IAQs: Infrequently Asked Questions
The question that is driving me crazy is never included in officious, unhelpful Frequently Asked Questions. It doesn’t matter how or what, why or when, the flummoxing, life-stopping problem is not covered there. Even when I squint, reconsider my problem, or go back to basics, there is no solution for me and my question.
Am I special this way?
Or have I stumped the professionals?
Do I get a prize?
I imagine them clustered in a conference room, sipping bad coffee, gumming terrible doughnuts. They’ve been dragged in to help out the customer service team or whatever unfortunate team has been designated problem solvers. Rocking in chairs, surreptitiously checking phones, outright doodling, they brainstorm the most ridiculous, stupid things people could do with the company’s brilliant cameras, computers, phones, all perfectly wonderful logical products. Possibly, they have an image of the dumpy idiots who have no intuition, who are not smart, who couldn’t figure their way out of a paper bag. I bet they throw darts and make fun of us.
I hope they are kinder than that, but bet they’re not. The doughnuts are pitiful.
Once the ultimate FAQs List has been debated, laughed over, carefully assembled to ensure happy customers, they shuffle out of the room, out to their real jobs, back to doing what really matters. Later, the shiny FAQs are launched into the world, imperious support for the fools who can’t figure it out.
I am one of those fools. Always have been, probably always will be.
I was the annoying kid who came at assignments sideways from an unknown galaxy. From grade school through business school, I was the kid who asked why, the person who wanted to know why the farmers in the collective couldn’t coordinate when to bring in their cranberries in for processing rather than force complex logistical manueuvers on overwhelmed facilities.
I think different. It’s not anything I’m proud of or go out of my way to do. It’s what I do. If we are to believe neuropsychological studies, people like me enrich, enliven, offer levity and innovation to the world.
That’s what I like to believe.
In the meantime, until collective angst blows up FAQs (because I cannot believe I am alone in this), I suggest those smart, fantastically brilliant creators of intuitive, perfect devices:
Create an Infrequently Asked Questions Section
Even with the answers to the most rarefied and oddball questions, I guarantee calls will come through that don’t fit and that there will more of them than you might expect — and I bet they’ll be really good questions, ones that make your people think, consider how their product is used in the real world of people with head colds, cranky dogs, and too much rain.
