A user calls the help desk because a business-critical Windows application will not launch. After several minutes of basic checks, the user becomes irritated and accuses you of wasting their time. According to CompTIA's troubleshooting methodology, what is the MOST appropriate next action?
Tell the user to perform a full operating-system reinstallation to eliminate possible corruption.
Terminate the call and document that the user was uncooperative.
Politely acknowledge the frustration and ask clarifying questions about the symptoms, recent changes and any error messages.
Advise the user to contact the application vendor directly since the software is third-party.
CompTIA's first troubleshooting step is Identify the problem, which explicitly includes questioning the user and gathering information. Acknowledge the user's frustration and continue asking open-ended, clarifying questions to collect the details needed to isolate the cause. Redirecting the user to another party, ending the call, or suggesting a complete OS reinstall all skip the information-gathering phase and risk prolonging the outage.
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How should open-ended questions be used in troubleshooting?