#DealingWithLyingEndUsers #UserSupport #CustomerService
Emojis: 🤥🔍🤷♂️👩💻
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Are you facing a situation where an end user is lying about their internet connection being kicked off? Dealing with dishonest users can be frustrating, but it’s important to handle the situation with professionalism and tact. Here are some practical tips on how to deal with lying end users effectively:
## Understanding the Situation
Before jumping to conclusions or confronting the end user, it’s essential to gather all the necessary information and evidence to validate their claim. This will help you make an informed decision on how to proceed.
### Evaluate the Evidence
– Review logs and records related to the user’s internet connection.
– Check timestamps and durations for discrepancies.
– Consult with your colleagues or manager for input.
### Consider the User’s Perspective
– Put yourself in the user’s shoes and try to understand their frustration.
– Determine if there could be any technical issues that may have caused the problem.
## Communicating with the End User
Once you have assessed the situation and gathered evidence, it’s time to communicate with the end user. Here’s how you can handle the conversation effectively:
### Stay Calm and Professional
– Remain calm and composed, even if you are certain that the user is lying.
– Avoid accusatory language or tone that could escalate the situation.
### Discuss the Evidence
– Present the evidence you have gathered calmly and objectively.
– Explain the discrepancies and inconsistencies that led you to believe the user is not telling the truth.
## Resolving the Issue
After discussing the evidence with the end user, it’s essential to find a resolution that satisfies both parties and maintains a positive relationship. Here are some tips on how to handle the situation:
### Offer Solutions
– Provide alternative solutions to address the user’s concerns.
– Suggest troubleshooting steps or workarounds to prevent future issues.
### Involve Your Manager
– If the situation escalates or becomes challenging to handle, don’t hesitate to involve your manager.
– Seek guidance and support from your superiors to resolve the issue effectively.
## Conclusion
Dealing with lying end users can be a challenging aspect of customer support, but it’s crucial to handle these situations professionally and diplomatically. By following the tips outlined above and maintaining a calm demeanor, you can effectively address the issue and find a resolution that satisfies both parties. Remember, honesty and transparency are key in maintaining a positive relationship with your end users.
Speak with your manager first to decide how to proceed
I would ask for evidence. Send me screenshots. I also humor them by giving them control “Man I’m sure you have done ____ 100 times already but can you try just one more time while you got me on the line”
And maybe their uptime was up the whole time but whatever they were using at the time was having problems. Your definition of a good internet connection could be different from theirs. Hell the browser could have just quit responding or something. Idk. Nothing you can do but get that ticket closed, hopefully educate the customer to prevent it again.
But I mean if you just need somewhere to vent about stupid people and stupid tickets my dms are open and we can have a field day.
I would never ever say “you are lying” even if they were
Your job is to help and get shit fixed. Not prove a point that’s a battle you won’t win dude.
Seriously we all agree with you probably and they probably are lying. Good luck saying “you’re lying” to a customer
I would just say something like “man from what I can see I don’t see any downtime. Can you explain to me what you mean by loss of connection? What were you doing and what happened?”
Sorry I’m at home sick today and am normally at work working my teams ticket queue. I’m their Lead, not yours. But that’s how I treated you,
Sorry.
I’m gonna go puke now.
I use to get people who would call in to get out of work all the time. It’s pretty funny when you really think about it. I’d always remote in regardless of it was bullshit. Take it as a win for a easy close ticket your stats will thank you. Seriously though remote into a machine they’d just fucking leave for 2 hrs I was out of there machine in 5 mins.
I play dumb to a point, document everything, and move on.
It’s not my job to monitor people. It’s my job to keep their tools up and running.
Ask them ‘What do you mean by kicked off the internet? I still seem to be connected, can you show me what you mean?’
Users don’t think the same way you do, and they don’t use the right terms. When something doesn’t make sense, HAVE THEM SHOW YOU EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
Communication skills will get you much further in at this level than technical skills.
Ask them ‘What do you mean by kicked off the internet? I still seem to be connected, can you show me what you mean?’
Users don’t think the same way you do, and they don’t use the right terms. When something doesn’t make sense, HAVE THEM SHOW YOU EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
Communication skills will get you much further in at this level than technical skills.
Sometimes users need more coffee and are doing something silly. (Guilty myself) Their perspective and yours can both be true.. vpn might be up but did the proxy falter? Did the vpn stumble? DNS?
Definitely check with your manager. I’d also review event viewer and VPN logs (if there are any). If you can, save those logs or get screenshots to show they didn’t lose internet connection.
Another thing worth checking is to ask the user what happens when they get kicked off the internet. Is it always with a certain application? I’m curious if this is a case where an end user doesn’t quite know what they’re talking about and an application kicking them out due to inactivity or something is the same as “being kicked off their internet connection” to them.
Users always lie. Rule one I was taught, never trust the user.
I think the why is more important. I had a user claim they kept getting kicked off the VPN and their internet and that is why their manager kept seeing them offline every time their manager randomly checked their status.
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I checked teams, the VPN logs, and outlook status.
also checked last time the user logged in to their computer and in dameware to see if their computer was turned on… it was off.
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they were not available during work hours(computer went to sleep) they tried to use IT issues as their excuse. would not reply to the manager for hours.
In other words find out why they keep lying and simply state your facts as facts on what the systems say and have recorded. also tell them to contact you directly next time this happens to troubleshoot right then and there.
more then likely they wont contact you and the issue will go away Magically. not your job to call anybody a liar. just state the facts. No time for all of that IMO
They’re not lying
I used to do this when I worked in a call center but just remotely restarted my router from my phone when WFH to avoid calls
I start by asking the user to demonstrate the issue if possible. Seeing what process or workflow caused the issue is almost always beneficial to me.
Tell them the facts you listed. Then ask them what occurs exactly when the issue occurs. Often times end users don’t understand the difference between somthing like the network dropping and somthing like an application freezing.
Don’t call them a lier straight up, show them the proof you have, then follow up with asking more questions about the occurrences. Ask for proof like a screenshot of whats occuring next time it happens.
If it continues to happen and causes issues contact management, its not your problem to manage people.
Never assume they’re lying, and never call them out on it even if you’re sure you ‘know’. Most users conflate the symptom with the actual cause, which are two different things and they don’t know how to tell the difference.
It’s far more likely their symptom is something like they can’t open a webpage, which to their perception means they’ve been kicked off the internet, when the reality is any possible number of causes other than an actual lost connection.
‘Internet broken’ becomes a browser hang, website crashed, conflicting application…
‘Printer dead’ becomes their software has crashed, computer lost connectivity, someone stuck the USB cable into the NIC port, they loaded paper the wrong way in the tray, didn’t close the tray all the way, installed the wrong printer, moved the printer and forgot to turn it back on…
‘Monitor dead’ becomes brightness/contrast settings turned down, someone kicked the cable loose, wrong input selected, driver crashed and system needs a reboot…
It can be frustrating but you have to follow their steps to see what they’re trying to do, what they’re actually experiencing, and translate that into what the actual problem is.
One of the things I tell my staff is “All users lie, sometimes they lie on purpose, sometimes they lie by accident, sometimes they do both. Treat them as truthful but verify everything.”
Many times rather then describing the symptoms of whatever is going on they jump all the way to the end of diagnosing the problem without adequate troubleshooting and report to you that they are “being kicked off the internet” without actually knowing what the hell they are talking about.
So my techs are trained to take their report as just a starting point to ask good questions about the exact symptoms that they are seeing, test and try and replicate the symptoms, eliminate unlikely causes and work towards the root cause of the problem.
If I had a $1 for every time a user came into my office and said “everything is borken!!!1!” when it was printer jam/caps lock/spilled coffee vs the apocalypse they are freakin out about I’d had retired 20 years ago.
Ahh you must be new, this just means Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Tiktok is down.
User isnt lying, they are just criminally dumb.
They aren’t lying to you in most circumstances. Something happened that they could not explain. Maybe a website was down. Maybe their DNS didn’t resolve. Maybe they timed out of a website. Have them replicate the issue or show you what happened. If it can’t be replicated, have them call you as soon as it happens again with screenshots.
If there is no issue, then you have resolved the issue. Here’s my script:
“I took a look into that and couldn’t find any specific error logs to indicate that exactly what happened. I am pushing out some generic Windows repairs to your computer which can fix weird issues like that. Let me know if it happens again, we can either reinstall Windows or wipe your computer if the issue persists.”
SFC. DISM. Ticket closed.
Are they remote or work in the office?
If remote- probably their own ISP and being disconnected from the remote session but still active on the other end till connection is restored.
If in office- possibly lieing. Could be other issues but would need more to go on
Edit: also could be there monitor turning off or going out. Cant tell you how many times ive been called before working tier 1 – tier 3 support that they told me X when it was never near X problem but a Y problem. Most EUs don’t understand technology and will say the internet went out or my pc froze if the monitor suddenly went out or batteries died in the mouse. Its unfortunately up to us and what we all get paid for to play both detective and doctor.
Easiest thing is to do a ping test to if it drops. Have them replicate. If they cannot then ask if this happens during a specific time or random. If they said it is happening while you are on a call with them. Be sure to keep that ping going the whole time. Tell them that the ping is showing a steady connection. If they still claim it and cannot reproduce it then escalate it. Maybe they need to work in the office from now on.
I did run into an End User that kept saying that and could not work. We proved that they had no connection issue. We had a record of it. It turns out that HR was aware and they had a history and was fired after we showed the evidence. So there are those that think they are clever and found a way to not do work.
It could be a brief network drop. I typically ask the users to recreate the error.
From what I see users are genuinely honest when they have issues, but when it comes to trying to work around policy that’s when the liars come out.
Couple things –
End users aren’t tech savvy. Getting “kicked off their internet connection” could be a server side issue, PC issue, anything.
End users can also lie. A lot. Just something you have to deal with.
Sometimes, its this. Other times it’s a reboot (some thing powering off and on their monitor is a reboot, others lie and know exactly what it is). If it’s harmless, just let it go. You could ask to replicate the issue, say that you see it as being up for a while and want to verify something. Or, if they want to escalate it and make it a big deal, let the manager know. Sometimes, there’s nothing to gain by calling a customer out like that. If they want to make a huge deal out of it, let the manager tell them. They’ll take it harder if someone higher up calls them out.
Is not knowing the technical term for a problem lying?
Probably an issue not related to what the user described but it might be the best description they can come up with.
Ask for errors, get on a call or screen share and confirm if and what the problem is instead of assuming, as it is the mother of all fuck ups.
I remember being in your shoes a long time ago…
You do nothing, especially in a case like this. When I just started in IT I just assumed everyone was lying, and to an extent I wasn’t wrong. After a bit I eventually realized that not *everyone* is lying and most people are just ignorant about how tech works. Plus, unless someone is lying about something illegal or being shady it’s your job to fix the issue. You only bring in your manager for serious stuff or if a user is being too angry to work with/verbally harassing you.
In this case you should get clarification on what they mean exactly by them saying they were kicked off the internet. From the user’s perspective that could be anything from the web browser crashing to their session timing out. Could even be a good ol’ 504 error.
Never call a user a liar to their face, assume ignorance, figure out what they mean exactly and go from there. The majority of the time they just have no clue how to actually explain what’s going on because a lot of people have no clue how computers actually work. So put on your best customer service voice and get to the root of the issue when they say they’re kicked off the internet.
Remember, not everyone knows as much as we know. Part of our job in IT is to not only be able to explain things to users in a way they’ll understand, but to also be able to figure out what they mean when they have issues. It’s a learned skill, but making a mountain out of a molehill will only make you look bad. Especially for something as trivial as this.
I call them out and be stern. Tell them what I think and any push back I get escalates to what I am going to tell their supervisor. Pass long the info I collected.
I once had a user promise me they were rebooting and I was frustrated because they were lying. It’s easy to see uptime on a machine of course. Turns out they thought logging out and back in was rebooting. Older lady just had no clue about anything computer related. People are often dumb and less often out to get you personally.
Kind of happened to me today:
Me: So when was the last time you restarted to computer?
User: I literally JUST restarted before calling you.
System uptime: 264:41:23
Me: …riiiight… Let’s try one more restart…
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I try to take it in stride and give them the benefit of the doubt that they dont know enough to know what “restart” or “internet connection” truely means. If it becomes a constant thing, you can always recommend general IT training to the users direct report.
Not sure what you use for monitoring, but charts, graphs, and syslogs don’t have opinions and don’t lie.
Identify his IP and time of the reported outage. Search your monitoring tool for that IP on a /32. Take screenshots.
Send them to him, and ask him to identify the time and duration of his outage.
Since he can’t/won’t reply, close the ticket, go get a beer, and laugh knowing his real issue was hardware related…. Something critical is broken between the keyboard and the back of his chair.