How will that help?? Decoding the troubleshooting advice of your customer service agent

Image credit to picjumbo.com

Working in customer service is a crash course in…everything. The job requires an understanding in every aspect of a business because the customer could be impacted by every aspect of that business. In my two service experiences, I have had to learn how to change a tire, file an insurance claim, the cost of tailoring a blazer, the impact of privacy legislation, and of course, how to troubleshoot a website that isn’t quite behaving as you’d like it to.

As an advocate, I like to understand why I’m asking someone to do something and as a user, I trust my advocate if they show a deeper understanding of the problem. Let’s learn a little bit more about why our CX or IT agents always advises us to try these three methods before filing a bug ticket.

Did you turn it off and on again? (or log out and log back in)

There’s a lot that goes into a launch. Image credit to Pixaby.

It might be intimidating to read that “computers and computer programs execute state-based processes,” but it shouldn’t be — because all things execute state-based processes! If you were in your home and needed to buy milk, you would have to change your state and find a way to the grocery store. If you somehow ended up at the hardware store, no matter how many times you tried to buy milk, you would not be able to.

I can’t imagine how you might have ended up at the hardware store, but that’s okay because most of us can’t imagine how a computer program will get stuck in the wrong state — and we don’t need to! All we need to know is that a production app or website probably gets it right 99% of the time and so if a rounding error sent us off into bugland, resetting our state by starting the process over will likely bring us back to a happy user experience. If it doesn’t, we’ve at least eliminated one possibility and we can move forward in our troubleshooting.

Clear your cache (and your cookies too just to be safe)

Now isn’t that better? Image credit to Pixaby.

Cache and cookies are pieces of information that your internet browser stores to help it run. They have slightly different uses, so we’ll address one at a time. A common use of a cache is for saving images. Image files can be large and take a long time to load when being accessed on the internet. If an image from a web page is saved (in a cache) the first time it’s loaded, however, that data can be more easily accessed the next time a user visits that page. That means a faster load time and less waiting — great!

But what if something about the image, or any other data saved in the cache has changed since it was first saved? You might be looking at an outdated web page or, worse, a partially updated website that is so dysfunctional that we had to call customer service for help! Clearing your cache, like resetting your computer, sets the state of a bunch of processes back at 0, giving them another chance to run from their intended start and produce the expected results.

Cookies are similar to cache in that they store data for future use, but they have a slightly different application. They keep track of things like activity and preferences, so you can thank cookies for keeping you logged into Gmail even after you close your browser or even restart your computer. You can also thank them for their other well-known function: saving data on websites you visit to help advertisers determine your shopping preferences. Privacy concerns aside, it’s likely becoming clear why cookies could be responsible for a website’s unexpected behavior (hint — we’re resetting our state).

Clearing your cookies and cache is different in every browser, so here’s a handy article that should help in case you want to give it a try. It can be a pain in the short-term because clearing your cache will cause certain sites to load a bit slower and clearing your cookies will log you out of EVERYTHING, but it’s good practice even if you’re not noticing issues. Think of it as spring cleaning — things that once seemed really important end up just taking up space after some time has passed.

Try it in a different browser

Image credit to Deepanker Verma

A browser is basically a translator — it takes written code (generally HTML, CSS, and Javascript) and turns it into a web interface. But not every browser interprets code in the exact same way and not every browser updates their interpretation at once.

Programming languages are constantly evolving to make coding easier and more efficient. When a new feature of a language is introduced, it may be up to a browser to support that function. For instance, if I want to use the CSS transform property to help arrange some pictures on my website in a circle, it’ll look great on Google Chrome but won’t quite work on Internet Explorer (check out the Pepsi logo in IE8 in the image below). If the website you’re accessing uses cutting-edge CSS or Javascript features, it might not function properly (buttons not working, page doesn’t load) unless you update your browser.

Image by Stephen Greig, who did an awesome series on CSS that can be found here.

These differences are magnified when it comes to browsing on a mobile device or tablet. Because of a different screen shape or obscure browser, certain items may be missing from a web page or be difficult to interact with. The customer service team will usually know what type of device and what browser will best support their product, so it’s worthwhile to take their advice and get the best possible experience.

It’s likely that very few of us will ever know exactly what causes a problem online and how to fix it, so my perspective has always been to simplify and reduce variables through process of elimination. By resetting state when appropriate through resets, refreshes, and clearing data, I can get closer to finding the source of an issue, addressing it, and happily browsing in perpetuity.