When you are providing telephone based technical support you are for all purposes blind.

You need the user at the other end to act as your proxy and your eyes.

However sometimes end users aren’t the most reliable of witnesses.

Example:-

I had a user who could not view content on a web page but others in the same office could.

The user says “no I just get a blank screen”.

This was not exactly the case.

The user had an Internet Explorer security pop up appear at the top part of the browser. It wanted to install an Active X Control that would allow the user to view the content.

So sometimes 20 years in tech can be useful.

I got the user to start over and I heard the error beep (that sounded when the Internet Explorer security kicked in). I knew exactly what it was from the audible sound.