The support desk evening shift was relatively quiet tonight.  I said goodnight to coworkers, took a few calls, answered a few emails, and deleted a few spams from our trouble ticket queue.

Earlier in the day I had spoken with a long-time customer whom we’ll call Joelle. She first launched into a gushing appreciation of Indra’s Net and the attention and assistance she’s always received from us. I am often grateful at how frequently incoming calls start this way, and this history of adamantly loyal customers really makes me proud to be a part of Indra’s Net.

Joelle explained that while she loved having Indra’s Net as her ISP, she didn’t carry the same torch for her telco DSL provider and as such had moved her internet service to another company. She was calling to cancel her Indra account, and I explained that while she didn’t require DSL service through Indra’s Net any longer, she could still keep her email address with us if she wished. Her tone instantly went from dispirited to gleeful, and we made arrangements to make that happen.

Hours later, with only a few minutes left before closing time, Joelle called again. Her new internet connection was working, but her Indra’s Net email wasn’t. I gathered that as a previous DSL customer she likely wasn’t configured for authentication from outside networks, so we started looking at her email client settings.

ME: “Click on ‘tools’ in the menu bar.  Scroll down to ‘accounts’ and select that.” [long pause, no response] “Found it?”
Joelle: “Wait. I’m going. [pause] Is it ‘options’?”
ME: “No, it’s just above ‘options’ at the bottom of the menu. See it?”
Joelle: “Hold on, I have to start over.”
ME: [waits] “So you see ‘tools’ in the menu bar, right?”
Joelle: “Ummm. Hold on. Yes, got it. Now what again?”
ME: “Scroll down to ‘accounts’, which is second from the bottom.”
Joelle: “Okay, wait a minute. [pause] Got it.  Do I hit enter here?”
ME: “Just click it.”
Joelle: “I need you to tell me the keystrokes.”

I’m a little baffled by this, since while I have a few keyboard shortcuts memorized, I certainly don’t know them all or exclude the use of the mouse when it’s most convenient.

ME: “Okay.” [shrug] “Hit enter on ‘accounts’.”

We struggled through many iterations of this, getting a little further each time. I would give clear, simple instructions, which she would follow up to a point and then lose her location and need to start over. She asked me again if I knew the keyboard hotkeys to do what I was describing. I didn’t. She kept naming all of the clickable buttons surrounding the sub-window we needed to get to, but she couldn’t highlight her Indra profile in order to select the ‘properties’ button to edit it. We were at an impasse.

ME: “So, in the center frame of the ‘accounts’ window is a list of your defined email accounts, yes?  There should be a line there mentioning, or with some logical connection to your Indra email account. Either your email address or a hostname with the word ‘indra’ in it.  Do you see that?”

There was a very long pause, and I was growing increasingly confused at why she was having such a hard time following my instructions.

Joelle: “I’m blind.”

My brain did a backflip and I finally understood. I also cringed mentally at the number of times I’d asked Joelle if she could “see” what I was talking about. Her pauses were not because she didn’t understand, but because she was waiting for her computer to speak/read to her the contents of her screen each time it changed. Every time I instructed her to find a tab or a button or a drop-down menu item, she had to explore the new window with keystrokes until (in my imagination) the Hawking Voice told her what window she was in and where her “mouse selection” was hovering.

I ‘clicked’ into this new reality. It was 5 minutes until closing for the night.

ME: “Where are you?”
Joelle: [exasperated] “I’m at the ‘accounts’ window again.”
ME: “No, I mean physically. Where do you live?”
Joelle: “Longmont?”
[we discuss nearby cross streets]
ME: “I live in Longmont too, I know exactly where you are, and I’m leaving work in 5 minutes. Would you like me to stop by and help you in person?”
Joelle: “Yes! Would you really do that?”

When I first started working with Indra’s tech support staff, I’d asked whether we ever did house calls. The answer was no, that it was way beyond our responsibility or staffing levels to do so. However since I’d be ‘off the clock’ in a few minutes, this was just doing a favor for someone on my way home.

We hung up, and I quickly determined the exact sequence of keystrokes needed to configure Joelle’s email client correctly with my eyes closed. I called her back and talked her through it. She sent me a test message, I sent back a response, and I wished her goodnight. No house call would be necessary after all.

That was an experience I won’t soon forget, and a reminder about subconscious assumptions that I’m sure I needed.