Talking down to and marginalizing users
A typical scenario provides a sin by omission: A tech-oriented person such as a network specialist goes to a user area to resolve a network issue. The user patiently waits at his or her desk, the technician works to resolve the problem, and problem solved, the technician, often without saying a word the entire time, gets ready to leave. Naturally, the user wants to know what was wrong.
I’ve known IT professionals in this role who’ve answered the user’s question with an unintelligible, grunted response, or have spit out an acronym like “AD lockout,” which means nothing to the user. Intimated, the user stops asking questions.
There is lasting impact from this. Users feel marginalized, and they don’t feel they can communicate with IT, which can introduce future problems for the organization and leave the IT department poorly perceived by business colleagues.
