Testing is the fundamental difference between good support and terrible customer experiences. Everyone has that family member or friend who are so gullible. In technology, you have to teach not blindly believing in technology and that you’re just getting started when setup is done.
Whether it’s ego or optimistic faith in technology, failure to test is one of the most common mistakes. Not only do technocrats make this error, but regular folks commit the same blunder.
The fact is that most things you try with technology fail the first time. You should be pessimistic about outcomes and plan to correct any subsequent problems.
Following those updates and server restart, it’s not enough to just see the logon screen displayed. Check the Event Viewer for errors, verify data shares are available, and access remote desktops. We know updates are done during off-hours, but this is quality control and saves everyone stress the next morning.
Regular users aren’t off the hook. Before you let that technical call go, try out your normal routine like Outlook works, printing, or that common transaction in QuickBooks. Take these steps even if the original problem seemingly has nothing to do with anything else. Neither you or technical support are clairvoyant and there is the likely chance that a fix for one thing breaks another.
Testing is mostly science and a tiny part thinking out of the box. Besides testing what you believe you fixed, sometimes you must learn how to break technology or test unusual approaches the uninitiated may try. Just don’t make the sin of believing those instructions on the Internet and not making sure all is right with the world before moving on.