People don't read the mail list

[Michael Secord]

Exactly Evan. I didn't work for that long in tech support, but I did my 
2.5 years in it, plus being family/friend tech support for a long time. 
People don't read, and they don't listen, half the time even when you 
tell them something. You can only fix so much ignorance before it's not 
worth it. Though, I do agree that a link to the support page as "Common 
issues" in the help somewhere may be helpful.

-------- Original Message  --------
Subject: Re: People don't read the mail list
From: Evan Platt <evan at espphotography.com>
To: David Balazic <David.Balazic at hermes-softlab.com>
Date: 5/18/2010 12:55 PM

> After 10+ years of technical support, I can tell you it doesn't matter
> where you put it, people don't read it. Places I worked at that had
> IVR's would add a "If you are experiencing <such and such> problem,
> press 3 now." No one pressed 3. When someone then said "I'm getting this
> problem", we'd subtly ask "Did you hear the option on the phone menu for
> the solution? It would have saved you ten minutes on hold." and the
> answer would always be something like "Oh, I don't listen to those
> stupid things".
>
> I mean, the homepage even had "ICQ/AIM Login problems? Go to Advanced
> Options, and uncheck....." How many people STILL said "I went to
> www.pidgin.im and downloaded the latest version" (thereby basically
> admitting they read the message)?
>
> On 5/18/2010 2:26 AM, David Balazic wrote:
>> ... obviously (judging by the latest posts).
>> Neither do they check the archives.
>>
>> So how about serving them the relevant information instead?
>>
>> Currently it seems to be:
>> - flash issue on Windows
>> - theme changing
>> - maybe one or two more I forgot
>>
>>
>> This could be put on one (or more) of the following places:
>> - home page (it already has a similar purpose line or two, currently
>> saying:
>> Pidgin 2.7.0 is out with fixes for AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo! JAPAN login
>> and a bunch of new features! )
>>
>> - About window of pidgin, before the mail list address, somewhere
>> around "Helpful Resources"
>>
>> - same as above, but just a button or link , titled like "(Current)
>> Known issues (- read this first)"
>> linking to a page listing the few most common problems with the
>> current version (or the version
>> the user is actually running, even if just suggesting an upgrade to
>> latest)
>> This could also be a menu item in the Help menu.
>> Displayed as:
>> - regular web page, using the system browser
>> or maybe:
>> - displayed inline in the about dialog or a special "Known issues" dialog
>>
>> Hopefully this would reduce the amount of repeat questions ont the list.
>>
>> Regards,
>> David Balažic
>> Software Engineer
>>
>> HERMES SoftLab
>> a ComTrade company
>>
>> Litijska 51, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
>> fax +386 (0)1 58 65 270
>>
>> www.hermes-softlab.com
>> www.comtradegroup.com
>>
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>
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