It irks me to no end whenever someone asks for tech assistance but provides absolutely nothing for me to work with. Tickets like “My X software is broke. How do I fix it?” or “My web site is all messed up. Please do something.” drive me nuts. It is like telling your doctor you’re sick.

If you want tech support to help you, you first need to help yourself and get as much information as possible so they can arrive at the most possible conclusions quickly. Yes, I understand sometimes we don’t have the technical understanding or vocabulary to express our problems clearly. But at least try.

Back to the doctor analogy. We aren’t all physicians but yet we can always describe and give our doctors more information so they can properly diagnose us.

Have a problem getting something to work on your page? Let tech support know what you’ve already tried, what are the specific errors if any, grab a screen shot and send them a URL of the problem page. It’ll help tech support resolve your problems quickly and save you lots of time going back and forth.

P/S: Screen shots are so very valuable. All you need to do is to hit the Print Screen key, open up your image editor or a program like Paint that comes with your computer. Paste and save.