1) They have often not tried the simplest solution: you’d be surprised at how often tech support staff have their education rendered completely pointless by the number of times they’ve said “turn it off, and turn it on again.” It’s worth noting that whether your internet is slow when you need your email or want to play Party Poker, or your phone is lagging badly, the device may just need to start up fresh.

2) They will often assume that you are being condescending: this really isn’t true! A lot of people enjoy working in tech support and like helping others – this is proven by them continuing to hold down their jobs. It’s baffling to realize how often people think the advice in #1 is an insult, when it’s simply just a tried-and-tested first solution.

3) They do not realize a lot of tech support staff must follow a script: at least at first, anyway. The reason we’re given a troubleshooting script when working at a lower level is because it’s easier to narrow down the problem by asking a set of pre-defined questions that can be displayed as a solution flow-chart. Faster for us, faster for you. Stick with it, we’re not being pedantic and annoying.

4) They are very impatient: we understand as well as you do that a tech problem that takes a while to solve can be really frustrating – it prevents you from doing what you’d rather be doing, and it also prevents us from moving on to the next person. We do enjoy solving problems, however, so please bear in mind that we’re working as hard and fast as we can.

5) They assume we’re thick-skinned: you have to be, in this job, but it wouldn’t kill some people to be a little more gentle. Swearing and interrupting doesn’t help us do our jobs, and it means we can’t actually solve the problem, because you’re providing profanity rather than the specifics of the problem you’re having.

We tech support experts are gentle folk, and whatever field I find myself working in, I’m always grateful I had roles in tech support to teach me problem-solving and communications skills, as well as how to keep cool under extreme pressure. Next time someone solves your router issue for you, surprise them – say thank you!

Post from: Jake's Corner

Five Common Misconceptions of Tech Support

Logan is a fairly recent import to ND. He is the Assistant Editor of the Jamestown Sun. (Having been Editor in Chief of The Collegian back in college at JC – I can attest that can’t be an easy job!) I find his blog well written and enjoyable. Even if you aren’t from Jamestown – stop by and take a look. You might move here and like it too.

Actually just today he was kind enough to link to this blog in a post.  Thanks Logan!

Technorati Tags: Jamestown Sun, Logan Adams, North Dakota, Jamestown, olorinpc, blogging

Post from: Jake's Corner

New link to Jake’s Corner

The big announcement is that I accepted a position with a company called ePartner Solutions – leaving the internship with the company I had been looking at.  The company and position I was at, I just was not going to enjoy long term.  I had left my resume online, and had occasionally been speaking to recruiters about Axapta (Well now Dynamics AX) work.  (That is the software I had been supporting in Fargo at my contract job.  I had been out of town for a couple of days because the company had flown me down to New Mexico to interview.  (Fun and impressive enough on its own.)

I was just really impressed with the people at ePartner Solutions.  The position I have here is that of basically translating to Axapta support.  For now I will be working totally out of home, which will be nice because I will not have to be on the road full time, and I will get to spend more time with my soon-to-be wife.  (Jennie duh!)  ePartners has taken quite a bit of time talking about how to grow my career.  In theory I should be able to shift into a consultant based position later if I so choose to.  It is really nice to see a company care that much about an employees professional development.

Anyways – that brings me to Dallas this week.  That is where our corp office is located.  It just happened that this week was the quarterly New Hire Orientation along with the first ever full Axapta team meeting.  So I have been down here since Tuesday, but I fly back tomorrow after lunch.  It has been a very good trip down here.  I have gotten a chance to meet and network with a lot of the companies upper management, along with all of the Axapta Consultants I will be working and communicating with.  That is going to be invaluable in the next few months.  (I even got a chance to meet my UK counterpart and his director, allowing for even closer communication between everyone.)

All in all – I am really excited to be at this company.  The work is far more in line with what I enjoy doing, and it is always the people that make the place.  I look forward to keeping everyone posted on this new job.

Technorati Tags: Jake Barnard, Olorinpc, Jamestown, Axapta, Dynamics AX, Microsoft, ePartner Solutions, ePartners, Jennie, Consulting

Post from: Jake's Corner

Checking in from Dallas

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Post from: Jake's Corner

More website tweaks

This also means we get to move back to Jamestown, which is what Jennie and I would like anyways. We are checking out a house we might rent this weekend – so I have my fingers crossed that things will work out there.

The job I have had in Fargo has been a great experiance. Yet, Jennie and I fell in love with Jamestown. So between that and the advancement of my career in the Tech industry, it was basically a too good of a chance to turn down. Once in town I also will be able to work more on the SGB Tech company. That stalled a little bit, but once I am back in town I am hoping that I am able to revive that along with being more directly involved in the other company. (Distro of the Month LLP.)

Technorati Tags: Olorinpc, Jamestown, Valley City, Distro of the Month, Jake Barnard, SGB Tech, Eagle Creek

Post from: Jake's Corner

W00+ it is about to get exciting again!!!

Other than that… it has been a pretty slow morning. Work is business as usual, i.e. slow. I am however, still working on the business planning. Talked with a grant service place last night, but they wanted a lot of money up front. Something that I am not sure I would be willing to do even if I had the money. There are just too many scams these days.

Almost forgot – but on the bright side, the whole wedding thing took a great leap forward this weekend. We finally put all the small notations together and made a budget. Yeiks was that scary, but really as far as weddings go – not too horrible. Oh and we put the deposit down on the hall (and some for the food), so that is locked in. Then we also talked to one of the possible dj’s for the dance part. So all in all, it was a rather productive wedding weekend. ThatEdeGuy’s wife is the wedding planner, so I believe she was rather pleased as well haha.
I really don’t have anything else interesting at this point. So I will keep “working” and update with another post when I find something.

Technorati Tags: Wedding planning, Wedding, ThatEdeGuy, OlorinPC, Olorin, Jake, Jake Barnard, Jamestown, Website Design, Jennie, ChaCha, Logo Creation, Business Planning

Post from: Jake's Corner

Site changes and other random things…

Post from: Jake's Corner

Business Planning update

I have a great business idea. I am working with a couple of friends to get it all down on paper so we can present it to investors. In order to do this, a full business plan it turns out starts at like 20 pages. The information I haven’t quite figured out how to enter in yet though is the cash flow/revenue parts.

How does one go about guessing their income for a startup business? Yes it will be a brick and morter setup with an online twist, but how do you make projections reasonable? I know it will make money, otherwise I wouldn’t try, but I have to somehow show how much and how my investorys would make returns on their money.

Idea’s? The whole plan is still a work in progres… so I have time, but trying to figure out how I am going to do the more complicated parts is on the backburner.

-jake

Post from: Jake's Corner

Business Planning

While I have been posting plenty of tech stuff here, I have decided to keep this mostly as a personal blog space. Deciding that, a tech blog was in order. After discussing the idea with ThatEdeGuy, we (along with a friend of ours), are now publishing a tech blog entitled “SuperGeekBlog – All things Geeky.”

Having three editors will make it much easier to keep a variety of content blogged. (While also allowing for more updates.) We encourage everyone to take a look at our new endevor and join in on the fun!

-Jake (Olorinpc)

Post from: Jake's Corner

SuperGeek Blog Launching!

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Post from: Jake's Corner

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