Twenty years ago “phone support” was not in my vocabulary. If I had to phone a large company, I expected to be put on hold forever and to yell and scream if I actually got a hold of someone.

Today, I still don’t relish calling a large company’s customer service, but “phone support” for web matters is a whole other story.

I actually remember the first time I dialed “phone support” for a computer problem. Before the computer era, when machinery didn’t work correctly, I was accustomed to taking it in to a repair place.

So I fully expected the person I phoned to direct me to a location where I could take my computer to be fixed.

To my amazement, the phone rep began telling me to go here, click this, go there, click that. Before I knew it, my problem was happily resolved.

To me it was as if the Red Sea parted. I was astonished.

That was my introduction to modern phone support.

Since then, for the most part, it’s continued to be a good experience. And we’ve all learned to unplug all our equipment and reboot before making that call, haven’t we?

A few times, I tried other methods of resolving computer or Internet problems. I’ve visited chat rooms, sent emails to customer service, read online guides, watched tutorials, or tried to navigate online manuals.

All of these other methods have frustrated me and been largely unproductive.

Solutions found in chat rooms simply didn’t work. Calling phone support worked 99.9% of the time.

There is something about the give-and-take of human conversations that makes it easier to communicate a problem.

Today, if I’m helping a client choose, say, a website or email marketing system, my main question is, “Do they have phone support?”

That’s because I know if phone support is available, my client is going to have a much smoother sailing on the Internet seas.

Easy Web Tip #92: To resolve computer or Internet problems quickly, use phone support first.