Diagnosing Customers

This article details what to expect, how to handle yourself, and how to position information to the customer for interactions at the front counter. This includes overall attitude, strategies for obtaining useful information from the customer, and expected time up front.

Overall Attitude

Every customer that walks through the door at University PC Care is an opportunity for a positive first impression. Customers are usually not in the greatest mood when they come to us since their visit usually involves a broken, virus-ridden, non-booting, or otherwise not-very-functional device. Whatever the case may be, right off the bat we want customers to feel welcome. Keep in mind this will not only help the customer, this will also better your experience providing service due to the fact the attitude is contagious. You want them to catch your enthusiasm and excitement rather than you catch their worry and frustration.

Obtaining Useful Information

The customer brings their device to us for a reason; typically because they don't know what's going on with the device and they can't find a solution to the problem. The customer will try to explain the situation to the best of their ability in terms that they understand, and it is then our responsibility to ask further probing questions in an attempt to ascertain the root cause of their problem and a proposed solution to fix their device..

Probing Questions

A probe is a question or other request for information. There are two general types of probes: open probes and closed probes. Open probes encourage customers to respond freely. Closed probes limit a customer’s response to a yes/no or specific answer.*

Examples

A customer brings in a computer with a cracked display and WiFi is not working.

1. (open) How long has this issue been going on for?
2. (closed) Did this issue start after it was dropped?

A customer brings in a device that gets stuck on the startup screen.

1. (open) What was going on with the device before the computer crashed?
2. (closed) Has it booted at all since?

Visual Inspection

It is important to complete a quick and thorough visual inspection of any device that is brought to us. Often, issues can be identified or hinted at by the physical condition of the device. Additionally, a visual inspection may identify accidental damage in the customer’s device that they may not have noticed - pointing this out to the customer during the check-in process will curtail any potential doubts about the origin of physical damage. Not inspecting and pointing out damage (if any) could open the door to questions of liability and fault later in the repair process.

Expected Time Up Front

Like anything else we do, practice makes perfect. We expect everyone who works here to get better over time at all the duties and tasks we handle on a daily basis.

You should be able to get an initial diagnosis and get the customer checked-in within 5-10 minutes at the front counter with them. If it looks like a customer is more interested in asking questions than wanting to check in a device, offer them an Unscheduled Quick Help to address those and any additional questions they may have. If they decline, inform the customer in a respectful yet clear manner that we are more than happy to answer their questions during the check-in process but, unfortunately, we need to charge for any additional time beyond the 5-10 minutes we have already allotted for this check-in.

Goal

The goal is to provide a basic understanding on how a full customer interaction should go. We hope that after reading this article you can build a strong foundation to grow off of. \

*This definition is a direct copy from the Apple module "Asking Questions" from ATLAS, which is another great tool to use that will help with diagnosing problems based on customer input.