Sure, I work on computers. But if you’re reading this, you probably do too. So does that automatically mean when you visit someone, they begin to unload all their computer problems on you? The Lance Howard Group is a client of Headsdown (a content management system so you can update your own webpage with no coding or web knowledge) and when they called me that they were having problems with their email (which really has nothing to do with us) I still decided to pay them a visit for PR reasons.
Yet when I got there, it was obvious this has absolutely NOTHING to do with me.
Problem 1: someone was on maternity leave. They wanted to keep the email the same, but change it so that the ‘from’ had the new girl’s name. Yeah. An Outlook setting. It has nothing to do with their web presence.
Problem 2: One of their advisers couldn’t receive their email on their computer. She could send, but not receive (once again, see how this is an email problem, not a web problem?) . Still, I tried to fix their problem.
Problem 3: the one guy couldn’t get iTunes to launch successfully (really, iTunes?).
I finally had to bow out gracefully with a ‘I’m not really your IT guy…I’m a web guy…this has nothing to do with your web presence’. I can tell by the glazed looks they heard: “Waah waah waah waah, waah waah”. Which means my PR attempt probably failed (probably because I couldn’t figure out the IPod problem).