Don't ever believe a computer person when they tell you a computer issue will take X number of minutes or hours to fix. It always takes longer!
Computers these days can provide the user with a wealth of information in a short amount of time; including the ability to do almost anything except think for them selves. At the same time computers have become more and more complex, making fixing these computer issues a more difficult task.
This idea was re-emphasized to me one day this week when our internet provider came in during a lunch hour to do some maintenance and possibly update our internet connection. I returned to the office after lunch to discover that our internet connection was down and would not be up again until near the end of the day. What was scheduled to be quick maintenance turned out to be an entire afternoon of down time. I could not connect to clients and offer any of my services.
This issue was compounded by the fact that I was in the middle of doing an upgrade of one of my clients Accpac software and could therefore not connect to them in the afternoon to finish the planned upgrade. What's unfortunate in this situation is that the client had to endure more down time of their accounting software as I had to finish the upgrade the following day.
I have also been involved in the other side of the issue. I have told a client that it will take X number of minutes to fix something and it took me longer to resolve the problem.
So I guess what I am trying to say is this:
- I would hope that us as computer specialists, provide the customer with a realistic expectation on the amount of time it will take to fix the issue. We should always keep the customer informed of the issues as they are discovered and do our best to resolve the problem as quickly as possible. It's important that we keep in mind what the overall issue means to the customer.
- In the world today, people want stuff and they want it now. I would hope that us as customers will understand the complexity issues with computers. It is important to understand that diagnosing what the "real” issue is may take some time and solving the problem sometimes takes a bit of trial and error to see what will work. It's important that we keep a perspective of the computer specialist and what we have to deal with; while at the same time ensuring they understand what the issue means to you.
Irwin Easthope
Asyma Systems Ltd., Consultant |
