Questioning Customers – Getting the Right Type of Answers

When a client calls you up for some tech support, you are obviously going to have to go though some questions to try and figure out what is happening with their computer based on their responses and find a fix. Once you have the details you need, figuring out the fix is often the easy part. The hard part is getting the rights answers out of your clients without annoying or insulting them. In this article we’ll talk about getting the right type of answers out of clients.

Dumb Questions

At the start of the support call you will have to ask the stupidly obvious questions; its no fun trying to figure out why the printer doesn’t work installing drivers and such only to find out that its just not plugged in. However, asking these obvious questions can result in a negative reaction as they believe you are patronizing them “Of course its turned on!!!…. oh wait”.

One way to ask this without the risk of being insulting is to blame ‘the man’ or ‘the system’. For example:
“I know that you have probably already checked this, but I have to ask some standard questions as part of our company procedure, just to make sure. Have you checked that the printer is plugged in?”.

Another one of my personal favorites is the “blow off the dust” method.

“Please unplug the power cord from the wall, blow on it to remove any dust that may be on it and plug it back in”.

If it was fine, you don’t make them feel stupid asking if its plugged in. If it was unplugged or loose, they just plugged it back in properly.

Open and Closed Questions

A closed question is a question with a limited amount of answers. Some examples may be “Are you running Windows XP or Vista?” or “Is the computer turned on?”.
Open questions have answers that are long and need to be elaborated on. For example “What is the computer doing?”.

Open questions are useful to figure out what happened, but can be dangerous as they can open a ‘can of worms’ with some clients. A good example would be you asking “how did this happen?” and they reply:

“well, I was using the computer sending off some emails to my grandma who just recently got a new computer. And then I went to my cousins BBQ which is two hours drive away or 1 and a half if we take the freeway. While I was eating my burger I remembered that I left the computer on but thought it would be alright. When I got home 4 hours later it wouldn’t turn on. I called my cousin and he said I should try doing a repair install but that didn’t work. So then he recommended that I buy a new power cord which didn’t work either. So the next day I asked my boss at work who knows a bit about computers and he said… etc..”

You know where this is going, and you are probably regretting ever asking.

The trick is to use a combination of both types of questions by asking closed ones first, and use open ones when you need them to elaborate. For example:

“Does the computer turn on?” (closed)
“Yes? Good. Does it get to the Windows desktop?” (closed)
“No? What does it do? Are there any messages?” (open)

Being aware of such techniques can make you more effective, save time and greatly change how you are perceived by your clients.

How about you guys? Do you have any techniques that work well with clients? Drop us a comment.