Every once in a while, I see tickets from the queue at work where customer replies are just ridiculous. Not only are some people incapable of understanding the most basic of concepts, even after them being explained, but sometimes they don’t get it, even when their original ticket seemed to indicate that they had a basic understand to begin with.

Here is a great example:

Entered on 10/06/2011 at 15:55:29 PDT by steve@***.com:
From what I see, our mail server rejected the “MAIL3” name because it is not a fully-qualified name like MAIL3.server.net

Going by the issue outlined, it appears that the customer is just looking for some clarification on the problem he is facing. Simple, right? Let’s give him that clarification:

Entered on 10/06/2011 at 18:47:23 PDT by C.D.:
Try assigning a fully-qualified name. Be sure to include a top-level domain such as .com or .net. Please let us know if we can be of further assistance, thank you.

Perfect. We gave him basic instructions to use a FQDN in order to send mail to a particular server. Case closed.

Entered on 10/06/2011 at 19:47:21 PDT by steve@***.com:
I don’t understand

Steve Nobody
President/CEO

How did you write the original response if you can’t understand our reply? The easy answer is that you didn’t write the original response, but if that is the case, why be our point of contact for this problem? There is no attempt to ask questions, or even care about understanding the problem at hand, not to mention that it is their problem and not ours. You’re a CEO of some company. You should grasp the importance of having someone competent work on technicals. This someone is not you.

If you are a CEO, attempting to work on technical problems that you don’t understand, please don’t think that by simply admitting you don’t understand something that you are entitled to some kind of special explanation that suits your lack of basic concepts.