Half-Elf on Tech

Thoughts From a Professional Lesbian

Tag: support

  • Getting Good Advice

    Getting Good Advice

    She was running a webstore on shared hosting without caching, and was upset it was slow. She was using only free products, no HTTPS, and was annoyed people said they couldn’t buy from her and that she could only use PayPal. She was angry that we couldn’t magically fix it.

    I sped up her site, improved PHP, and cleaned up some duplicate plugins. And then I asked “Have you considered a VPS?” She ranted that it was our job to make shared hosting better, even if it cost us more, because she certainly wasn’t going to invest in her business. So I complained, on Twitter, that people who use free/ultra-low-budget services for a business and are unhappy with performance get what they deserve.

    Then my buddy joked that Danica Patrick said it worked for $0.99! I joked back that he was taking web hosting advice from someone who’s selling skill is “I drive real fast!” As we tweeted, we elaborated it to how silly it was to take hosting advice from someone whose job it was to look pretty, drive fast, and only turn to the left.

    It’s funny to us because we know better. If I was going to ask Danica Patrick for advice, I would ask her how she managed to sell her image so effectively. I might ask her if I could learn to drive a race car from her. But asking her what the best setup was for running an ecommerce store? Hell to the no! It’s outside her expertise and I’d be a fool for asking her in the first place!

    Which brings me to my point. The advice you get is only as good as the people you get it from.

    That’s painfully obvious, right? To go old school on you, you shouldn’t ask the fish guy for advice about pork, you don’t ask the vegetarian for advice about lamb, and for goodness sake, you don’t use the marketing sales pitch as your only measure for what kind of host you need.

    Sorry, marketing guys.

    A Koala - which has nothing to do with anything

    Way back in the beyond days of websites, when we all used pure HTML and loved it, I was starting up a fansite. I had an idea that it might be moderately popular, so I reached out and asked some people who ran similar sites. I told them what I wanted to do, and asked who their webhost was, what ‘tier’ of hosting did they use, and were they happy? A wonderful woman named MadDog (I miss her so) was insanely helpful and sent me a breakdown of how much traffic she got, what her spikes were (our actresses were on the same TV show, this was helpful), how crazy the fans got, and then handed me a coupon for her host. “Use it or don’t use it. I get about $50 if you do.” (Spoiler alert: I did.)

    When I was looking at getting DSL back in 1999, I asked other people in my building who they used, why, and were they happy. Surprisingly a lot of people hated their ISP except one guy, Quinn, who told me what he used it for, why he paid as much as he did, and how it was worth his money. And he too said if I used his code, he’d get $50. Actually I think he got $150 and took me and my wife out to dinner.

    The point is this. I sought out people with a similar experience as I was expecting to have, such as living in the same building. I asked them how they used it, so I could see if their issues would be the same as mine. I asked them if they were happy, because I knew I’d been calling support at least once, and it would be nice to know how painful it would be. I did my research, myself, because it mattered to me.

    Your site matters to you. It behooves you to sit down, take stock in your goals, and research the options out there. We can’t always know where we’ll end up or how we’ll get there, but we can make the effort to find people who match our perceived direction and ask them a simple question. We can search for our peers and read articles they’ve written. We can ask them for recommendations. And in the moment those people take time to sit and answer your questions, you need to listen to them. You should thank them. You may even want to go out of your way to compensate them. Because they just gave you some amazing value.

    Would I host a business on low-end shared hosting? Sure. To start with. But as my business grew, I learned that I had to invest in order to reach my goals.

    And yes. I did.

  • Don’t You Give That Girl a Gun

    Don’t You Give That Girl a Gun

    His WordPress site was hacked.

    He’d reported it as a ‘slow site’ and the techs had done an amazing job helping him clean it up, but when it landed in my lap, I took one look at saw backdoors, permissions issues, and vulnerabilities galore. So I did the reasonable, responsible, fair thing. I reinstalled the files, I cleaned up the plugins, and then I saw his theme was behind a paywall, old, and, worse, no longer supported. So I removed the theme from his website (putting it where he could get it back) and switched him to Twenty Fourteen. Then I explained in a rather long email about how his site was hacked, how I determined it, and what he needed to do to get the theme back (basically download it again from the vendor).

    He was mad.

    He argued that I had broken his site and it no longer looked right. This was true. He complained that my service was deplorable because his site looked wrong. This is debatable. He groused that I had to put the theme back. This was not going to happen.

    old fashioned rifle on a wall

    It’s the service conundrum. If you know something’s wrong, do you leave it alone or do you fix it? When I see people post their passwords in public places, I delete them and use bold and italics to chastise them. When I see people doing dangerous things like editing core, I do the same. I try really hard to educate and warn people, so they can be protected from shooting their own foot off. So when I have a rabid customer telling me I need to let them do it … I don’t.

    My job is really to help people fix their sites, and that tends to mean my job is to debug and educate and provide options. But when someone has an abjectly wrong bit of code, like the bevy of people who had their old themes and plugins break when we upgraded them from PHP 5.2 to 5.4, I will regularly go that extra mile and fix the code. That doesn’t mean I don’t educate them, they usually get a quick lecture about why we upgrade promptly, but when someone’s that far off normal that their code won’t work on PHP 5.3, I assume they just don’t know anything.

    The worst part about it, though, is when they argue. They’ve asked you for help and advice, you provide it, they demand you fix it, and at a certain point… they’re just asking the wrong person. Your webhost is not your consultant. While many times we can and will fix the site, when it gets down to code that isn’t working, we can’t be expected to re-write all the code.

    Sometimes we’re going to be the bearers of bad news. Your theme is hacked. Your plugin is vulnerable. Your code won’t work on this server because of reasons. We’re never making an excuse, but we are trying to explain to you why things happen.

    Now I know I’m a little weird, because I think that everyone should be educated in how their site works. Not that I think they need to learn to code, but to understand what’s going on, in broad terms, means you’ll be able to help us help you fix your site. And with that, I expect people to actually listen to what the support techs say. We won’t always be right, especially not with WordPress which has infinite combinations of plugins and themes (it’s a mathematical impossibility to be able to be familiar with everything) but for the most part, we are all trying to learn to be better and faster at debugging.

    But. What do you do when the person you’re trying to help insists on hurting themselves? Like the person with the hacked theme, maybe you’re lucky and your company has a policy that once you know something is malware, you’re legally not permitted to reinstall it. But what if they decide to use a plugin that has a maybe backdoor, like an older version of TimThumb? How big a deal is that? Is it better or worse than helping someone do something that will absolutely kill their SEO?

    For me, it’s pretty simple. My company does have a no-malware policy, and I can fall back on that. When I volunteer, I often tell people “I will not assist you in doing something I don’t feel is right.” and I walk away. Because I feel strongly that I should educate you, but also that I should never enable you to hurt your site.

  • Mailbag: Playing the Middle

    Mailbag: Playing the Middle

    This is from Ben in Minnesota and … It’s not about WordPress as much as learning and support, but here is the meat of his issue:

    I’m just learning things. I’m really familiar with Drupal and okay with a vps, but I took over a WP install on a dedicated server and I’m way out of my league! I don’t understand half the questions. They treat me like I should know everything already because I’m experienced and tell me to just ask the vendor. But the hardware scares me and I don’t know how to get the information I need to solve things!

    Do you have any advice, besides learning faster?

    My least favorite role is when I have to play the middle man between two tech groups. Group A has a problem, so they ask me to ask it of Group B, and I have no familiarity with what the subject is. Happens a hell of a lot, and it exposes the lack of depth of knowledge in specific areas.

    I hate it. It makes me feel like I’m stupid, and then when I ask for clarification, I get vague, top-level answers and what I need are examples. Much of this has to do with how I learn best, but the other problem is people have a tacit assumption that I know what the hell they’re talking about, when I clearly do not.

    Men in the middle of men

    Basically? They’re giving me shitty support based on their preconceived notions about how “everyone” thinks. And yes, it pisses me off and I have been at the point of tears of anger me frustration over this before. I’ve been there, man, and recently too. It’s worse probably because I am clever and can pick things up quickly. They assume I know, or will figure it out, so I get half-assed help.

    So. What do I do? Well first I quote them. “My DB guy said this [quote]. Do you need any specific information? I’ll ask him, but I’m not familiar with this topic.” Sadly that tends to net me a pretty generic reply like “Just filter it.” It does make me want to scream, you’re not alone there.

    Lately I’ve been stopping them before it gets that far, though. When I’m told “Can you ask Group B about this?” I say “Can you explain like I’m 5, real fast, so I can make sure I ask them the right things and make sure that I don’t have to go back and forth really a million times and bug the hell out of you?” If I already understand a little about it, I may say “I thought that ModSecurity could hook into IP Tables and auto-block people who hammered my login files?” to set the tone of what I did know.

    Basically the only path out of ignorance is to explain that you are uneducated in this topic, and while you will learn as fast as you can, you need a little more help than that. If they still won’t help you out, take them aside and ask if you’re doing something wrong, because you need their help in a different way than you’re getting. Be firm. Be up front. Be honest.

    Good luck, Ben! And just for some fun, here’s a scene from Office Space:

    People skills!

  • Cold Calling Support

    Cold Calling Support

    Recently a coworker said I was mean to support, because I was firm and annoyed with someone on the phone. “Every time I’ve heard you take a support call in the office, you’ve been mean.”

    I corrected him “Those were cold calls. When I call support, with the exception of the idiot I got at NetSol, I usually walk away from my desk so we can have a long, friendly, chat.”

    Basically he only saw me talking to cold callers and thought I was mean. And I get why. Are not cold-calls a part of support? Given that cold-calling people who didn’t pay for (and who paid but never used) hosting, I can see where he might be taking it personally. I didn’t mention, since we both agreed that surveys calling you and offering to pay you was shady at best, but I don’t see what he does as a cold call. Debt collection maybe, but he’s not a cold call. He’s calling you because he has your information and you already started a relationship with us.

    So why do I hate cold calls? Well it’s the same reason I generally hate the emails “Can I ask you for a debugging favor?” You’re trying to get something off me without compensation, or generally thanks (no, Anne and Benny, you were fine). A cold call is even worse, though, because it really is just an out of nowhere call.

    Whats an example of the worst kind of cold call? Phone scams. I actually get a lot of those for services I don’t use, like Microsoft, and it’s actually made me tell people when there are legit calls “If you’re calling from X company, I’m going to call you back at the main contact number. What case number can I reference?” I did that with the cold-call for a debt collection which I argued. I didn’t recognize them, I didn’t know them, and I was not about to give them my credit card info over the phone.

    I got into an argument with a fake Microsoft call recently. “Sir, let me stop you. You’re calling someone who works in IT. I don’t have a Windows computer, you’re working for a scam company. I know many good companies in India–”

    And he shouted at me “I am not in India. Please listen, your computer has a virus.”

    So I raised my voice, “Sir, no it does not. You are working for a scam–”

    And he screamed, “YOU ARE A SCAM!” My wife could hear him. I tried to cut him off and explain, he shouted insults (I used to work with people from India, I know some insults) and I hung up.

    Hand holding a phone

    I’m sure I could have been nicer. Equally I could be nicer to the salespeople from DirecTV who call. “We’d like to upgrade your service.” and I say no thank you. “But it’s free for 3 months.” And I know that, but I know in 3 months I have to remember to cancel the service. No thank you. Again, no thank you. It’s around the second ‘no thank you’ that I start to lose my patience. Certainly I try to be firm, so they don’t think I’m easy to convince, but I’m not trying to be mean.

    It’s possibly a side effect of ‘Bitchy Resting Face.’ Whenever I’m firm and direct and say “No, I don’t want that service.” I get push back that I’ve been mean to the person on the phone. But if I say the same thing in a sweet and kind voice, I’m told I’m being too soft and that encourages the hard sell. From my end, it’s a no win.

    This is probably why I’m a bad salesman. If I say “You may be interested in product ABC, it can do these things.” and the person says “No, thank you.” I stop. I may say “Okay, if you change your mind or have later questions, please just ask.” and I move on. Because I, personally, hate the hard sell. I don’t want someone convincing me I want something I don’t need. Sales calls are not something I appreciate.

    On the other hand, of the few times I’ve been called by companies for support (not the other way around), I’m cautious and then pleasent. When I moved to California, my bank and credit cards called me. “Hi, we’re seeing a lot of charges from your card in a new location.” I laughed and asked if it was my new city and if it was the Target. They said it was, I assured them that was me. “Well, we’re going to hold those transactions until you update your account with your new address.”

    Boom. That was awesome. Security and support in one. I had to update it, of course, but in doing to, I confirmed for them it was me, and I helped them out. This was good because the next week someone in Kentucky tried to use my card numbers and they knew it wasn’t me. Of course, the amount of travel I do makes this hard, but they keep checking with me when appropriate.

    And that support? I always smile for.

  • “Oh yeah. That’s a bug.”

    “Oh yeah. That’s a bug.”

    “You’ve been saying you’re working on it for two years! How hard could it be?”

    The post made my blood pressure rise a little. I was uncharitable, in my own mind, thinking Well if you know how to do it, why don’t you get off your whingy ass and do it? I was snippy, I was snide, I was … let’s face it, I was mean.

    But I didn’t say it out loud. I stood up from the laptop and played a round of ping pong with a coworker who is a bazillion times my better (seriously, he’s great) and tried to learn to return spin-serves. I still can’t, but I understand them now. Then, refreshed, I went back and replied.

    “I know it sounds really dismissive, but there are more things at play then just slapping a new coat of paint on the system. We have to take into account the following things [list]. On top of that, we have to do it all in a way that won’t crash the system and that’s backwards compatible!”

    I looked at that for a moment and I sighed. No matter how I explained it, no matter which language I used to demonstrate the complications, the reply was still going to be ‘Don’t make an excuse, just fix it.’

    Complex art

    There’s a weird truth about software and development that is the people writing or fixing the code generally don’t get fired up about it in a reactionary way. That’s not to say they’re not passionate, or that I never see them angry or excited, but that they’re sort of a Cool Hand Luke about a lot of things, including their job.

    From 1997 to 2012, I worked at a bank. I tapped out just shy of 15 years, and through that time I went from desktop applications to operating systems to server based desktop applications (remote apps) to server deployment. I did a lot. I worked on everything, but I was never what you’d call ‘tech support.’ I did support for developers for about 5 years. At one point, when I was working on the OS side of things, my manager asked if I could help one of the senior VPs with an email issue. I agreed, went to his computer, looked at it, calmly minimized the app, fixed the resolution (yes), and was about to go when they screamed.

    “You closed my email!”

    I blinked a few times, clicked on maximize, and pointed out I had only minimized it.

    My manager apologized for over-reacting, but suggested next time I maximize before I leave the desk. I did not point out that what I was doing was not in my job description at all, but I did agree he had a point and said that I would be sure to leave the PC the way I found it, except fixed. This lesson stayed with me. When I fix your site, I try to leave it the way YOU wanted it.

    The next day I had a complaint land in my lap, from the Sr.VP, that I didn’t take the issue serious enough. This was tacked on to the heels of another incident that, at the time, I’d forgotten about, where a server went down, people flipped out and called me, and I said “Uh huh, I see what’s wrong. *type* There we go. All better, I’ll fill in the ticket. Sorry about that.”

    What was this complaint? I was too cavalier.

    I did argue that complaint, and ‘won’ as much as anyone can, because I noted you don’t want the panicking person to run around and scream when they fix your broken stuff, you want them to be calm and collected. At the same time, I did learn something important, and that is people need to feel that you do empathize with them and feel their pain. I’m much better at that now than I was in 2001, but in the last thirteen years, I’ve blown my site up enough to know that level of terror in a visceral way.

    But for the person who is having the horrible, no good, very bad, day, there’s a lesson for you too! Sometimes when someone says “Yes, we know.” or “Yes, we’re fixing that.” they can sound far more calm and casual than you are, to the point where they seem dismissive, not because they are dismissive, but because of their experiences. It’s the same logic behind anyone who handles high-stress situations regularly: we get used to it, and we have managed to overcome our panic.

    What does all this have to do with the time you asked for a change and we said “We’re working on it?” We’re calm because we are working on it. We sound dismissive because we’ve said many times we’re working on it. We know we don’t have an answer and how much that sucks, but we know (and you know in your heart) that yelling at people to fix it now has never, in the history of ever, actually made someone come to that genius moment faster. Even critical bugs, like Heartbleed, are things everyone tries to fix as soon as possible, but not in a rush or a panic. And if they’re not critical, then we’re generally not going to rush and fix it unless we’re certain we can do it in a way that is safe for everyone, sustainable, and we agree with it.

    That sounds like a lot, and it also sounds like an excuse. It’s not. If someone replies “Yes, we’re working on it.” it’s okay for you to ask “Is there anything I can do to help?” It also means you may have to accept that some annoyances are going to stick around for a long time, because they’re complicated, or maybe they require a total rewrite. But as long as they’re communicating with you, they’re not ignore you.

  • Support Politeness

    Support Politeness

    I had a great time at WordCamp Miami, talking about becoming a WordPress hero and inspiring people to do more in WordPress even when they can’t code. I helped people figure out how to approach their favorite theme shops and plugins and suggest that perhaps they could fix documentation. I networked and met a lot of people who opened their eyes to opportunities. I told them the truth: companies ask me if there are more people like me to help answer questions.

    One of the off the cuff comments I made in my talk was that people think that support is the ‘low end’ of WordPress because that’s how they treat it. What I meant was that I see a lot of people look at support, dismissively, and say “Well that’s a low end job for dumb people who can’t code.” and honestly I want to grab them by their shirt and shout “You’re the dumb person!” I don’t, mostly because that would get me arrested, but also because it won’t help.

    Let me explain by telling you about my flights to and from Miami.

    I live by a tiny airport, and I always have to transfer at either DFW or ORD. I went through DFW on the way to Miami, but I almost didn’t. As we got on the plane, they announced there was a horrible storm and we were all de-planing. No flights were going to DFW. So we all started calling American (my airline of choice) about options, and the crew removed luggage. Then I overheard the gate agent say that if people did not have any checked luggage, including gate-check, they could get them on the next flight to DFW. I rushed over, asked if I could get on the flight, and had a ticket in my hand. I said thank you very much. So did the people behind me.

    When I got to DFW, I found the second half of my flight was canceled, so I went to the gate and asked about it. The gate agent was harried and I told her “You know what, take your time. Do you need me to step back?” She looked at me and asked if I’d mind ‘blocking’ for her, just standing there and acting as if I was being helped, so she could sort out other things. I agreed, and proceeded to say things like “I can’t believe how helpful you are, how dare you be so accommodating!” until she laughed too hard and made me stop. Then she pulled my information up and bumped me to a better seat. As she did so, they told her the plane had been diverted and she asked me not to tell anyone. I thanked her, agreed (though I told my family my flight was delayed), and we watched a tornado pass by.

    Cat on the floor, screaming

    If you can’t tell, I was nice to the people giving me support. I was polite, I treated them with respect, and I made sure to take a moment to tell them I appreciated their work.

    You see, the problem with support is that it’s low end because that’s how you treat it. Certainly, when I call Time Warner and tell them “My DNS tables aren’t refreshing, I can’t get to this domain, how do I refresh them on my modem?” and they ask me “Did you reboot?” I get annoyed. I make sure to tell them, exactly, what I did, I ask them how to do things I’m less familiar with, and I say thank you when they explain things. But when they ignore what I ask to follow their scripts, yes, I get frustrated. I appreciate what they do, but they created a situation where my service is problematic and my experience was sub par because the way they’re told to handle people is to follow a script.

    Let’s go back to airports. Sometimes things happen outside the control of anyone, like weather. When I was at ORD, my flight got grounded due to lightning on the tarmac. And when I say that, I mean we watched lightning hit the tarmac in front of us. It was a microburst storm, so we waited it out, boarded the plane, and then got hit by another storm. This storm was so bad, the whole airport was grounded for 6 hours. I spent four hours getting my flight sorted because all the flights were canceled. Did I get mad? Nope! It was not American’s fault all the flights got canceled, and it wasn’t their fault everyone’s calling to get help. When I finally got a hold of someone, I told her what happened and asked if she could get me home. She said she could get me on the first flight out and I said “Oh my god, I love you!” You see, I’d heard all these other people from my flight get multiple leg trips to our small airport, or not even to ours. And here I got an exit row aisle seat. I thanked her, and went to a gate to get my pass printed. When the gate agent did that, I said thank you for the extra work.

    That’s when something amazing happened. The woman beside me did a double take and said “That’s right! Thank you very much, we do appreciate this!” And people around us suddenly looked sheepish and started muttering thanks. A small angry group became calm and polite. The gate agents told us where we could get pillows and blankets, and when I went there, I also said thank you. The same thing happened. People around me stopped snatching pillows and complaining, and they started being humans again.

    I changed the feeling of support. I made the people helping me feel respected and needed, which they were. I made the people around me remember that these people were providing a service above and beyond the norm. I changed support from being a low-end situation to a valued service.

    When you deal with support, when you have a problem and ask for help, remember that. We know you’re having a terrible day. Take a moment to breath deeply, calm yourself, and thank the people helping you. When you treat support like crap, you get crap support. It’s as simple as that. I’ve been out with WordPress folks and seen them lose their shit on coffee barristas, and I’ve told them “If you treated me like that in the forums, I’d ban you.” It slaps them in the face, because they forget somewhere down the line that humanity is what makes us human.

    If you want more people like me in the support world, and I know you do, you need to start with yourself. Check yourself, treat people how you want to be treated, and when you read what they say, assume the best intentions.

    And say thank you. It will change everything.