One of my old bosses told me, "remove the phrase 'it works for me' from your vocabulary. If it worked for _them_, they wouldn't be bringing their problem to you."
This made me realize that the phrase "it works for me" can be dismissive and condescending, and that I should spend at least a little bit of time under the assumption that I am the one that screwed up (personally, my team, or my company) until I can prove otherwise. Anecdotally, I'd say 90% of the time it is either a bug or poorly documented processes -- and those can be fixed! Only about 10% of the time is it truly users doing something stupid.
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One of my old bosses told me, "remove the phrase 'it works for me' from your vocabulary. If it worked for _them_, they wouldn't be bringing their problem to you."
This made me realize that the phrase "it works for me" can be dismissive and condescending, and that I should spend at least a little bit of time under the assumption that I am the one that screwed up (personally, my team, or my company) until I can prove otherwise. Anecdotally, I'd say 90% of the time it is either a bug or poorly documented processes -- and those can be fixed! Only about 10% of the time is it truly users doing something stupid.
A good replacement might be “I am confident we can make this work.”