Only 2% of Technology Users Try to Find a Solution to a Problem Online
by
on November 16, 2008,
A study released today by Pew Research proves an obvious fact: technology and gadgets are not particularly user-friendly and nearly half of all users need help setting up their devices or learning how to use them. The paradox is quite obvious to me: the latest and greatest technology tools are intended to make our lives easier yet learning how to make life easier takes some time first. And even after everything is up and running, chances are you will still face a problem and will need to find a remedy somewhere.
In fact, all the technology tools that we use on a daily basis tend to fail according to the people surveyed as many respondents reported failures with various tools during the previous year: home internet access (44% of respondents), computers (39%), cell phones (29%), smart phones (26%), and music players (15%). This means that whatever technology tool you use, you are still very likely to experience a problem - be it a manufacturer’s fault or something you yourself do wrong.
What’s more important, while 72% of respondents said they were confident they would be able to fix the device anyway after using a range of available options, there were still 15% of people who reported they were not able to fix a broken device anyway and stopped trying. And of course it is not surprising that many people felt a wide range of negative emotions because of their technology products failure: impatience - 59%, discouragement - 48%, confusion - 40%.
When it comes to fixing the problems when they emerge, 28% found a solution successfully on their own but as many as 38% had to contact customer support to get help. At that for some people (15%) friends and family members who are more tech-savvy are the people to turn to when a product fails while 2% ventured online to find a solution for a problem there.
The most surprising thing of the entire study to me is the tiny 2% of people actually trying to have a problem fixed by looking for a solution online. I somehow thought that in this age everyone must know that you can find just about anything online so an answer to a question anyone ever asked must be already available online. So if you have a similar question or problem, you will be likely to find an answer or a solution if you are looking in the right place.
After all, many manufacturers already have their knowledge bases where all users can report their problems and company support engineers can offer solutions - and searching in the support forum must be easier than waiting on the phone like for a customer representative to answer your questions. Besides, there are multiple discussion forums, Q&A sites, topical forums where users who already know the problem and the solution are generous enough to share their knowledge.
But for some reason checking for an answer online somehow just does not occur to us and we either go and ask a friend who owns the same device or who simply understands technology better or call a customer help line - and spend endless line waiting when we could probably easily find an answer on the support forum of this company.
I have to admit that I myself often am too lazy to go looking for a solution online - even if all the problems I experienced invariably were fixed whenever I actually tried to find an answer on an online support forum or on blogs of people reporting similar problems along with available solutions.
At that it is hard to argue that making fixes for potential problems easily available online is cost-efficient to companies as well - at least for those that know their customers are tech-savvy enough to try and fix the problems on their own. It is rather difficult for me to understand how customers should be persuaded to use online tools to find remedies for their broken technology tools but I am sure that after studying the results of this research technology companies should both focus their efforts on making their products more user-friendly for people to need help and support less and less frequently and also on making their online support options more available to users - at least to cut costs on customer support service.
