Service people: Answer the NEXT question, too

Support people of all kinds (tech, customer, etc) are often eager to move on to the next item in their queue. With ratios of one tech person to a hundred employees being commonplace, it’s not unusual for a support person have a backlog of items. 

As a result, the moment they’re done they usually write a very short reply to the original requestor, usually as terse as “this is done.” If you’re the support person, it’s tempting to mark the item as “done”, close out the ticket, finish your queue and go home to rest.

Think about the person receiving your answer. What are they likely to do? If you’re able to predict what their next question might be, try answering it in advance. You’ll save yourself an email, new ticket, reply, new email with a “thank you”, an archiving/delete of that message, and a bunch of time.

Here are common responses tech support people give, without anticipating the next question the customer is likely to be thinking:

• “Have you tried restarting it?”

• “It works on my end.”

• “I can't reproduce the issue.”

• “Try clearing your cache.”

• “Make sure everything is up to date.”

• “It's probably a network issue.”

• “Have you checked your internet connection?”

• “Try uninstalling and reinstalling it.”

• “That's not supported.”

• “It's a known issue.”

• “We're waiting on the vendor.”

• “That's just how the software works.”

• “It must be something on your end.”

• “Try resetting your password.”

• “We haven't had any other reports of this.”

• “It should be working now.”

• “The logs don't show anything.”

• “We'll keep an eye on it.”

• “Let us know if it happens again.”

• “The ticket has been resolved.”

• “You'll need to contact the manufacturer.”

• “That's outside our scope.”

• “We applied a fix.” (Without explaining what changed.)

• “Everything looks normal.” 

• “It's an intermittent issue.”

Here are some alternatives that look ahead rather than just at what's directly in front of you: 

• Anticipating recurrence: “This is likely to happen again. When it does, here's what to look for and what we should do next.”

• Explaining root cause: “We've resolved the immediate issue, but I'd like to understand why it happened so we can prevent it.”

• Looking ahead: “Everything is working now, but there's another potential issue I noticed that we should address.”

• Preventing future problems: “While we're fixing this, let's make sure the same issue won't affect your other devices.”

• Providing context: “Here's what went wrong, why it happened, and what we've done to reduce the likelihood of it happening again.”

• Taking ownership: “I'll follow up tomorrow to make sure the problem hasn't returned rather than waiting for you to contact us.”

• Identifying patterns: “This is the third time we've seen this issue. Rather than fixing it again, let's investigate what's causing it.”

• Offering alternatives: “This workaround will get you running today, but there's a more permanent solution I'd recommend.”

• Setting expectations: “The fix should hold, but if you notice these symptoms again, here's what they mean and what to do.”

• Thinking beyond the ticket: “We fixed the problem on your computer, but I'd like to check whether anyone else in your organization is affected.”

• Educating the user: “If this happens again, there's a simple way you can get back to work without waiting for support.”

• Considering business impact: “You're operational again, but let's make sure this didn't interrupt any automated processes or scheduled tasks.”

• Recognizing underlying risk: “This may be an early warning sign of a larger problem. I'd recommend checking a few related things before we close this out.”

• Being transparent: “We haven't identified the exact cause yet. Here's what we've ruled out, what we suspect, and what we'll investigate if it happens again.”

• Going the extra mile: “While I was working on this, I noticed something else that could cause problems later. Would you like me to address that too?”

• Documenting for the future: “I've documented the symptoms, what we tested, and the resolution so that if this happens again, we can troubleshoot it much faster.”

• Confirming actual success: “The technical issue appears resolved, but can you confirm you're able to complete the task you were originally trying to accomplish?”

• Proactive monitoring: “Rather than waiting for another failure, let's see whether we can monitor this and catch it before it affects you.”

The underlying philosophy:

Don't just fix what's broken. Explain what happened, anticipate what comes next, and leave the client better prepared than before they called.