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Actually its the plague of anyone in a support role, but since I’m a programmer I’ll disperse the insanity from my point of view (although much of what I’m telling you any support person will agree with)

As a programmer, I pride myself on the way I attack a web application. With the inception of Web 2.0 and AJAX there’s NO EXCUSE for a web page to not behave the way the client expects. No matter what they do, it should react in such a way to give them immediate satisfaction, that is our goal. If a user double-clicks on something, something should happen. If they enter a word in a box that is expecting a number, they should be told the proper thing to enter. Yes its a lot of work on our end, but just think of all the support calls you’ll avoid if you plan ahead and build it right. To alter a quote from Field of Dreams : If you build it right … they won’t call!!  … or so I thought.
Now, when they do call, I (selfishly) expect as much detail out of them as I give them when they do something stupid with my applications. Here’s a true story that is near and dear to my heart. Picture if you will an order form, say a purchase request form to be exact. People of all types of technical levels use this from from fellow programmers and IT folks to faculty and maintenance people. This was one particular application I laced with help, form validation, interactivity, tool tips, instructions etc.

For example, if they enter “three” in the quantity field, a message box pops up that says “Hey stupid, enter a number”. Well, not exactly, if you read the comments in the code, that’s what it says the error really says

“I’m sorry, You seem to have mistyped something on the form. Simply enter the quantity of the product you want using digits. Please don’t enter spaces, or any other special characters in this field.”

How can you mess this up? Not sure. My only hypothesis is that people don’t really read polite messages like this. They’re not used to it. They’re used to senseless messages from Microsoft that say something like :

An error has occurred a 0xdhf8a88aas7d7d7a8sd6as8d76ad8as6dqwetf3s8ad.
Please contact your administrator

And when they call us - we say - “huh? You didn’t actually type out the word three did you? That’s the only way that would pop up.” Then we hang up and quickly IM our co-workers and submit them for ID10T award.

What really happens when they call is what started this post. I attempt to debug the problem over the phone in a polite way, always giving them the benefit of the doubt. What did you type in the quantity box? … “3″ … ok, that shouldn’t be a problem. Can you try it again? … “It does the same thing” … Can you send me a screen shot? … “Sure” .. then I see it, “three” is entered in the quantity box. priceless.
Better yet is an email I received. Keep in mind this is the first contact about this problem, its not a follow-up.
This is a direct cut-n-paste from the email

>>> Xxxx Xxxxxx 6/2/2008 1:43 PM >>>

Hi Jon,

Can you please help Xxxxxxxx Xxxxxxx, ID: Xxxxxxxx, groupwise acct. Xxxxxx@xxxxxx.xxx

His mom called and said that they cannot get into see anything. They click on it but nothing happens. Can you help?

Thanks,

Xxxxx

Questions that come to mind :

• What are they trying to do
• Can not get into where?
• Can not click on what?
• Are there error messages
• Does “nothing” really happen when they click
• What does nothing mean - its different for different people (that’s a whole other blog post)
• Is it a link they’re clicking on? A form button ? An image?
• What are they expecting to happen?
• Why is mommy doing this - you’re in college for cripe sake?
• What help can I give since I have no idea what the heck you’re talking about? I want to, I really, really do, but come on.  Vanna can I buy a clue?

Before you get all defensive, I’m in-charge of many, many web applications so to be this vague - is no help at all. The best part is that after I emailed back for more information, I personally contact the mom via email and NEVER got a response back. nothing.

…maybe it was her email link?

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