If you’ve worked in IT then you know exactly what I’m talking about here: One of the easiest and yet most-obvious fixes for tons of computer issues is simply a hard restart of the actual computer.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve simply recommended:
Have you tried restarting your computer?
Hah. And, it works. But, I think there’s a “new” answer (or suggestion) that I’ve been using as well…
It’s the “Did you Google it?” answer.
What do you think? Will this work for you?
[Image from Marco]
I don’t know about ministry help desks, but I encourage the support team I manage to recommend Googling it where they can. The best help desk is the one where the phone doesn’t ring, and part of that is training your customers/users/youth pastor to use their resources.
But make sure you do it in a manner that shows you’re trying to help them be self-sufficient and not just a jerk that’s annoyed with having to help.
It doesn’t necessarily work for the people asking me for help (yet), but it certainly does help me when I am trying to help someone and can’t figure out how
When my eldest was growing up and getting in to computers I always tried to give the impression that “Dad knew everything” – children don’t like to know their dad isn’t supreme at everything …
Anyway, now he’s 20 and doing Physics and Comp Sci at University he still phones and asks me random IT questions. So now I say “don’t your tutors know?” or when that doesn’t work I refer him to our esteemed friend google. I think he’s old enough now to know I don’t know everything
Hi John,
Actually this is a one brilliant way to identify faults and fix errors in both hardware and software. I have done it and I love it…
“Google It” is always the answer I want to give, but usually can’t because most people where I work don’t know enough “tech speak” to really explain their problem or just expect us to do it for them, so Googling it just wouldn’t work. Second, the majority of our users don’t have the system permissions to truly fix any of their problems. All of that being said, the majority of the Googling is done by IT.
There’s an app for that.
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tech_support_cheat_sheet.png
This is the best. People who have questions seem to ask others before google.