The smart user's guide to getting better tech support

I don't simply write about IT -- I also manage them in my other role as editorial CTO for InfoWorld's parent company. We have several custom operational systems for producing, coordinating, and publishing our content, and I help manage the functionality and priorities, working with our development organization. Thus, I spend a lot of time fielding, analyzing, and triaging support calls from staff and other users.

In that work, I've seen several patterns of support calls and tickets that are guaranteed to make it harder to actually solve those issues. Although many in IT like to joke about stupid users, the issue is not stupidity. It's usually some combination of frustration, myopia, and lack of systems understanding. The users who can step back and present a fuller context for the issue are the ones whose problems usually get addressed faster and more completely -- they made it easier for me and the developers to get to a solution.

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