I have a picture on my office wall where I’m surrounded by various friends and family. In this photo there is a war veteran & retired law enforcement official, a church minister, a vice president of a bank, a graphic designer, an executive business coach, and my mother.
When I ask my friends questions pertaining to their field of expertise they respond kindly and are often informative. I know they have spent years, if not decades, obtaining wisdom about their respective vocations. Yet they never expect me to know what they know. That would be silly.
Speaking of silly, it is embarrassing to have spent over a quarter-century in a professional realm (technology support) where some-not-all tech support professionals make their customers feel dumb or stupid:
“It’s easy to fix your course issue. I do it all the time. Here is a seven-step list for cross-listing courses.”
“This has been a known bug in our company cloud storage solution. We’ve had a Knowledge Base article on our website for two years now. It should resolve your issue.”
“You should have known that your five-year-old Mac laptop would not load your Canvas dashboard in Safari. It needs to be upgraded to the latest operating system.”
“We posted announcements in Canvas months ago about discussions and assignments having a new redesign. Didn’t you see those large announcements at the top of your Canvas dashboard?”
“An email was sent last week stating multi-factor authentication would be enforced for future logins to email and/or Canvas LMS. There were web links included with directions to set up the university-recommended authenticator app on your personal mobile phone. Since email is not a secure method of confirming your identity, please call the help desk to verify your identity and receive a code to set up the authenticator app. Please be aware that a large number of personnel are also having to enable their MFA, so the wait time to reach a help desk employee may be lengthy.”
“You’re telling me you have never set up assignment groups weighting in your course yet? Hundreds of faculty are doing this already in Canvas.”
“Did you see… the memo… about the new cover sheet for those TPS reports?”
Not only am I embarrassed by some-not-all professional technologists’ responses to client issues, I am angered by some-not-all upper management who backs their employees and blames the client for not staying up to date with the latest updates to Canvas….or technology in general. And I have much disdain for some-not-all upper management for allowing their staff to deploy tech upgrades during work hours.
Imagine if technology support went the route of The Rabbit Listened or How to Take Care of a Sad Person (professionally, of course):
“Hi [firstname], I cross-listed the courses in your request below, primary course is [SIS ID]. Let me know if there is anything else I can do to help with your Canvas courses?
Have a good day,”
“You don’t need to say it was dumb not to remember this from last term. How could you be expected to remember the cross-listing procedure when it is only needed twice or three times a year? I cross-list hundreds of courses for faculty every term. Next time, send me an email and I’ll take care of it.”
“Sorry to hear you lost access to your email and Canvas courses. Let’s walk through the steps to get your MFA set up. Pick a time on my calendar that works with your schedule.”
“It’s totally understandable how that obscure part of quizzes got missed. With your best interests in mind, and to help your students start the quiz right on time, I made the change for you.”
“Please don’t be spending a stressful hour trying to figure out why your students couldn’t submit their PDF files for your assignment! Next time you hear from students about this, send me an email with the course and the assignment name and I’ll take a look for you.”
Someday there may be a change in technology support based more on a relational core with empathy and collaboration between client and professional. Upper management can be the catalysts for change by understand what their staff’s support landscape consist of and take steps to build relational bridges for all involved. And it will require the client to not tolerate conversationally-immature, emotionally-insecure, professionally-insensitive behavior from their tech support professionals.
Clients, expect better.
Tech support professionals, do better.
</rant>
-Chris
canvasinsider@protonmail.com