Gordaen’s Blog

I’m not sure if anyone of any significant influence reads my blog regularly (God, are you there?), but that doesn’t prevent me from rambling about something everyone hates: being talked down to. No matter how stupid you are, you want to be considered intelligent and you appreciate someone who values your level of knowledge. Of course, it works both ways; you don’t want to hear overly technical terms either. Communication is a bridge that works best when crossing the middle ground (since bridges typically cross ground and not rivers, right? stupid analogies…).

If you tell someone, “The orthomode transducer is not successfully separating the orthogonally polarized signals,” the average person might hear “not successful” and assume what you are saying is bad, but if you continue speaking s/he is likely to go into ignore mode quickly. Similarly, if you tell someone, “Your car is not working because the engine is not turning on,” that person is likely to think you’re an idiot and not helpful (particularly if s/he has any mechanical knowledge).

I bring this up because I think nearly all contact forms should have a dropdown to select your level of knowledge on the particular subject. If you’re filling out a complaint about your cable service and you know what you are talking about, you don’t want the typical, generic “Have you tried turning it off and then back on?” response. The one that sparked this post was with USAA (and, incidentally, the first time I have ever been disappointed with USAA). They have a broken link on their site, so I thought I would be a nice user and let them know. I copied and pasted the URL of the page with the faulty link as well as where it was attempting to link to. I gave all the explanation necessary (X link is broken, Y link works). Eventually, I received this vastly useful (form) response:

Thank you for your e-mail regarding usaa.com. The problem you are experiencing may be a cache issue within the browser. To correct this issue, you will need to first be logged off of the USAA Web site. You will then need to go into your browser and clear out the cache or temporary Internet files. Please perform the following steps:

Netscape Users:

1. Select ‘Edit’
2. Select ‘Preferences’ in the drop down menu that appears
3. Select the ‘+’ sign next to ‘Advanced’ in the left-hand column that appears in the new box
4. Select ‘Cache’
5. Select both buttons that appear, ‘Clear Memory Cache’ and ‘Clear Disk Memory’
6. Select ‘Every Time’ towards the bottom of this screen and then exit from the entire menu
7. Close the dialogue box, log onto usaa.com and try again

Explorer Users:

1. Select ‘Tools’
2. Select ‘Internet Options’
3. Under ‘Temporary Internet Files’, select ‘Delete Files’
4. Under ‘History’, select ‘Clear History’
5. Close the dialogue box and log off of Internet Explorer
6. Open Internet Explorer, log onto usaa.com and try again

If you need further assistance, please contact us by e-mail using the ‘Contact Us’ feature at usaa.com.

Thank you,
USAA

As a web developer, this amazes me on many levels. Typically, a user does not report broken links, so reports of broken links should be reviewed. Caching could cause a broken link, but a quick check of the page would have revealed that is a current problem (and a quick look at my user agent would have given them all the more reason to double-check the link; most people aren’t using Firefox on Linux). Netscape? Is this message from 1995? I’d be surprised if Netscape users represented a large fraction of a single percent of all Internet users today. If they really wanted to provide directions for caching, they should check the user agent submitting the message and give specific directions for that browser. About 43% of users don’t use either of these browsers and I’d be willing to bet that IE7 (which represents nearly 20% of the market) needs slightly different directions.

Anyway, before this post becomes so long that no one reads it, I’ll (re)make my point. If the contact form had a dropdown box where I could select my knowledge level (preferably one that says, “I’m smarter than whoever/whatever generates your generic reply), then they would have at least two options. They could send a different generic reply with more useful and less insulting assistance or they could realize that an “advanced” user is likely to be reporting a real issue and they could review the site to find out it is an actual problem. Instead, they insult me (”It’s your (browser’s) fault. Fix it yourself!”), and I become far less likely to want to help them out in the future.

In all fairness, this isn’t the first large website to ignore user feedback. I’ve even blogged about my issues with Amazon before.