I've resolved problems for customers for over twelve years. In that time, at least eight out of ten times, when a co-worker has asked me for help with a problem, that co-worker, and maybe even the customer, didn't understand the problem.

A simplified example of this would be when someone says "website x is broken". What does that mean? Can that person get to any websites? Does the website come up and they can't do something they want to? Does the site not fully load? Does the browser crash when they open the website? Answering any and all of those questions clarifies "website x is broken."

Consider asking the following questions:

• What are you trying to do?
• Could you do this before?
• Has anything changed on the system since the last time you could do it?
• What is happening?
• What is not happening?
• Where does the problem occur?
• Where does it not occur?
• Who does the problem occur for?
• Who does not encounter the problem?

Lets work through a contrived support issue.

Customer: Your website is broken.

Support: Ah, I understand that is frustrating. The website is working for me right now, so let's figure out why it is not working for you.

Customer: That's why I called.

Support: What are you trying to do on the website?

Customer: I want to delete item x from the shopping cart, and it won't let me.

Support: Does it give any kind of error? What do you see when you try to delete it?

Customer: I click the delete button and nothing happens. After waiting for a while, I can click on the shopping cart again, and x is still there.

Support: That sounds frustrating. Okay, I'm going to try and duplicate this. I'm logging in as a test user. I searched for x, and I added it to the cart. I clicked delete. Hm, it worked for me. I got a popup saying item deleted. Hmm. Okay, is there anything else in your cart?

Customer: Yes, I have a, b, and c in the cart.

Support: Do you remember what order you put them in the cart?

Customer: Yes, a, b, and c.

Support: Okay, I'm going to try again. I have an empty cart. I just added a. Okay, I found b and added it. Yes, there's c and I added it. And for the last one, there's x. And it's added. So, I have a, b, c, and x in my cart, in that order. That matches what you have?

Customer: Yes

Support: Okay, I'm going to try and delete it now. Hm, it worked for me. Okay, there are three more things to try. You can clear your cache, reload the page, and try to delete it. If that does not work, you can turn on developer mode and try to delete it. We might see an error code there. And finally, I can use admin privileges to delete x from your cart. If you are willing, I 'd like to work through the possibilities to find the problem and not risk it happening again.

Customer: Okay, that sounds good. … Okay, I just cleared the cached. I exited the browser and restarted it for good measure. Loading the website. Pulling up the cart. X is there. I'm clicking delete. And … it's still there. How do I enable developer mode?

Support: Are you using Chrome?

Customer: Yes.

Support: Click on the top three dots on the right and hover over More Tools, then select Developer Tools from the pop up. Click on Network, and then reload your page. Click on delete again. Did anything show up in the Network tab?

Customer: Yes. There's a red entry at the top.

Support: Excellent. Please click on that red error and more information will come up. Can you take a screenshot of that and send it to me?

Customer: Yes.

Support: Thank you for your help with that. I'll continue to research this and test on my end to try and duplicate the problem. In the meantime, I'm going to use those admin privileges to delete x from your cart. Is that acceptable?

Customer: Yes.

Organize your information.

The direction to proceed in troubleshooting, in this contrived example, depends on the error on the screenshot. For this particular issue, the entire chart probably won't need to be filled out. This is true for most issues. When you can't solve a problem, filling out the above chart often provides insight.

If the problem persists

If the problem persists at this point and you need help, that's okay. At this point, you have a good problem description, data in the form of the screenshot, and a list of things you have tried to fix the issue.

Remember to copy your problem description and chart into your ticket notes!