Showing posts with label Difficult Users. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Difficult Users. Show all posts

February 20, 2008

Difficult IT Users and Enterprise Architecture

User-centric Enterprise Architecture focuses on serving the business and IT end-user with useful and usable information products and governance services. But what do architects need to know about the types of users they face out there?

ComputerWorld, 4 February 2008, reports on “The 5 Users from Hell: Difficult IT customers can drive you crazy.”

Here are the 5 types of users:

  1. The Know-It-All—he knows a little HTML, and he defragged his hard drive once, so now he thinks he knows more than you. He often refuses to follow policies and instructions and has been known to poke his head into the server room ‘just to see what you’re up to to.’
  2. The Know-Nothing—this is the clueless user who looks in vain for the ‘Any’ key when his computer prompts him to ‘hit any key’…requires hand-holding for even the simplest tasks. He demands attention and may need multiple visits. Also, he’s frequently unable to articulate problems.
  3. Mr. Entitlement—often heard uttering the phrase, ‘Do you know who I am?’…He may be the CEO…or he may be a peon…who thinks he’s entitled simply because you’re in customer service.
  4. The Finger-Pointer—he never thinks (or at least, never admits) that he’s in any way to blame for any of his problems—you are.”
  5. The TwentySomething Whiz Kid—“this person has dozens of freeware applications on his computer, along with three IM clients and a passel of unauthorized open-source software, and he knows how to use a proxy web site to bypass the company firewall.”

And the 6 type of user is The Angel—“They take the knowledge you give them to solve one problem and are able to apply it to another problem…My dream user is someone who actually listens to what I have to say.”

Obviously serving any sort of customer is never easy. It means that we have to provide products and services to customers, who may be annoying, rude, arrogant, and less than grateful. They may actually be a “bear” to handle, but it’s our job to deal with them gracefully and provide them top notch service. And so we shall, heads held up high.
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