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Today's advice is: Don't take shortcuts.

Follow the instructions even though they don't make full sense. If you have to know why they are how they are, then ask. Then follow the instructions.



I had a young woman contact me today about registering her product. The process involved knowing enough about her network to be able to get past her proxy/firewall for the registration. Short of being able to do that, she needed to be able to type a long command prompt-style string to bypass the proxy/firewall.

I sent her a copy of it so she could literally copy/paste most of it, but there were a few places where she'd need to fill in the appropriate information. Unfortunately for her, it required full path information to the files she was trying to use.

Every time she got to one of those variables instead of typing the full path:

c:\example folder\example.exe

She would attempt to use a system variable:

%drive%:\example folder\%filename%

Or some such nonsense.



Now, that may be ok in some circumstances, but the instructions clearly stated that she need the fully qualified path.

In the end, the process failed. Even after I tried time and time again to get her to put in the correct information.

She could have saved herself alot of time and aggravation by just filling in the correct information the first time instead of trying to buck the system. Those instructions are there for a reason. If you knew how to do it your way then why are you calling for help??? Because you don't know how.


So, the moral of the story is:

Capitalize on someone else's experience and do it the tried and true way. Don't try to be a hero.

Labels: call centers, calling, instructions, method, question, questions, support, tech, technical, technical support