Mika Epstein published yet another great blog post today: Support Politeness. It reminded me of another post, Hello, I’m a Human Being. I often go back to that post when I’m having a rough day at work.
In an ideal world, everyone asking for help would behave like Mika. As she demonstrated in her post, it makes everyone’s life easier, and often means you get a better service.
However, we do not live in an ideal world. If you work in support, you will help people who are not grateful. When that happens, go back and read these 2 posts. And remember: you’re not good at your job because you can help friendly people; you’re good because you can help passionate users, users who are sometimes too passionate about your product to be reasonable.
But if they’re asking for help, it means that they haven’t given up on you just yet! You have the chance to help and to make them happy again!