Some users don’t know what they want and that often frustrates employees who are only trying to help!

This employee shares a similar experience. Check out the full story.

The user who doesn’t want help.

I am a software admin in an industry that you’d swear would be on the cutting edge. And if you think about military contractors who develop some of the tech we all eventually benefit from: you’d be right… well usually.

For those of us in the civilian sphere though; change comes slow, glacial even.

Watch how things escalate…

We recently transitioned from our 20 year-old primary platform to a new one. 6 months of blood, sweat, tears, and some new gray hairs for me.

But we got it done.

Many of my users though were married to the old system and not happy with the change.

Their objections were partly that it was different and partly that the new system no longer allowed our operation to behave like it was the wild west. Nothing brings out user animosity like justified permissions restrictions.

UH OH…

One in particular loves to send in support tickets that consist mostly of vague complaints with little directional hits thrown in.

After many back and forth emails (it is mandated that we never do his initial troubleshooting over the phone for… reasons), my team can usually translate his vague complaints into an actual task he’s struggling with.

At this point it is moved to a recorded call.

The conversation from here generally goes as follows:

That’s INSANE!

Support: if I understand you correctly you are attempting X task and it’s not happening as fast as you want.

User: Yes, it was so easy in the old system, why can’t it be like the old system.

Support: I understand, using a new system can be frustrating, but you know how unstable the old system was. You wouldn’t want us to continue using a system that puts (insert very VIP client here)’s data at risk because we didn’t upgrade? Let’s see what we can do for this issue.

Are you completing process X via steps D, E, F, G, H, & I.

He made sure he would direct the user correctly…

User: Yes… insert vague complaints again.

Support: While those steps do work, try step A, B, C, D, you should get the same results, but much faster.

User: That does work and it is faster. (tone should be as begrudging as possible)

Support: Wonderful, do you think that will help you complete task X more efficiently and reduce some of your frustration?

User: No. I don’t like steps A – D. I’m going to do it the other way.

User: hangs up.

That sounds frustrating…

We’ve been fully in the new system for 6 ish months now and this call happens so frequently, I had to ban facepalming because my team were giving themselves bruises and start to plot vengeance.

As of three weeks ago his tickets are now exclusively directed to myself and our IT manager because as soon as we respond the answer is usually “never mind” because he knows we won’t tolerate his pretend incompetence.

YIKES! That must have been annoying!

Why do some callers act like that?!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a customer complaint that led to them losing their VIP status.

Let’s find out how people on Reddit reacted to this one.

This user shares their experience of a similar issue.

This user suggests working with the tech writers.

This user knows what would have worked instead!

This user suggests some retraining to get better results.

This user knows involving the manager is always a best case scenario.

Somebody needs to recheck the system!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a barista whose keen eye uncovered a customer scheme for free coffee.