Surviving the IT Support field

Hello to everyone out there, I will attempt tell you, in this brief post, how to handle things, and/or generally try to survive in the IT Support field.

End-Users are the hardest part. That's for sure. They take their money, put them into your product, and are angry when something is not running perfectly, or in the worst case, not running at all.

1st: Always be friendly. It's hard, but the first two, or three, maybe 5... seconds are the base, it's key what happens in the interaction right after the entry point.

2nd: Try to set yourself in their situation, taking 1000€ $ or whatever, and then, that trash isn't working. That will set you up too be Honest and Genuine.

So, try to calm them down, say you are totally on their side (if the problem is not user based), and that, because you are being honest, and not acting, they will notice the difference, believe me.

3rd: When the user destroys their device by their own fault, then there's only one thing left... the battle. It happens mostly, but not all the time, that the user is honest to you, or himself. He or she, search for the reason everywhere but themselves. Never happens. You can't do anything, go through it. Be friendly and understanding (here you need to act), but that's all you can do.

4th: Something takes to long, to repair, or buy... Hard one too. If you want to keep the costumer satisfied, then tell him why the repair is doing longer than expected (HDD/SSD Test takes longer, replace parts delay e.g).

5th: The User/Customer who takes your time for technical advice from you, but doesn't buy anything, and does this over and over again. You know him. Solution: Try to hide, looking busy - as best as you can. Waste of time, 99% of the time.

Now, we are coming to inhouse Support

At first, understand, that you are supporting your own company. The People calling you, are only here to work, and your coworkers. So when something is not working it's mostly totally different to the private costumers, because its not (directly) their money that gets lost. So they are mostly calm.

The biggest disadvantage is that when something important doesn't work, their supervisor, is calling your supervisor, and that can get really .... like little street fighter sometimes. Someone remembers that game? I love it.

When something REALLY important thing/program isn't working, then everybody is calling you, and you should make this, and that, and answer the callings of course too. Everybody starts going crazy. The best is, you have 10 hands. But the realistic thing is, answer the calls, calm the users down via push messages, and relax.

You are first level (which is MUCH different in every company), that's now the show of the higher paid gods of databases, servers, infrastructure and so on. The same thing (lil bit worse) happens when a security accident occurs.

To come back to 1st, 2nd LVL. In every company its much different. Mostly you are 1st and 2nd LVL, maybe with a lil bit administrator/network tasks, or more. So, you are underpaid. mostly. But nobody, can take the expierience with so much different people you are working with, believe me. Everyone should go through this in IT (yes, especially you, UX researchers or designers). You are getting a much better understanding what the user wants to do and whats not working as they wish.

All in all - i never wish to skip this field. You are working with so much different people, IT Helpdesk is like a catch basin for people that can't be more mixed.Students from every possible areas, older people, young people, some from other complete other sectors (accounting, cashiers, or even people with a master title).

So... if you are in it. SURVIVE. And pull the much positive things out of it. you can use it in nearly every life/work sector.