Benign Neglect & Tech Support

In general, I am not a fan of the "benign neglect" concept, but I make an exception for some tech support questions.

(Psst, I'll tell you a secret if you promise to keep it to yourself: I am not the only one. But more on that below.)

By this, I mean that when I am providing tech support for products, which I do on occasion, I sometimes deliberately take my time responding. I sometimes take a long time because I am really busy, but that is an entirely different kettle of fish.

I should point out that my software company, as opposed to my consulting company, is a no-frills operation: we offer a high-quality product at a rock-bottom price. We do this by skimping on the human interaction: we provide a web site, a tech blog and a free on-line manual. What we don't provide is a call center filled with bodies to talk to you on the phone; we also provide email-based tech support and a cheerful, prompt, full refund if you would rather pay literally ten times as much to one of our competitors, who will happily talk to you on the phone.

So we have a severe market-segmentation device; them that like us love us and them that don't like us REALLY don't like us. Those that love us love the fact that when we get back to you, you get a thorough, thoughtful answer. But before you get that thorough, thoughtful answer you may get a thorough, thoughtful silence.

And not all tech support requests trigger the benign neglect policy: in fact, most do not. Most are reasonable questions from reasonable people which are a pleasure to answer. Some are valid criticisms that I cringe to acknowledge, but look forward to fixing. Then there are...the others.

There are two query categories to which I apply this policy: the breathless and the clueless.

By "breathless" I mean the really excited highly caffeinated poorly punctuated query that runs on and on and interrupts itself because the writer is so darn excited he-or-she cannot contain his-or-herself and just goes on and on with super-detailed but indiscriminatingly detailed accounts of some tale of horror involving my technology behaving in ways that it does not cannot never does behave.

By clueless, I mean the complaint or question reveals such a profound ignorance of the general topic and specific issue that it is hard to know where to begin to answer.

I give the breathless a chance to catch their breath, which they often do: the initial babbling request for tech support is often followed by the equivalent of "oops, sorry, I figured it out, I was doing something stupid." In other cases, I at least get a follow up that says "I figured out X and Y, but I still don't get Z." That is a query to which I can respond: I feel that we have a shared basic understanding and a clear context for a reply to issue Z, instead of a headache and desire to forget.

I give the clueless a chance to get a clue: to reconsider what they are trying to do or how they are trying to do it. Or to decide that they want one of those cheerful, prompt and full refunds. Which we are delighted to provide: spending time arguing with people about how a $250 product can't come with hours of hand-holding is a great way to lose money.

PS It is my experience that every tech support organization does something similar: they may have a polite ignoramus contact you to acknowledge your request for support, but the actual tech firepower is probably waiting for you to catch your breath or get a clue.