Musings from technical support, part of an intermittent series: Empathy

[azurelunatic]

When the person in front of you is in distress caused by an intentional feature, this is not actually the time to dig in and fight to justify why the feature is necessary. Not as your first reaction. Your first reaction should be, in the name of your common humanity, "holy shit, the situation you are in sucks and I am sorry." Not the "sorry" of "it's my fault or the fault of the larger entity I represent", necessarily, but the "sorry" of "we are fellow sentient beings, and the distress of one of my kin is in some way my distress, no matter how small". This distress is present and real.

You may believe wholeheartedly in the necessity of the feature and the decision process that led to it, but this is not the time to get on board that train. Yes, even if you were the person responsible for implementing the decision or whatever. This moment is not about your self-image and need to be validated and right, this moment is about somebody having a really shitty corner of their day.

Even if whatever portion of your good and/or service that your companion is cursing is necessary (sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, and discreetly checking up on whether it could be done a better way is often a valid life choice) this doesn't mean that it's an objectively good thing.

Sometimes the best choice for the health of the product as a whole is in fact a choice between the least bad of several crappy options. The fact that someone is right now distressed by it, and they're not actually a spammer or other bad guy that the feature was intended to foil, means that this was less than ideal. Even if there's legitimately nothing better that could be done.

Being the person who observes someone's sobbing meltdown over not being able to make something work, and then saying "But the fact that this is happening is actually a good thing" doesn't make you a champion for whatever product or service you're shilling. It makes you an asshole. Break out the goddamn empathy.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Also power dynamics stuff.

As a person affiliated with whatever thing, you may have more power to petition for change/more knowledge about stuff, than the person in front of you. You probably have more contacts who could effect change.

Sending the message "We could change the thing that is making you miserable if we felt like it but we won't" is a form of asserting your power over that person, even when the "won't" is "really effectively can't because of reasons". This is doing the wrong thing with the power dynamic.

If you, a handmaiden or whatever for the organization, feel that the distressed customer shaped person in front of you has the potential to, by being upset in public, change a policy/technology that exists for a serious reason and make things *worse* within your organization? If the people steering the tugboat are that out of contact with the reality of running the thing? Then you have more problems than I want to shake a broken blue pencil at.

[pauamma]

Interesting. It seems to me that a lot of what you say hinges on the distinction (in the discourse universe of a perhaps-intact-then blue pencil provider) between "sorry" and "apology".

[princessofgeeks]

THANK YOU

[cleverthylacine]

And that is 100% of the reason why I had so many fights with Abe and one of the other LJ people who kept telling me that I needed to be grateful for something I had to log into over 100 journals and fix.

[azurelunatic]

Amazingly, while you vs. Abe was one of the incidents I thought about, it was not the main one.

[cleverthylacine]

Well I assumed it was something a lot more recent than that, probably related to /redacted for your protection.

[azurelunatic]

It was in fact pure coincidence that I was present for the unrelated train wreck.

[cleverthylacine]

Wow, LOL.

[siderea]

A-fucking-men.

I actually had a fermenting rant on tap about this, and you said it much better (for one thing, calmer) than I could heretofore manage.

P.S. Can I point people here? Hell, can I repost it with credit, with further illustrative commentary?

[azurelunatic]

Oh, yes.

[silveradept]

Generally, if the item causes distress, even if the feature is functioning as it should, the feature is mal-functioning.

Or, I suppose: keep in mind that support has multiple meanings, and doing your work well means being able to do all of those meanings in the right order.

[mmegaera]

And a "feature" of Thunderbird is why I cannot use it, in spite of the fact that everyone I know thinks it's manna from heaven. Extremely frustrating.

No, this is not a disguised request for help with T'bird. I will react in a violently negative manner if it is perceived as such [wry g]. It's just a comment.

[azurelunatic]

You can actually add a person to your list who doesn't think so! I tried it, and while I didn't find it unusable as you did, I just didn't really take a shine to it.

[mmegaera]

Oh, I'd have been fine with it if it had actually, you know, worked properly. But so far you and I are the only two people for whom T'bird isn't the be-all, end-all of email clients [wry g].

[jecook]

THIS. Oh gods, YES THIS VERY VERY MUCH.

You've managed to describe the reason why I work as an administrator and as a general tech monkey, despite the burnout and other negatives that come with that position.

[ghoti]

.... <3