We often don't think of communication skills
as being important to someone who's working with technology.
But in reality, it's one of the best skills
you can have when you're working through the troubleshooting
process.
Unfortunately, it's also one of the most difficult skills
to be able to master.
Being able to communicate with others
and to be able to get ideas across can be very powerful,
but it does take a bit of practice
to become very good at it.
And indeed in information technology
and really any industry, the better you
are at communication, the more marketable you're going to be.
If you've learned anything in this course,
you know that we love to use three letter
acronyms and other types of technical jargon.
This is a common way to communicate different ideas
very quickly to others in our industry,
but it can also be very confusing for someone
who doesn't deal with these acronyms on a daily basis.
So if you're speaking to an end user about a problem
they're having with their system,
it's best to avoid this jargon and these acronyms,
and instead describe the problem in terms
that they would understand.
You effectively have to be that translator
between the technical and non-technical worlds.
Whenever you communicate with others in a way
that they can understand, then they're put more at ease.
Very often the tense situations that
sometimes occur when there's a technical problem
can completely change when everybody
is able to communicate.
And ultimately, there will be people in charge
who are not technical that need to make decisions
based on the information that you have.
So being able to relay that information in a form
that everyone can understand becomes very important.
And after a bit of practice, you'll
find it's very easy to avoid using
this acronym or this jargon.
If you listen to any motivational speaker,
they'll tell you that maintaining a positive attitude
will have a dramatic impact on your day to day life.
This is certainly true in information technology
because your attitude will determine how
certain problems are resolved.
You can use a positive tone of voice to partner with someone
and make sure that they're aware that you're involved in fixing
this particular issue.
And if this issue can't be easily resolved,
you can provide issues that can give them options
on what they can do next.
Your attitude has a dramatic impact
on the entire troubleshooting process,
and you'll find that users are more
willing to work with you throughout this troubleshooting
process if you have a good attitude.
We sometimes have a bad habit in this industry of interrupting
people when they're trying to explain to us the problems
that they're having.
This may be because we'd like to solve the problem quickly
and go on to the next thing, or we
would like to prove to someone that we really
have the knowledge necessary to resolve the issue.
It's useful to get into the practice of actively listening
when someone's explaining the problem.
And what you may want to do is take notes
so that everything they say can be documented,
and later on, you can explain back to them
the things that you understand about their problem.
The key is to build a relationship with the customer.
One of the best ways to do that is
to have a conversation about the issue that they're having.
And if you can listen to this issue
without interrupting throughout the process,
you may find that you're able to gather information
that normally you would not have had.
You'll find this especially useful
if you're on a voice call where there's
no visual cues from the user on what they're seeing
or how they're talking.
Instead, you can let them explain the issue
and then there can be a question and answer process where you
can gather more information.
This is a challenging skill to perfect.
But you may find that not interrupting
during this process makes the entire troubleshooting
process go much smoother.
One of the first steps of the troubleshooting process
is gathering information.
And one of the ways you can do this
is by clarifying customer statements.
During this process, the end user
can explain what they're seeing.
And then you can ask clarifying questions that might bring up
issues about error messages, things
that were seen on the screen, or anything else that
might help with the troubleshooting process.
At this point, we're not trying to question or challenge
what the user is seeing.
Instead, we're trying to gather information
about what they believe they saw on the screen.
During this process, you might want
to repeat back to the customer the things that they just
told you.
This not only clarifies that you've written things down
properly, the customer now knows that you
were listening to everything they were telling you
about this issue.
And even if we think that this problem has a relatively
obvious solution, it still makes sense
to be able to ask some clarifying questions just
in case the problem that they're having
is very different than what we initially thought.
There may be times when the user has
to make a decision about what the next step should
be during the troubleshooting process.
This may be that a system has failed
and we need to either repair the system
or replace it completely.
We need to offer these different options,
so that the user can make a decision
on what they'd like to do next.
It's always useful if you're able to document
this information and provide it in a way that
could be referenced later.
This way everyone knows exactly what options are on the table
and there's no ambiguity with what direction we should go.
It's also important to keep everybody updated with what's
going on with the process.
When we send something out to repair,
it might be weeks before we receive that back.
So providing weekly updates on the status
can let the end user know that you're on top of it.
And after that problem is resolved,
we can check back in with the customer
and confirm that everything is working to their satisfaction.