When clients and class students email us a question, we answer. It’s not always right away, but since everybody in the team has access to our shared public email address, somebody’s going to be available sooner or later to give a good answer.
But when people I don’t know email me with a technical support question, I respond with a GMail canned response:
Thank you for thinking of us! We’re busy tending to sick SQL Servers, so for questions, here are a few ways to get an answer:
- Free, at StackExchange 24/7 – post your question at https://DBA.StackExchange.com, and if you don’t get a good answer within a day, email me the link to the question. The geeks here love answering those.
- Free, at our weekly Office Hours – on Wednesdays, we do open Q&A. Bring your question, but make it as brief and clear as possible to get the best chance of it being picked. You can register for the next one here: https://www.brentozar.com/office-hours-podcast/
- With consulting or onsite training – we relieve SQL Server pains with our 3-day SQL Critical Care® process for $6,995. To learn more and read sample deliverables, go here: https://www.brentozar.com/sql-critical-care/
Hope that helps!
Brent
I’ve had this same approach for years, and it’s not the only right way. For example, lots of business books will tell you that you should never turn away a future customer. Answer their questions today, and maybe they’ll pay you back with loyal business tomorrow. I can totally understand why people would follow that philosophy.
It’s not like I’m pawning the work off, either. Check the DBA.se users page, and you’ll see that I’m a frequent answerer myself.
I just strongly, strongly believe in growing the online data professional community.
DBA.StackExchange.com
I believe that the faster a data professional discovers the online community, the better off they’ll be. I also believe that DBA.se is the fastest way for them to learn the rules of the road: how to craft a good question, how to work with others to get the right answer, and then longer-term, how to improve their own online reputation.
Getting one of your questions answered online, in public, is a gateway to participating in SQLslack, going to SQLSaturdays and local user groups, then eventually maybe even giving back by starting their own blog or delivering their own presentation.
I make less money this way, but who cares? It gets people hooked on free public help instead of expensive private consulting.
For me, teaching people to fish is just the most personally rewarding approach. Every time I see someone email us in a question, get that canned reply, then proceed to post that same question out on DBA.se, I’m ecstatic. It’s another new community member getting their wings.
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A simple tweet from Brent helped me get my wings in the public forums. https://twitter.com/BrentO/status/14706748630
Woohoo! That’s awesome to hear.
The mixed metaphors in the final paragraphs hurts my ears 🙂
I sometimes have a question that isn’t a good fit for Stack Exchange – e.g. where would you go to start learning about some topic. It’s a question that would be closed as primary opinion based or something.
I feel like it might be a good question to ask at Office Hours, but due to me living on the other side of the world – getting to office hours isn’t all that easy (you guys start at about 3am). I listen to your podcast weekly and really appreciate the time that you guys give and have had all sorts of questions answered, but was wondering if you’d ever thought of having a way to ask questions on Office Hours without being there, and then listening to the answers on the podcast (or reading them transcribed)?
Greg – no, but check out #SQLhelp. It’s phenomenal for opinion questions like that.
https://www.brentozar.com/go/sqlhelp
If you don’t use Twitter, check out the SQLhelp channel in slack:
https://sqlslack.com
I couldn’t agree with you more.
“I believe that the faster a data professional discovers the online community, the better off they’ll be.”
Do you ever customize where you direct folks based on the question?
Like “please open an issue on the first responder kit” or “try #sqlhelp on Twitter”
BTW, I like this kind of post. Do you have any more canned response templates for “I won’t blog about your company” Or “No thank you, I have to pass on that Oracle DBA gig”
If it’s asking for help on the FRK, I have a much more to-the-point manual reply – I just say, “For help with the First Responder Kit, check the readme.txt.” I’m pretty blunt with that because it’s in multiple places.
For job posts, I use this one: https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2012/09/email-templates-for-recruiters-questions/