COMPROBACIÓN DE HIPÓTESIS

Effective communication skills are required for every computer support techni- cian. It does not matter whether you are working as an in-house helpdesk technician for an organization, or whether you have to travel to a customer’s place for service and support calls. These include maintaining customer privacy and confidentiality, effective talking and listening skills, and asking the right ques- tions to understand and resolve the problem. At the same time, you will try not to use technical jargon to unnecessarily impress the customer and will refrain from being judgmental. This section explains the essentials of communication skills.

Privacy and confidentiality

Due to increasing competition in almost every field today, organizations needs to ensure that its confidential data is not stolen or misused, client confidentiality is maintained, and the support technician completes his workto maintain the mutual trust.

Customer privacy, as related to computer support, refers to the fact that support technicians do not copy, take away, or misuse confidential data belonging to the organization. Most organizations take certain measures to prevent undesired disclosure of data to third parties including computer support technicians. As a support technician, you will need to abide by these rules when you visit a client organization to resolve a computer-related problem. Chances are that you will come across such confidential data stored on a user’s computer or her home direc- tory. You are not supposed to copy this data or take it outside the client office in any case. If you do this, you may be subject to legal actions as per the rules of the organization or regulatory consumer privacy laws.

Client confidentialityrefers to the principle that any individual or an organization should not reveal or disclose confidential information about their clients to any third party without the consent of the client. The only exception is that this disclosure is required for legal reasons. In most of the countries, this principle is enforced by law. As a computer support technician, it is your primary responsi- bility to respect and maintain the trust of your client.

Apart from physical theft of data, you should also keep yourself from talking to the customer in such a way that he thinks that you are being too personal and trying to obtain private information. This is social engineering. It is the process of gathering personal information about a client in order to use it later for commer- cial gains. This is particularly important when you are trying to gather information about a problem over the telephone or when you are talking face-to- face with a customer. You must ensure that the customer does not suspect your questioning skills.

For example, a user may reveal his username and password to you to help you resolve a connectivity problem. In case this user has remote access permissions to the network, these credentials can later be misused to get unauthorized access to the network. This is unethical and you should not indulge in any such activities.

Talking to the customer

Control your facial expressions. Do not lookupset, confused, or frustrated when the user is talking. When talking to the client, make sure that your tone of voice

matches your body language and facial expressions. You should not give an impression that you do not have time to talkto the client. Hurriedly asking about a problem with just a few questions and suddenly jumping to a conclusion without letting the client properly explain the problem usually results in an incor- rect resolution.

When the client is talking, listen to him. Active listening is one of the most impor- tant constituents of good communication skills that a customer support technician must have. The following are some important aspects of talking to clients:

• Listen carefully and attentively. • Let the client complete his statement. • Do not interrupt the client.

• Do not be judgmental. • Do not jump to conclusions. • Use effective voice tone. • Control your body language.

• Do not use obscene jokes or talk about sex or race.

Another important aspect of talking to clients isparaphrasing. Paraphrasing refers to the repetition of what the client has said in order to give him a feeling that you understand correctly what he is saying. Secondly, it gives the client a good impres- sion that you are interested in what he has to say. Finally, it gives the client an opportunity to correct any misunderstanding.

Your verbal and nonverbal language should not contradict each other. For example, you are trying to assure the client that you are very much interested in resolving his problem, but your body language or facial expressions give the impression that you are feeling tired or frustrated. Make sure that your facial expressions, body movement, and gestures match with what you are saying.

Active listening

When talking to a user, you will need to employ the technique of active listening. Active listening ensures that whatever the user has to say is fully understood by you. In other words, active listening techniques improve mutual understanding. It is often noticed that support technicians do not listen properly, which results in misunderstanding the actual user problem and an incorrect resolution. Active listening techniques consist of the following components:

• Listen attentively and respond with a nod when needed. • Do not look distracted.

• Do not look angry, frustrated, or confused. • Do not keep thinking about something else. • Keep the problem in focus.

A+ Essentials

Study Guide

The user should not at any point in time thinkthat you are not paying attention to what she is saying. It is quite obvious that if you do not listen to the user prop- erly, you will either miss half of the information she is providing or completely misunderstand the problem. This often results in an incorrect approach in resolving the problem. Your first goal should be to gather as much information as you can, which should be helpful in diagnosing the problem.

Active listening does not necessarily mean that you have to agree with the user. Simply repeating what she has said confirms to the user that you are attentively listening to her and trying to understand her problem. Based on the information provided by the user, you may have to askquestions to further clarify a point or to obtain more information about the problem. When the user feels that you are paying attention and understanding her, she is encouraged to talkmore and provide more information.

Asking questions

Active listening is closely related to asking reasonable questions in order to clarify the problem. The first thing you must do is listen carefully to what the client has to say. During the process, you may feel that you need more information. This information can only be gathered by asking meaningful questions. You will need to have good questioning skills to get to the root of the problem. Usually you will ask questions in order to do the following:

• Seek clarification on client statements.

• Learn whether the client has some other needs.

• Encourage the client to elaborate more on certain points. • Gather more facts and details.

When asking questions, you must keep the following things in mind: • The questions must be directly related to the problem.

• The customer should not feel embarrassed or let down.

• The questions should be open-ended so that the client is encouraged to come up with a variety of answers.

• It is good to show interest when the client is responding. It’s useless to aska question if you do not bother listening to the answer.

• Do not asktoo many questions in a row. Let the client respond to one ques- tion before you ask the next.

When you askquestions, listen to the answers. Do not interrupt the client but let him complete his sentence or statement. Do not just say, “Oh, I know what you mean. I faced these problems before.” This is incorrect. When asking questions, make sure that your questions do not offend the client in any way.

Use nontechnical vocabulary

Your client may or may not be a technical person. He may just be an accountant who does not know anything about computer components or software applica- tions and may just be working on a computer to get his job done. When talking to

a client, you should not use technical vocabulary (jargon) just to impress him. This will have a negative impression on the client and he may feel confused. He may also not feel like talking to you anymore, thinking that you will figure out the problem yourself. This is a dangerous step so far as problem-solving is concerned. If a client stops talking, you may not gather sufficient information to resolve the issue.

Always talkto the client in a friendly way. Use terms that the client can under- stand. This is known as theframe of context. Give examples that are relevant to the problem or to the client’s job. Your target should be to get as much informa- tion as possible to correctly resolve his problem in minimum possible time.

Don’t be judgmental

As a sincere customer support technician, you should not be judgmental while listening to a client’s problem. This ensures that you will understand the problem correctly, diagnose it properly, and apply a resolution effectively. Nonjudgmental listening involves the following factors:

• Do not finish the sentence for your client. Let him complete what he has to say.

• Do not respond too soon or jump to a conclusion. Interpret the client’s state- ment, think of a suitable response, and then start talking.

• Do not react emotionally to a client’s statement. • Do not try to minimize a problem.

• Never ask something like “Why?” or say something like “You should not do this.”

• Never criticize a client if the problem is a result of some of his actions. • Do not try to teach the client.