I love words. I love how they can describe wonderful detail and grand ideas. I love how there can be as many interpretations as there are readers, or in the case of speech, listeners. One of my favorite examples of interpretations in the Help Desk world came back in the day of the conversion to to Windows NT and the alphabetical naming of drives on the servers. Much discussion was had about which letter was best used for the common share and what was best for user directories (“O” and “X” respectively). Fairly early on, a rather frustrated customer became offended by the caustic description of a specific drive used by one of the support staff. Emails flamed around and in the end, after much ballyhoo, it was discovered that the tech was describing the “F” and “G” drives but the customer had heard “The Effin’ G Drive”.
“No need to swear at me young man!”
In the perpetual crush of issues that is Help Desk management, it is easy to forget to pay attention to what you are saying and how it may be interpreted. Each contact to your team is an opportunity for misinterpretation. We are already hindered by the need to use a technical glossary of terms unfamiliar to our customers but to add in the normal misunderstandings due to poor enunciation, speaking too fast, and the big one, assumed knowledge is a train wreck just waiting to happen.
Since we can’t avoid them all, it becomes vital that as a manager, we understand the what was said along with the actual incident. In most cases, the confusion comes from not clearly understanding what is being said.
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