As you listen, you need to listen to more than simply the problem or question that is being described to you. You need to pay attention to where the user is coming from. What was the first time they notice they had a question or problem? What have they already done to try and resolve it? How well do they understand their own problem or question? How strong is their technical background? These are all questions that help you understand the situation from the users perspective and will help you figure out what gaps of knowledge you will have to fill in later.

Understanding what the user is telling you clearly is very important. Part of this understanding is that you have to know exactly what is meant when a certain statement is open to interpretation. If there is more ways than one to interpret a certain statement and the context provided does not help you to know which of those ways is the right one, you will need to ask for clarification. This can be done by common phrases such as: "Sorry to interrupt you, but if I understand correctly you mean that..." or "Am I right to understand that..."

Get the clarifications at times that you do not seriously throw the user of course explaining their question or problem. Sometimes it is best to make a quick note and ask your question when the user finishes explaining his or her point. If it is a particular long introduction to the problem, you may need to interrupt. If so, apologize for your interruption.

Once the user stops speaking, you may be missing parts of what the problem is. Before continuing to fix their issue, you should ask specific questions to get the missing bits and pieces together. When you ask questions, you need to consider if you want a yes/no answer, or if you need more detailed information. When you need more detail, it is important to use an open question that requires the user to explain further. If you just want to know whether or not something specific happened you need to ask a specific yes/no question. For example:

Open question: Did you see any further messages from the system?

Yes/No question: When you clicked finish, did you see an error saying 'Error 12: Invalid operation'?

People feel naturally uncomfortable with silence in conversations. You can use this to get people to give you more details about their question or problem. When the user explains rather briefly what their problem is and you want to know more, you can ask questions as explained in the previous section, or you can use the power of silence.

To use the power of silence you need to be silent. That sounds very simple, because it is very simple. An example of how this can be done effectively is the conversation below between a support tech (ST) and a user (U).

Notice how the support tech only had to ask one question to get the information? This is the power of silence. It would have been much harder to guess that the power was out without the user volunteering additional information.

Emotion is a very important factor in human communication. We are very sensitive beings when it comes to emotion, but, unfortunately, we are less capable of interpreting emotion when we are not talking to someone face-to-face. In technical support there is one particular emotion that you have to deal with that strongly affects communication, anger, and related emotions such as: frustration, irritation, and annoyance. Anger makes the mind focus on the negative aspects of any situation and prevents the user from being able to think in more constructive ways.

Sometimes anger is expressed plainly by a user, but oftentimes it will be hidden. Most of us have learned not to express our anger until we reach a breaking point, at which time anger will become fury. As a support engineer you want to understand the user's emotion so you can adjust your style of communication before aggravating the user further. If anger normally comes in subtle signs and we are less apt to see these subtle signs without talking to a person face-to-face, the it is easy to see the challenge to detect anger in written form or through the phone.

When you are on the phone with someone you can hear sarcasm and cynicism much easier than when you have to pick it up from written text. The tone of someone's voice will tell you a lot about their emotional state. Someone that is upset will speak in a distinctively different tone from someone who is happy. Use this tone of voice as a tool to understand the other person's emotions.

When all you have to go on is what the other person is saying you will need to resort to evaluating the words and wording that this person chooses. Be particularly aware of phrases such as: "I expect this to be fixed once and for all this time," (anger), "This has happened before," (irritation), and "No one has been able to help me with this issue," (frustration). The only real way to learn to detect emotion in written form is through experience and it pays to be consciously receptive to emotion implied by text.

For further help on learning to recognize emotion in communication, see the role playing exercise in this chapter.