Troubleshooting Questions & Probing Questions

When you are dealing with a client query, it is important to ask questions to get the right answer/result. By asking the right question, it can help guide you to a possible solution and even inform you of what the issue is.

These questions are not by any means the limit of what you can ask, however, these are here to help guide you as you establish what the issue is.

Key establishing questions

• What is the exact error message you are receiving?

• How long has the issue been occurring?

• Can you replicate this issue yourself?

• Can you talk me through step-by-step/click-by-click what exactly is happening?

• Is this an isolated issue or happening on multiple devices?

• What steps have you taken to try and resolve this issue so far?

Investigation Questions

Open

Other Related Questions

You may find you need additional information from the client especially if you need to refer the case to a developer for further investigation. The questions below will help you gather that additional information that would prove useful

• What is the specific category/event/ticket/order you are looking at?

• Have you had any other occurrences of this happening?

• What internet browser are you using? (I.E. Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge etc.)

• What device are you using? (I.E. Windows Computer, iPad, Android Tablet, iPhone/Samsung phone etc.)

• Has this issue happened before?

Intermittent Issues

Sometimes clients will report an issue that only happens occasionally, or once in a while. This is extremely difficult for us to troubleshoot as we cannot always replicate the issue being reported. However, there are a few key things that we can do to try to get as much information as possible.

The key thing that we need to do is establish a pattern of behaviour. This means, what happens before, during, and after the issue occurred. Things we need to consider are;

• Which user account was being used when the issue happened?

• What internet browser?

• What software is running in the background?

• What was the task previous to the issue?

• Were there any specific error messages that came up?

• What happened after the issue occurred? Did the till/computer restart? Did the software restart?

• What did the client do to resolve the issue if at all?

• Were there any antivirus or firewall software scans during the time in which the issue occurred?

• Were there any windows updates being downloaded or installed?

This can help us build a better picture of the issue at hand and if required, help us narrow down where in the logs to try and identify the issue.

It is also important to log the date and time of when the issue occurred.

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