How to make a support request

Hello,

As we get bigger and bigger, as expected, we are getting more support requests. Most are fine.. "how do I do this".. and we can give you an answer. However, there are more and more people who don't realize that when they are making a request, they arn't actually giving us any information. For example:

"Help, my email isn't working!"

is a *bad* support request for the following reasons:

1) We have no clue what the problem is. The problem could be anything from a wrong password/username, to dns errors, to "your computer isn't on"...
2) we don't know what you are doing. If you give us all the data you are using, we can quickly try and duplicate the error with that data to more quickly determine the source of the problem.
3) we haven't a clue who you are. If you don't tell us the domain or ip of your server, there is no way that we'll be able to go to that server to fix it.

so general rules when making a support request:

1) provide a detailed description of the error thats being produced
2) provide everything that you are doing / trying to do. Include usernames, passwords, domains, ips, anything that is relevant to the problem.
3) tell us who you are and where you are. If you have a username, include it, if you have a domain, include it, if you have an ip, let us have it. Too much information never hurt anyone.

Following these basic guidlines will help us help you better

John

wow, John your funny.

Hehe, I've heard horror stories where a user was complaining that they couldn't send a fax. They were holding their page upto the computer screen and pressing fax.. "It won't go!"...

Or a lady who couldn't get her computer to turn on. The tech asked her to check if it was plugged in and she said she couldn't tell because the lights in the room were off. He told her to turn them on, but she replied she couldn't because they were experiencing a power failure

hehe

John

I used to be a techie for compaq, boy some people're really dumb.

"I can boot my computer!"
So what does it say when you press the on button, does it show anything at all?
"It says 'it's now safe to turn the computer off'"
Then try pressing the button on the big thing below your desk.
"thanks, it's working now"



Or try explaining where the arrow keys are if people regard everything right of the enter-key as off-keyboard.

it's right next to the enter key and about 3cm to the right and below
"I can't find it."

brilliant!

I know exactly what your getting at though John, experienced a few times myself

Chris

omg john i know what you are going thru i had a customeri had to explain 5 times how to update his site and finally i said i will show you thru msn assistances and he caught on what the update button was for

lol keep them coming