Last Saturday (April 28, 2007) I gave a presentation at the Alberta Library Conference (ALC 2007) titled, “How to Get the Technical Support You Need.” I think many, if not most, people have had negative experiences trying to obtain technical support. Contacting a helpdesk leaves people feeling frustrated, ignored, or like they are getting the run-around. After dealing with tech support, people often feel as if they are expected to learn new technical skills or adopt a new language of three letter acronyms just to get a little help.

My presentation rejects the idea that people need to learn technical skills just to get a techie to help them. Instead I introduce management and communication skills that can be used to obtain better tech support.

The presentation is divided into three sections. First, I explain how helpdesks generally work following the Limoncelli (1999) 9-step/4-phase model. Second, I explain how to write a great support request that has enough information that tech support won’t need to ask a lot of question and give you the run-around. Last, I present some rules-of-thumb for effectively managing communication with tech support for those worst-case scenario problems.

All of the ideas are based on my nearly 15 years of experience in giving and getting support. The rules and advice are inspired by some of my worst-cases in getting support and I show how my advanced technical skills are not enough to allow me to get tech support: Managing communication is the key to getting good support.

The slides for my presentation can be downloaded and they contain commentary in the “notes” field that can be viewed or printed if you open the file in Powerpoint or OpenOffice. The presentation is covered by a Creative Commons license and can be redistributed and remixed as long as attribution is provided and you share-alike.