IT Soft Skills 2

[Onyxpurr]

Recently someone brought up a couple of issues with IT customers. I thought maybe I could get some good responses on how other handle the following:

Users berating themselves for asking a stupid question, making a mistake, etc...

What is a good way to make your customers understand that first of all that although we're IT, we're not gods/gurus/wizards and secondly that it's okay to make a mistake/ask a question?

 

[Gmama]

Thanks guys I just started an IT job and am running into staff that are not confident to ask questions about the problem they are running into, and I did not know or thought that I had ran out of answer. Thanks again.

 

[MakeItSo]

databases or applications not used by the users were because the initial programmer didn't bother finding out what their needs were as opposed to what their wants were

I think, that kind of hits the point, doesn't it?
Seemingly stupid questions are often just the result of incompatible communication.
You can program the neatiest features into an application - but what if the user normally never hits that button in everyday work? He'll forget about what it's good for and how it functions. But if the programmer had listened to the user's "stupid" questions, he would have found out, what the true needs were...

You need seemingly stupid questions to find out how the user "ticks", and what he actually needs...

P.S: If something is stupid, but it works, then it's not stupid!

Just my 2 ¢...

P.P.S: Here goes a "stupid" question: Why are there $ and Euro Signs on my keyboard, but no cents? I guess M$ doesn't care for small money, does it?

 

[pmrankine]

My experience is a mixture of a few of the above posts.
I try to reassure users that their questions aren't stupid and encourage them to ask if they are not sure because:
- it can save them time trying to get something to work
- it can save problems occuring
- they are not being stupid because I wouldn't be able to do their job without training (or not at all)

If I get annoyed it's probably with myself or our department because we haven't provided adequate training or asked the right questions during a build.

Of course if there were no stupid questions then we wouldn't be any jobs for us...