Tech support takes a lot of critical thinking. The user usually doesn't know how to properly articulate what the issue is, so you have to read between the lines and fill in the gaps. You'll have plenty of logs and other data to potentially comb through, so you need to be able to quickly pick up on relevant information. And, once you have a starting point, you need to be able to follow the thread all the way to its conclusion. While a lot of these thought processes seem obvious to me, I'm learning that they aren't necessarily obvious to everyone. With that in mind, here's a very basic real-world case study of what goes through my mind when I'm troubleshooting something.