBirch wrote: | Even ignoring the obvious "Users are idiots" chat, if you ever | show a problem to someone else "Oh it works now" is almost | always the answer. | jlokier wrote: | Heh. I'm known for fixing things that don't work. I do it by | looking over someone's shoulder while they show me. I don't | have to say anything, just agree to watch. Then I walk away, | all fixed. It's like magic. | sneak wrote: | The reason that so many people ask for calls is because they are | slow/bad at typing. Speaking is faster/easier for them because | they are not trained. | chihuahua wrote: | On the r/bread subreddit, I am greatly irritated by people who | post a picture of their failed bread along with the title "what | did I do wrong???" | | Please, tell us what you think is wrong with your bread, as well | as the details of the recipe you followed. Why are you expecting | us to be mind readers just so we can help you? | BarryMilo wrote: | Anyone else notice the corrected version is just the standard | format for an email? | karaterobot wrote: | My ideal interaction is more like: Teammate: | hey can we hop on a call real quick, I need some help | Me: yep, give me like 2 minutes and I'll send you a zoom link | | There is almost always value in seeing what happens right before | the problem, and I almost always have questions I want to ask | them about it, and it's _so much faster_ just to do it with | screensharing and voice. A lot of the time anyway. | KronisLV wrote: | > There is almost always value in seeing what happens right | before the problem, and I almost always have questions I want | to ask them about it, and it's so much faster just to do it | with screensharing and voice. | | This is a pretty good counterpoint to my site! I think that for | some, voice is just the preferred medium of communication and | that should also be taken into account when possible. | | Of course, I'd argue that a little bit of context of what the | problem is related to could still be helpful, not to have to | waste a bunch of time trying to find some Jira ticket that had | some relevant info from like 2 weeks back during the call. | | For others, text will probably reign supreme, though I also | enjoy things like huddles that Slack introduced, to make | informal "meetings" a bit more organic: | https://slack.com/help/articles/4402059015315-Use-huddles-in... | RoadieRoller wrote: | I always start the chat conversation in office with a simple "Hi" | or a "Hi, Do you have a minute?" This way, I am giving that | person a choice if | | 1) He/she is in a meeting, they have a choice - to or not to | reply | | 2) If their screen is shared, I am not disturbing the meeting | attendees making them read what I typed, and what comes in the | notification pop-up | | 3) Gives enough time for the other person to switch context | | 4) Ignore me for an indefinite amount of time and continue their | work | | If the other person responds, my second comment would be with | full details. | wnolens wrote: | I don't like this. You're demanding a sync interaction from | someone who is probably very busy. | | If you have a question, just ask it. If you want to have a 5, | 10, or 30 min, discussion, ask for that. | | I'd prefer a long form question with all the communication from | your side fully expressed, then I can ponder on it and | multiplex it between my dozen other things. | james_in_the_uk wrote: | As someone who receives lots of questions as a core part of | my job, often concurrently via multi async comms channels, my | biggest challenge is controlling cognitive load so I can be | efficient and effective. Having a spot of politeness in the | interaction, as the parent suggests, helps me meter the flow | of information in my direction. I much prefer it. Horses for | courses I guess. | ivank wrote: | Reducing the information content of a message, effectively | concealing the information that you already plan to send | after "Hi", isn't being polite to people with this | personality, it's frustrating. | james_in_the_uk wrote: | Agree with this. Perhaps it's my British sensibilities, but I | find it rude when people launch straight in. | jon-wood wrote: | I think there's a middle ground. "Hey, are you free to talk | about Project X?" is a perfectly valid entry to something | where you know an actual conversation will be needed. | Likewise "I'm having trouble with the frobinator, when I run | frob -x blah it gives me this error: XXX, are you able to | help?" if you just need an answer. | | Niceites are, well, nice. They help to make sure everyone | remembers we're all human beings rather than question | answering machines, but we are also talking to get a job | done. Unless you're actually a good friend of mine if you | drop me a message asking me how my weekend was, I know that | you're just lining up to ask me a question, but now I have to | do The Dance to work out what it's going to be about, whether | I have time for it, and if I'm even the right person to ask. | nql wrote: | I absolutely hate it when people send me a question that | doesn't have the question. Now I have to pull it out of them, | on their time. | grayclhn wrote: | Obligatory: https://www.nohello.com/ | | And as a blanket rule of thumb, don't send people chat messages | that you wouldn't want to see displayed to an arbitrary meeting | full of people. :) | chihuahua wrote: | Many people at $TECH_GIANT have www.nohello.com as their | Teams status message. I love it. | wizofaus wrote: | Strangely I've found at my current workplace no matter how much | time I put into preparing the initial message with detailed info, | screenshots etc., it just gets ignored and we end up doing a call | anyway. And to be fair it usually is quicker to resolve issues | with a live/screen-sharing session, but obviously it relies on | the other party's availability. | WastingMyTime89 wrote: | That's because talking to someone is always nicer than perusing | error message. Plus it's a nice break. I am always a bit | baffled by people who are full remote and want even less social | interaction like if it wasn't already hard enough to somewhat | get to know people when you never see them. | wizofaus wrote: | Actually I do agree with that, but...it's still annoying when | you think you've done the right thing by providing all the | information upfront and placing no expectation that you need | the problem solved immediately, just to have it ignored. | chihuahua wrote: | It depends on how many interruptions those people receive | during the day. If there's a question once or twice a day, | the call could be a pleasant break. If it happens every 15 | minutes, the person being interrupted may not be able to get | any work done at all. | | What I find baffling is that when someone is working from | home, they can answer a call any time. When someone is | working in the office, they have to find a meeting room | before getting on a call. And yet, the office is officially | declared to be more conducive to collaboration. When | Microsoft still had individual offices with walls and doors, | the open plan offices were called "more collaborative" which | is 100% incorrect. | jon-wood wrote: | I work remote, and also have anything up to a full eight | hours a day scheduled as meetings. Another video call really | isn't a break for me, and I'm not suffering from a lack of | social interaction at work. Throw an error message, nine | times out of ten I'll be able to point you in the right | direction after a quick glance at it, and by not insisting on | getting on a call to talk about it you also get to avoid an | exciting game of 20 questions about comparative availability | of meeting times. | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | I own a platform with several thousand unique monthly users | within the company where I work. | | In order to get to the point where you can raise a support | ticket, we gently usher people through a flow that asks them | whether they've checked our FAQs (that cover 90% of all tickets | raised) and then provide them with examples of the kind of | additional information that will help the support team to provide | quick and useful responses. | | Some ridiculously high proportion (half?) of tickets still come | out looking like "it doesn't work when I do X" with no attempt to | report what (if any) error was experienced or what parameters | were supplied or what indeed their expectation for "work" was or | whether this was "working" before etc. | | I'm sort of coming to the conclusion that for some fraction of | users, there is nothing that can be done to get them to think _at | all_ before raising a trouble ticket. Another theory: that for | some people, hitting a problem is an excuse to stop working | entirely and claim to be waiting on another team for support. | lhorie wrote: | > Another theory: that for some people, hitting a problem is an | excuse to stop working entirely | | What I do in these cases is link back to the docs in question | format, e.g. "have you tried [link to relevant docs page]". | Puts the ball back on their court and kinda puts them on the | spot for not doing due diligence without coming off too passive | aggressive. | | On occasion, I had to also explicitly spell out "please include | error messages, expected and actual behaviors, repro steps, | what have you tried, etc" as a response to a question in slack | chat. Some people just lack self-awareness. | pianoben wrote: | Oh my god I feel so _seen_ right now! | | I'm in a similar position, and it is an _incredible_ struggle | to convince people to raise their head up from their work and | think about the context in which they are doing that work. | | I've generally treated obnoxious bug reports as being _my_ | fault, in that the API or interface I 've shipped is not | sufficiently obvious. In that light, they're a good source of | insights on possible new features or design tweaks. All the | same, it's demoralizing as hell to see that onslaught of | laziness from your coworkers. | ok_dad wrote: | > Another theory: that for some people, hitting a problem is an | excuse to stop working entirely and claim to be waiting on | another team for support. | | Agree, but sometimes it isn't even the user's fault and they do | things like this out of desperation or frustration. | | Imagine working in a place where nothing works right, you | always have to search through shit documentation to find tiny | nuggets of wisdom, and everyone is always pushing to get more | done in less time. Then, if you sense a chance to have a short | break by throwing something over the wall to another team, you | might also choose to do that rather than work even harder to | try and find some missing answers for the questions you seek. | _puk wrote: | Don't forget actually putting the work in to understand an | issue, and then becoming the go to person for all problems | related to X as there's no chance support will solve it in | any reasonable timeframe. | ok_dad wrote: | Yup, the old "hey, X fixed it once, they can do it again" | combined with "fixing this permanently will cost too much | time" resulting in "X" having to repeatedly tape together | the paper airplane carrying the load of a 747. | codingdave wrote: | Supporting your customers is a different scenario than | interrupting co-workers. You want to make sure you have | frictionless communications within your team. But your | customers are already feeling friction if they feel they need | to contact you - don't make it worse for them. Just take their | call and fix their problem. | galdosdi wrote: | > Another theory: that for some people, hitting a problem is an | excuse to stop working entirely and claim to be waiting on | another team for support. | | You can move this one out of the theory column and into the | fact column. It is very real. :-) Not only is this common but I | once even had the misfortune to be in an environment that was | so high pressure and under-resourced that the only way to meet | ticket quotas was "by any means necessary" I learned this and a | bunch of other sketchy tricks to buy time there, such as the | reverse of this, which is when the support person asks a | question to the customer that is not actually relevant or they | already know the answer to, just to buy time till the ticket | queue is less overloaded. | tomcam wrote: | Neither of those strategies ever occurred to me. That is... | Not encouraging | Swizec wrote: | > Some ridiculously high proportion (half?) of tickets still | come out looking like "it doesn't work when I do X" with no | attempt to report what (if any) error was experienced or what | parameters were supplied or what indeed their expectation for | "work" was or whether this was "working" before etc | | As a user I have given up on providing this info. Any time I | start a support conversation with a detailed analysis of what's | breaking, what I've tried, and even which resources I looked up | ... | | ... the first question is always "Have you tried this obvious | thing you just said you've already tried?" | soco wrote: | I wonder if some support depts (I look at you Tumblr) have | this first response automated. MLOps if you want to use a | fancy name, but basically a dumb canned answer based on the | keyword(s) in your ticket title. | Macha wrote: | Almost certainly. | | Some of them (iirc Logitech is one), surface the automated | answers and make you click through that you've tried them | before letting you contact an agent. I imagine others have | this done but don't make it as obvious to the user. | hirundo wrote: | > As a user I have given up on providing this info. Any time | I start a support conversation with a detailed analysis of | what's breaking, what I've tried, and even which resources I | looked up ... | | I love tickets like that, they are so rare and make a | resolution so much easier. So I try to compliment them | without gushing too much. | | And then, yeah, I sometimes still want to confirm that | they've tried turning it off and on again. I'm that stupid, | so it doesn't feel insulting to think that they might be too. | onion2k wrote: | _I 'm sort of coming to the conclusion that for some fraction | of users, there is nothing that can be done to get them to | think at all before raising a trouble ticket._ | | I think this is correct, but I also think it's fine. Users | shouldn't have to think about _your_ job. They have their own | jobs to fill their time. Implement systems that capture and | trace errors, that provide an audit trail of user actions prior | to an error event, and capture the state of the system when | something goes wrong (or when they hit the help button). Don 't | rely on users to have to learn how to describe an error in a | meaningful way in order to make your job easier. That's not | their job. | pc86 wrote: | I agree with you if it's a customer reaching out to a company | whose product they use, or service they've purchased, etc. | | But if you're using internal company support, it is by | definition your job. You should be expected to put in the | minimal effort of reading through the "What to do when X | doesn't work" documentation when your ticket subject is "X | doesn't work" and the body is "help" | _gabe_ wrote: | > Another theory: that for some people, hitting a problem is an | excuse to stop working entirely and claim to be waiting on | another team for support. | | I would like for this to be the case, unfortunately I've run | into this same thing in many open source projects where it's | random users that don't need excuses. I suppose an alternate | theory for open source tickets like this is: users who are | trying to buff up their github activity regardless of what that | activity is. | codegeek wrote: | Some customers just don't like to do their homework and want | you to do everything for them. When we get a ticket like this | at our company, we have some "Saved/canned replies" to resend | which basically asks them for things like "screenshot, error | message text etc etc" and only then we even jump in further | with any follow ups. | | My favorite is when there is no info but they expect us to | resolve the issue asap. :). | _dain_ wrote: | On the other hand: please don't make it an odyssey just to | email you with a problem. I find it so disrespectful when I | have to jump through a million hoops to confirm that _yes, | really,_ my problem isn 't solved by the FAQs, it's something | that you haven't thought of. | | One particular blind spot that I've come up against again and | again is on websites that aren't really for tech, they're for | selling some product or service. In their ontology, customer | problems are only ever to do with things like accounts or | payments or deliveries, never technical aspects of the site | itself. In the designers' minds, all their forms work | flawlessly, all information presented to the user is | consistent, all links work, etc. When any of this fails, they | make it hard to report. Things like: dropdown menus for "what | is your problem" that don't have an "other" option for anything | not listed. | | Remember that there are always unknown unknowns that need an | escape hatch. | yccs27 wrote: | As a lot of other comments here indicate, having to confirm | multiple times it's _really_ not in the FAQs is not out of | disrespect, it 's out of necessity for all the people asking | the same question again and again. When I encounter that I | check the help pages one more time, and just go through the | motions to get to the real support. | | On the other hand, it does bother me when there is just no | way to escalate from tier-one support. Some customer service | person sends you a canned reply, you respond that the problem | persists and you already know there's a technical issue with | xyz, and after a few cycles they just go quiet or say "sorry | can't help you". After investing time to get this far, that's | incredibly infuriating. | | I've also encountered your issue with "other problems", and | how much it matters really depends on how easy it is to get | beyond the initial support stage to someone who really | listens/reads your messages. | frozencell wrote: | > some people, hitting a problem is an excuse to stop working | entirely and claim to be waiting on another team for support. | | Maybe they just write to think :) | swatcoder wrote: | Another theory: we spend most of our lives interacting with | people and trading care and attention. | | Maybe some people don't have a natural instinct to pore over | text looking for a case study that sort of might fit their | troubled experience. | | Automatic funneling through FAQ's and documentation may be the | only way for a company to service it's 100M users, but | necessity doesn't mean it's a good fit for the users or that | there's something wrong with the users who don't take to it | well. | ep103 wrote: | Agreed. | | If I am looking at a company FAQ about how to open a ticket, | then the emotional interaction here is that the company is | putting in not only 0 effort, they are asking me to put in | more additional emotional labor to figure out how to get | _them_ to address the problem that is causing _me_ harm. | | To then ask the user to do yet more labor to fill out a | _good_ ticket for the company just adds insult to injury at | that point, so it should be no surprise so many tickets have | nothing worthwhile mentioned. At that point I'm frustrated, | have been given the cold shoulder by your company, and have | no desire to do your !@#%$ job for you, to help you fix your | software, that should have been working already..... | | I understand that a company might not be able to dedicate a | human phone call for every ticket, but I guarantee if they | did so, the mere fact that the company would be putting in | emotional labor on their end to address the harm their 'bug' | has done so far, would cut the number of empty raised issues | down massively. | | In lieu of doing a phone call for every ticket, perhaps try | to figure out ways to interact with your customers when they | have a problem, that isn't as emotionally barren and uncaring | as an FAQ page and forced work to submit a ticket. | bee_rider wrote: | While it is annoying I can definitely see why _some_ | companies operate this way. I mean, if an individual | customer is a large recurring revenue stream, then they | should be strongly incentivized to keep them around. | | For the googles and amazons out there, they have enough | customers who don't require manual service that they can | afford to just let go of any customers who do. | | Of course most companies are somewhere between "little shop | that needs your money" and "google." | sokoloff wrote: | If customers were, on average, willing to pay enough to | companies to staff an employee per 100 customers (or | whatever the ratio is to allow prompt, individual service | to issues), I think you'd see some companies doing that. | | That's more or less how AWS support works when you have a | large enough account with them. I don't _directly_ see the | bill for the team who works mostly on my account, but I do | know that I'm paying for them (and am happy with that | arrangement). | | A lot of customers (users?) with low or zero spend level | want personalized hand-holding. I'm not surprised that they | often end up disappointed. | Spooky23 wrote: | Absolutely, it's a form of goldbricking. | | I ran a service desk for a bit. 70% of tickets are password | resets, and 95% of those resets can be done online. We | deliberately put password calls in a flow that required a 25 | minute minimum wait time, which actually increased the number | of calls from some cohorts of users. | | We reduced the call count by a significant margin by requiring | remote users to report to the office if they needed a password | reset first thing in the morning, after discovering that cohort | was like 5x more likely to call, and most likely to call before | 10am. | breischl wrote: | Some people cannot be bothered to (or are incapable of) finding | information unless it is spoon-fed to them at the exact time | and rate they require. I think this might be the valid use case | for support chatbots, even though I personally despise them. | | Ex: I was selling an item on Facebook Marketplace. The price of | the item is in the item header, and in the item description. | Multiple people started a chat with me - opening a chat window | that has the price _again_ in the chat header - to ask me what | it costs. I don 't know what you do about that other than have | a bot spoon-feed them that information. | mod wrote: | > I don't know what you do about that | | I refuse to answer them and wait for the next customer. I'd | rather wait and sell the item passively (or not at all) than | deal with answering questions for people who mostly aren't | going to buy the item anyway. | fn-mote wrote: | > Some ridiculously high proportion (half?) of tickets still | come out looking like "it doesn't work when I do X" [...] | | Do you get support for just closing these tickets as "does not | contain enough detail to be actionable"? | | Or do you have to deal with them anyway? | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | For the most part, they get directed back to the user with a | link to our "helpful guide to writing a good problem report" | and put into a "pending user response" state. If the users | don't update the ticket within 5 days, the ticket will go | self-resolve. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | I think a big problem is discovery. I search google and it | shows me reddit or stack overflow and I have my answer. In | larger orgs there is no one stop search for all company | knowledge or if there is its painful and returns thousands of | useless items. | Aperocky wrote: | This is why you have a bot to comment and reinforce the same | language in the ticket if information are not explicitly | provided. | fezfight wrote: | Having had the displeasure of dealing with several large | oligopolies, I have been trained to ignore FAQ | funnels/forums/chat windows/phone menus. They seemed to be | designed to frustrate the user into giving up. | sacrosancty wrote: | It can be easy to think that since your problem seemingly | happened so easily, surely it must already be well-known and | you just need to identify the problem to the support staff so | they can give you their already-known answer. I've fallen into | this trap myself sometimes. Also, sometimes it's true. I get | support emails where I see the subject line and know | immediately what's wrong. | | Another thing is people are trained to ignore the content of | error messages, probably because usually they're totally | useless or meaningless. I used to teach computers at school and | kids would demonstrate the problem they're having but when the | error message popped up, they're reflexively close it. I'd have | to get them to start again so we can read the message. Error | messages really are stupid. If you try to copy photos from an | Iphone to a Windows, it can fail with either "A device attached | to the system is not functioning.", "The device is | unreachable.", "Can't read from the source file or disk", or | "The requested value cannot be determined.". What the hell is | the difference between them? What does the last one even mean? | EvanAnderson wrote: | My favorite is the "Unexpected error". You know, because all | the other ones are "expected". | ryandrake wrote: | My favorite lately is "Something went wrong". Thank you, | error message writer! How is this even a remotely | acceptable error description? You might as well just crash. | 9dev wrote: | Weeeelp... I See both sides of this. There's some things | you anticipate to go wrong, like a disk being out of space, | or an API to not respond. Those are the type of things you | can (and should strive to!) provide meaningful error | messages for. | | But then, there's also that class of things that fail in | exciting and unexpected ways: a bit randomly flipping in | memory, a cable detached in an untimely moment, a missing | system library that was there when the program started... | you cannot enumerate all things that may fail unexpectedly, | hence the only viable solution is to have a special case | for those - ,,Unexpected error" doesn't sound wrong from | that perspective. | | Still, it's completely useless to the human in front of the | machine, so there's that. | [deleted] | SkyPuncher wrote: | If I've hit the point where I'm deciding to contact your | support channel, I have absolutely zero interest in looking | through any other documentation. Anything that's preventing me | from contacting a human is a waste of time. | | At the point of contacting support, I've probably already done | my research and have come to the conclusion: | | * I don't know how to explain my issue. I want a human that | might be able to make the connection for me. | | * I've already searched your docs. They're either too | confusing, don't answer my question, or lack clarity in a | critical detail. | | * I haven't searched your docs because I suspect it's a glitch | (like downtime) or bug (like clearly bad UI) | | * I haven't searched your docs because, I don't care. I'm doing | a courtesy of informing you of a problem, but I don't expect | you to fix it. | | * I'm a potential customer. I want to understand how your team | will actually deal with me if I have issue. Good documentation | is great, but useless if you don't have a human to support | weird edge-cases. | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | > _At the point of contacting support, I 've probably already | done my research_ | | ... then you're already not part of the problem. | renewiltord wrote: | Well, extra-large FAQs run into the access/completeness trade- | off. A 200 page manual is a poor substitute for targeted help. | But it's true that StackOverflow and FAQs are fantastic | resources. | | Ultimately, though, perfect reprexes move you nowhere in the | queue since no one triages based on issue report quality beyond | a bare threshold. | EntropyIsAHoax wrote: | I work on the Platform team at my company, and so we do a lot of | internal tech support. It's a daily struggle to get people to ask | good questions, provide details, provide links when possible, | etc... | | Sometimes it's really hard not to get incredibly frustrated with | it. The questions can be as vague as "hey we're having trouble | authenticating to the artifactory, how do we fix it?" A few | people really shine in explaining themselves clearly, giving the | context, copy-pasting the error message, etc, and I truly | treasure those people. The proper context can really turn an hour | of debugging into 5 minutes debugging | jon-wood wrote: | I see way too many questions in the Slack channels for teams | that manage common services at work which are just "Is there a | problem with [service]?" | | Clearly there is, at least from your perspective, otherwise you | wouldn't be asking. Come out with it and state what the issue | you're seeing so someone can either tell you it's known and | point you at the ticket tracking an open incident, or do what | needs to be done to resolve your issue. | thenerdhead wrote: | I am more than willing to help if someone has shown the due | diligence or curiosity. | | Otherwise these asks are nothing more than asking for attention, | which isn't just given away freely. | | That doesn't make someone an asshole, this makes someone who | values their time. | | "A problem well-articulated is a problem half solved." | | -Charles Kettering | | https://jondouglas.dev/problems-vs-solutions/ | | Aside: If direct messages and email doesn't scale for you, try | doing an office hours type deal. | nomel wrote: | I pushed all of my support to an issue tracker, at work. The | only requirement is to put a basic description of what's going | on, the version that they're using, and include the error text, | in full. | | This immediately cut the time I spent, with support, by half. | Some people realized the solution its almost always in the | error text. Others spend _hours_ trying to figure out the | problem themselves, just to avoid submitting a ticket. People | are strange. | thenerdhead wrote: | I've been there. I don't like barriers personally, but I do | understand they can deter people to the point of the problem | solving itself or at least the urgency of the problem. | | People will go through hell and back to not fill out a quick | form for help. | valenterry wrote: | I thought the right way to get answers quickly is to ask them and | post a wrong answer (under a different name) which will then | cause people to correct you quickly :^) | WastingMyTime89 wrote: | I am going to strongly dissent on that one. | | I much prefer the first situation where someone says hi and that | leads to a discussion on their issue to the second one. All the | things the article asks for will come forwards in the discussion | anyway and ninety percents of the time the people asking for help | have a different problem than the one they thought they had | anyway. | | I am not a robot. I don't want to be treated like one. | EvanAnderson wrote: | Different people have a different "style" for this. I prefer to | work people whose style is similar to mine. I think most people | are the same way. That's all this comes down to, sadly. There's | no formula to that will ever solve this mismatch. | | Be tolerant of others and gently suggest they can help | themselves, in the future, by helping you. Be thankful for the | times you get to work with people who share a common style with | you. | KronisLV wrote: | Working remotely day to day, I've seen some patterns of | communication that feel like they could be slightly better for | this mode of work. | | Personally, doing calls with screen sharing when they could have | been replaced by a screenshot or a code snippet alongside a text | message feels like not the most efficient way to do things. Much | like the "this meeting could have been an e-mail joke". | | And yet, most of the sites that out there that encapsulate some | of these ideas feel a bit emotionally charged: | | https://nohello.net/en/ has a facepalm as a reaction to the | behavior (though the design is great) | | https://nohello.club/ calls pleasantries "useless", even if the | logo is cool | | https://no-hello.com/ seems to be meant for sending to someone in | particular | | So I went ahead and made my own little page that attempts to | offer similar suggestions in a slightly more boring manner. Maybe | some day I'll get a proper domain for it. | | Overall, asynchronous communication just feels like one of those | things where you can improve how well it works with minimal | effort. | burnished wrote: | The pleasantries description feels out of alignment with the | practice outline as an example. The good message still starts | with 'hello', it just doesn't treat it as a statement that | requires individual acknowledgement. Which is great, that | practice is great, but I think the framing could use some work. | | But it also has a special badge so that can communicate to | other people that you bundle polite greetings in with the | payload of the message, which I think is weird, and is probably | a clue that the author and I don't share a cultural context | here. | tpolm wrote: | http://aka.ms/nohello | KronisLV wrote: | That is an even better link that I missed, thanks! | | I do think that a lot of these sites date all the way back to | 2013, to a blog post that was referenced in one of them: | https://www.nohello.com/2013/01/please-dont-say-just- | hello-i... | | I guess it's actually very much like that xkcd about | standards: https://xkcd.com/927/ | i_like_apis wrote: | "Don't ask to ask" is also relevant for chatrooms: | https://sol.gfxile.net/dontask.html | sam_lowry_ wrote: | No one said it better than Robert Sheckley in Ask a Foolish | Question: | | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33854 | bananamerica wrote: | It is regretable that a lot people takes these kinds of | "questions manuals" as an incentive or an excuse to feel | justified for being a total asshole. | sacrosancty wrote: | Yep. In general, advice on how to treat people better is often | used as an excuse to be an asshole to people who aren't | following it. Which is kind of ironic, really. | | A case I personally encountered was somebody who wanted to have | better relationships with people and read the book "How To Win | Friends And Influence People". Unfortunately, that book is just | full of advice on how to make _others_ feel good about | themselves, which wasn 't their aim, and it really backfired | into blaming others for not following the book's advice. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-31 23:00 UTC)