Further education: Codeacademy.com

If you've been on the "Support" side of things for a while and want to start edging into the "coding" side of things, check out Codeacademy - It's a rather nifty "interactive tutorial" site that will get you nicely grounded in string-oriented coding with JavaScript. In keeping with the times, it also provides scores, badges, and other things to boast about on FaceBook and other social media sites.

I've been very "results oriented" in my coding experience - only soaking up as much knowledge as I need to get a specific task done for a specific project. This site has helped shore up the basic concepts of programming, which will make it easier for me to create my own projects.

Two thumbs up.

Tools: A (cloudy) place for your stuff

If you haven't heard about DropBox yet, I'll be happy to tell you about it. DropBox is a free online "Cloud" storage service which provides its users with 2GB of free storage space, and can be accessed through the web or via an App for most operating systems (Windows, Mac, Unix, iOS, Android, etc).  I've found this very useful for porting installer programs, data files, online manuals etc from place to place.

The 2 GB disk allocation is free - you can pay for up to 20 GB of online storage.

The other cool thing about it is - if you refer someone to DropBox, you can get a bit of extra storage for yourself. So..  if you're interested, feel free to click any of the links I've made in this post and sign up for some free storage space.

Scavenger Hunts

Life is more manageable when approached as a scavenger hunt, rather than a suprise party.

- Jimmy Buffet

Technical Support is, by its nature, a reactive job - it's very hard to be proactive in an environment where your purpose for being there is to "fix things".  In my experience, there are two ways to approach the situation:

•  a never ending series of emergencies which require immediate, adrenaline-laden flurries of frantic activity to fix whatever was broken (and try and prevent that from happening again); or
•  a series of interesting challenges which can be overcome with enough research, questioning, and learning (and can then be documented so you can recover gracefully 

I leave it to you to decide which way leads to less stress and irritation at your customer base.

 (and yes, we're back on line - your humble blogger got himself a new contract gig and has been, well, busy doing tech support - we'll get more info and useful tools out here shortly)

 

 

 

The new gig: Hitting the ground running

Starting a new job means getting an idea of what the work environment will be. While some companies take the time to provide an orientation period, in many cases once you're in, you're moving. If you have the time to do so (say, the weekend before you begin your new job), try the following:

Spend some time getting familiar with the area around your new place of work: This will give you an idea of the environment, possible places to go for lunch, where to go when you're almost out of gas, and other useful bits of data.

Spend an hour or so checking your favorite online map site for alternate routes to and from your new gig - where do you go if the freeway is at a standstill? Can you get from here to there on surface streets alone?

Get an idea of the size of the company. A company with 120 employees "supports" differently than a larger, more spread out company.  The kind of support you provide (ie: sterling) should not change, but the manner in which you provide that support might be different.  Do they have a system in place to log requests or is it a more informal "can you help me with this?" environment?

Learn the location of the restrooms, fire exits, break rooms and vending machines. This information will help keep you sane when it's time to get up and walk away for a moment.

Read over any information your company provides in regard to internet usage. This is a big one especially as some companies are beginning to crack down on the use of streaming media sources like YouTube and Pandora. Find out what's OK and not OK to do at work before you try learning the hard way.

Learn people's names as quickly as you can. Start with your immediate supervisor and coworkers, then work your way out from there to the other teams and support people.  Always learn the names of the admins, secretaries and receptionists. They're the ones who really run things.

The more you know about where you're working, the easier it will be to work there!

Seek Free Knowledge

There are always a few - a few - moments of relative quiet in the day of a tech support rep. If you have access to the internet, why not use it to track down additional information you can put to use?

Try running a search for free (your area of interest here) tutorial - most of the results you will encounter will provide at least a basic education in the field, programming language or program you're interested in, which can justify your adding it to your skills and experiences list mentioned in Monday's post... which can lead to improving your options and opportunities moving forward.

On top of all that - it's free knowledge, which is always a good thing.

Update! Update! Update!

This holds true for most jobs, but especially in the area of IT and Tech Support:  When you learn a new skill, get it on your resume as soon as possible.  Partially because it follows the Write Everything Down rule, and partially because you can use your resume to remind yourself about your skills and experiences when it comes time to think about your next assignment, job, or career choice.

It also doesn't hurt to have an updated resume just in case someone points out an opportunity, of course...

Carry Your Knowledge

RTFM - Read the (freaking) Manual.  It's an old phrase, and one which has a lot of truth in it. Most of the issues a customer will encounter are documented somewhere.

If you have the resources, consider picking up "portable" versions of the manuals you reference most often - versions which will fit on a smart phone, in a cloud storage service such as DropBox, your personal laptop, netbook or tablet.

Electronic formats are generally searchable, notate-able, and far easier to carry around than the telephone-book sized "dead tree" versions.

Starting Out: The Contract Gig

It can be challenging to get into the Tech Support industry - although there are plenty of postings for job openings, there are also plenty of applicants for those openings.

One alternate way to get experience in Tech Support is to work short term "contract" assignments.  Many companies need IT personnel for their internal "Help Desk" or Technical Support for their customers on a temporary basis. Even more companies use contract employees to fill the need for more bodies on a seasonal basis, or to "try out" new employees before committing to full-time employment.

If you're starting out as a tech, do a few searches for "technical staffing" on the search engine of your choice. The odds are good you will find at least two agencies in your area who provide temporary employment (also known as "contract").  Call, email and make appointments with the understanding that you're just starting out.

If you're an experienced tech and currently "between jobs", a contract agency can help you fill the gaps between full time employment. Some techs simply go from contract gig to contract gig, as it allows them flexibility and the ability to decide when and where they work.

Working with agencies can make job-hunting easier: the agencies are paid by the companies who are looking for help, so they're motivated to help you get work!

Winning in Tech Support

It's hard to remember that when you're dealing with a caller, you're dealing with a person who has a result he or she is trying to achieve and is being frustrated by some part of the product you're supporting.  It helps if you can put yourself, even slightly, in that customer's place - most people do not muck about with technology for the entertainment value (with the exception of, say, game consoles) but rather use technology as a tool to achieve a specific goal.

"Winning" for the customer is being able to achieve that goal. "Winning" for the tech should be helping the customer to "win'.

(Why should Charlie Sheen have all the "Winning" around here?)

Steam

We all get bad calls. Every so often, a call will come along which will just does not go well for all parties concerned.

When that happens, and it will, take a few minutes. Get out of the queue, get up, take five minutes or however many you can manage. Remember that the call wasn't about you as a person regardless of what the customer said - the call was about the customer being frustrated that he could not do what he wanted to do.

Even though some customers get angry and even abusive at you on the phone, you are not the target.

Not my job

The three words which will kill your customer's experience faster than anything else are these: "not my job".

Customers call into Tech Support because they have a problem with something - something they may not understand at all other than knowing that it's on their computer.  Sometimes that something might not be with the product you're being paid to support.

Be willing to take 30 seconds, do a quick web search, and at the very least aim the customer in the right direction for assistance.  Tell your customer"I haven't been trained to support that, but here's what I found that might get you what you need..."

... You can help even when you don't know the solution.

Seek out new resources

One of the easiest ways to avoid work is to be certain that whatever the problem is, it isn't the area you're working in.

Granted this allows you to get off the call or reroute the email message, but it doesn't benefit you to just foist the case off and be done with it.

If and when you can, seek out and make note of resources which might be useful when a issue is Not My Department. If you can clarify whose department it is, or direct a customer to a product that might be able to fulfill his needs when your product cannot, that will improve your support chops and the customer's experience at the same time.

Follow Through on your Follow Through

Although most calls that come in on a tech support line are "one and done", there are going to be times where you need to check on something and get back to your customer.  In this case, "Follow through" is key.

• Let your customer know roughly how long it will take for you to get back to them
• Make sure you and your customer agree on the manner in which you will contact them (email, phone, IM, etc)
• If you don't have a solution by the deadline, at least let the customer know you're still working on it 
• If you come up with an answer ahead of schedule, let them know ahead of schedule! There are very few circumstances in which a customer will be upset that you have gotten back to them with good news ahead of the agreed up on time

Be Pleased With Your Ignorance

For a Tech Support rep, not knowing something is akin to admitting defeat. After all, the job entails knowing more than your customers know.

However, finding out that you don't know something is an opportunity to remind yourself that you don't know everything - it's an opportunity to learn something new, write it down and stockpile that information for yourself and your coworkers.

Be happy when you find out you don't know something - it means you're still learning.

Time and Knowledge

When is the best time to make sure new information is noted somewhere you can find it again?

As soon as you recognize it as being new information.

"One-off" information may not be needed on a regular bases, which makes it even more important that it be recorded. Information you wind up using on a day to day basis will be reinforced through repeated use. As usual, it's the "edge cases", the things that only occur once in a long while, which make Writing Everything Down vital.

Coaching vs. Criticism

In the course of your job, you will make mistakes. When mistakes happen, managers communicate thes "opportunities for growth" in the form of coaching notes.

Don't take them personally. A coaching note is intended to point out information which you may have missed, or a technique to resolve an issue which you may have been unaware of. Take that information as information rather than as an attack. (Remember, managers want you to succeed.)

Don't be afraid to point out areas where you made a mistake which you learned from before it's pointed it out to you. Learning without being prompted to learn looks good to a manager.

Brake for safety

In a high volume environment, it can be easy to forget that not only are you supposed to take regular breaks in the call and ticket flow, but that, in fact, it's legally mandated.

Take advantage of scheduled "down time" to get up and away from the screen - and not just to check your own email. Take a walk, talk to people, go outside and remind yourself that there is a world out there.

Widen Your Scope

It's very easy to get used to dealing with a very finite set of subjects during the course of your day.  You can end up knowing everything about a few things and very little about others.

Take some time to broaden your scope - even if you only spend a few minutes surfing on a subject that's tangential to what you do, but interesting enough that you continue to look for more information on it.  That might even lead to widening your scope farther.

It also helps to remind us that no, we don't Know Everything. And that can keep you out of Competency Level 4, which will make working with people who don't know about your particular area of expertise easier.

Not Knowing is OK

Part of knowing your job is knowing what things you know and knowing what things you do not know. Although many techs would rather lose a limb than admit they don't know something.

Customers actually appreciate it if you let them know that you've hit a point where you need to get more information from other sources. (It lets them know you're human!) Set the customer's expectation, do some research, and then them know what you've found out. Even if you have to tell a customer that you still aren't sure what's going on and are still researching, they appreciate that you are willing to say "I'm not certain, but I'll find out."

Above and Beyond? (The worst they can say is...)

Some Tech Support reps are nervous about asking whether something is possible when the request appears to be beyond the generally assumed scope of their company's support.

It's hard to think about going "above and beyond" when a product or service is new to you , but once you have some experience with what you're supporting, don't be afraid to look beyond the scope of what you've been trained for and consider offering support that goes "Above and Beyond"... provided you know how far you personally are capable of going.

One other thing to consider: If you're going to go "above and beyond", make certain you document what you've done and what you've offered in considerable detail and set the customer's understanding that what you're doing is a little farther than some would give...

Going Off Script

In some Tech Support jobs, a "script" may be provided for techs to use in communicating with customers on specific topics.  Anyone who has ever received a telephone solicitation call has heard someone reading off a script and, it's likely that it wasn't a pleasant experience.

When you're working from a script, treat it as an outline rather than verbatim - take the information or steps and state them in your own words, with your own cadence. Talk to the customer rather than talking through the script, and you'll find the call goes better.

Phones vs. Email

Tech Support takes multiple forms these days - it used to be that the only way to get assistance was by calling a phone number, waiting on hold, and then talking to someone.

Now you have telephone support, and then support via email, instant messaging, chat, even social media outlets like Twitter.

While Tech Support will always be, at its root, the art of helping someone use something they don't fully understand, there are some differences between email and telephone support.

Email (or chat, message board, instant messenger, IRC channel) support has the advantage of an unspoken, but generally understood time delay.  You don't have to maintain a continuous dialog with the customer, and that can give you the chance to review what you want to say, polish it, edit and then send the email, post the message, send the IM.   The disadvantage is that you are communicating entirely in text - you do not have the advantage of communicating through pitch, tone and timing that speaking with someone on the telephone permits.

Telephone support is the most "immediate" form of support - the clock is running from the moment you answer the call. You need to be able to think on your feet, and if you need to put the customer on hold you need to set that customer's expectations as clearly as possible.  On the other hand, you can make a more direct connection on a social level through how you say what you say - it adds another level of communication beyond conveying information.

Most techs have a preference - phone or email. It's a good idea to build your skills in both media, that way you won't have issues no matter which media you work in.

What is "World Class Support"?

The phrase "World Class Support" gets bandied around a lot among Tech Support managers.  The problems is, no one defines the phrase.  What does it mean?

The surprising truth is, "World Class Support" simply means doing more than what customers have come to expect from technical support.

• Talk to your customers like they're people, not problems
• Listen to your customers - even when what they're saying may not be 100% focused on the technical aspects of the problem they're encountering
• Set expectations realistically - and be sympathetic when your customers want things done faster
  This particular bit falls into the category of "Under promise and Over provide" - if you can do so honestly, let your customer know that the time line you're giving them is the official line, but things tend to get done faster.
• Be Honest - Sometimes the answer is no. This can be an "Unfortuantely no." It helps if you can suggest alternatives.
• Be willing to take the time to end the call with the customer happy. If that's not possible, try and end the call with the customer less unhappy than they were when the call started.

Just keeping these things in mind can result in providing, yes, "World Class Support."

Managing your Manager

We all have to deal with Management. In the best of all worlds, a manager's job is to act as the buffer between the rest of the company and yourself.  In a Metrics-Obsessed Management Environment, it may feel like your manager, whether he wants to or not, is out to get you.

Here are some things to keep in mind, and help you manage your manager:

1. Managers want you to succeed. Most managers are judged on how well their teams function.  Since you're part of the team, how you do in your job reflects on them.
2. Managers don't always understand exactly what your job entails.  If your manager didn't come up through the ranks as a Tech Support rep, or has been away from the position for a while, they many not know the details of what you have to do in order to do your job. If you take the time to explain (and sometimes document - see Write Everything Down) what you actually do, it will help your manager do his job.
3. Communicate - Communicate - Communicate. If you let your manager know that something's up that might affect how you do your job, then your manager has information in context and that adds more data to the raw numbers he has to contend with.
4. Be Patient - Managers don't always speak the same language as reps (Managers speak Manager, Tech Reps speak Tech). Feel free to ask for clarification, and verify that you've interpreted the words correctly.  If this sounds familiar, that's because this is also one of the basic steps in troubleshooting.
5. Coaching is not a personal attack -  Managers get feedback from customers, other reps and QA and are responsible for communicating this information to you. Being told you have things that need improvement shouldn't be considered a personal attack. No one is perfect - acknowledge, make a couple notes so you don't make that particular error again, and carry on. 

Keep these things in mind, and it should be easier to manage the person who's responsible for managing you.

Where do Managers Come From?

In the Tech Support industry, managers tend to come from one of two categories:

1. Tech Support reps who have been promoted to management
2. Managers who are brought in to manage Tech Support Reps

 It's one of the ironies of the industry that if you're particularly good at your job, you're often given the opportunity to move "up" to a position where you don't actually do your job any more, but rather manage people who do what you did. 

If your manager is from category one, it's likely you'll have an easier time relating to this person. He's done the job you're doing, so he's been in the trenches and will have a basic grasp of what you're doing and the challenges that arise.  The odds are good that this manager is being challenged by his new job - the more information and data you can provide for him, the better (see The Metrics-Obsessed Management Environment) - Tech Support Managers don't want these numbers for themselves, but need them to satisfy those farther up the food chain.

If your manager is from category two, you may need to be patient with him as he gets an idea of what it is you actually do. Again, numbers tend to be important here (so, again, Write Everything Down) as does having what you actually do documented so your manager can take the information you give him in context, and communicate that information to his managers.

If you can make your manager's job easier, he's going to be more inclined to make your job easier.

Teach Troubleshooting

Tech Support exists because consumers do not know how the expensive products and services they purchase work. Most of the time, a Tech Support rep's job is to help their customers learn how to use what they've already paid for.

The rest of the time, Tech Support is there to fix what turns out to be broken, whether due to a flaw in the product itself or due to what is gently referred to as "pilot error".  Again, this usually is not the customer's fault because they don't understand what they did wrong in the first place.

One of the greatest services you can perform for a customer is to help them learn how to troubleshoot - when stepping them through the process of diagnosing an issue, if it's one that they can fix, you can show them what to look for and what to do to resolve the issue.

Each time you teach a customer how to troubleshoot an issue, you build their ability to help themselves and, when they do have to call, they might just have done some of the work for you.

The Art of Batching

If you're working in email or other non-telephone support modes, usually you have the ability to pull in a number of cases or tickets into your "in box" before you start working on them.

If you do have this option, take a day or two and see how many tickets your comfortable dealing with at a time. For some folks, a stack of 100 plus tickets in their "in box" is nothing, while for others it looks like (and feels like) an insurmountable obstacle.

Look at batching your work - pull in 20, 10 or even 5 cases, work them, and then pull in the next batch. You may find you're doing more work with less stress.

Macrotize

Tech Support is full of forms, formats and "expected information" - in most cases, you'll wind up with templates to use for recording case information, escalating cases, and in some cases even formats for responding to customers via email.

I've mentioned writing everything down previously, and this is another piece of the puzzle. If at all possible, use macros, "hot keys" or programmable keypads to "pre-load" standardized template information - one click is always faster than copy/paste, and that extra moment or two you have where you don't have to go looking for that one piece of information could add up to more time to get the actual work done, and better metrics overall.

Right now, I'm using a USB programmable keypad which I've loaded with a number of templates and stock responses for email.  I like this one because I can change key assignments on the fly (which is good for changing the "notification of issue" hotkey to the "resolution of issue" hotkey when said issue has been resolved).  Anything that lets you substitute one keystroke for six or more is a good thing.

The Metrics-Obsessed Management Environment

Caveat: This article, and most articles in this blog regarding management and how to deal with them, use management jargon. I'll try to call out jargon by putting it "in quotes".

One of the manager's primary tasks is to communicate with... his management. He needs to be able to summarize the current state of his team and explain how well or poorly the team is doing in a concise manner.

This usually means numbers. Managers like numbers, and the higher up the management food chain you go, the more those numbers are used to explain how things are going.  In the end, numbers are used to explain the state of the entire company to shareholders.

Consequently, managers of Tech Support teams like to find ways to apply numbers to what the team does - assist customers - and generate as many different types of numbers as possible. This is what I call the MOME, or Metrics-Obsessed Management Environment.

Numbers and data are the best protection in a MOME. The more numbers and data you have, the easier it will be to respond to any questions and concerns your manager (who is, after all, answering questions from his manager) may bring up.

The most common metric imposed upon a Tech Support reps is the simplest one to count: the number of calls, emails or other customer contacts made in a day.  In some systems, this is automatically compiled by the program used to track the calls or emails. In some cases, though, it isn't.  This is where writing everything down comes in handy.

If you know the number of calls, emails or contacts that is set as the base, or minimum average, writing down your cases - even just jotting a quick summary on a pad somewhere - can help you keep an eye on how you're doing with what I've heard called the "Salary Continuation Program".  If you find yourself falling behind, notes on the nature of the case will help you spot problem areas either in your handling of the case or perhaps an issue with the product or service which should be brought to the attention of your engineers, management, or other higher powers.

The second most common metric is call times, or calls / emails per hour. This one is a little trickier to manage from the Tech Support rep side, but if you know how many calls or emails you do in a day, you can take that number, divide it by the number of hours you are "in production" (that is, working on customer issues) and get a rough estimate.  Again, if you find your "per hour" metric isn't matching up to what management sets as their expectation, you can look over your notes and use the types of cases you worked and the nature of the issues to provide some context for the numbers themselves.  Managers like it when a rep "proactively" spots, analyzes, and defines "areas for improvement" before a manager has to bring it to his attention.

Most Tech Support reps see all these metrics as the enemy. But, if you're willing to put in a little effort, you can get them on your side.

Search and Ye Shall Find

We tend to become blinkered when we're supporting a particular product or service - the powers that be show us "the sources of wisdom" (usually a Knowledge Base or a series of FAQs or pre-written hotkeys) and leave us to support the thing we're being paid to support.  If the problem we're encountering isn't covered under those few bits of info we're pointed at, we tend to default to further escalation or making something up to appease the customer.

However, there's a vast wealth of info on the internet - exercise your search engine chops when faced with a problem tangential to your product - maybe it's a piece of 3rd party software that isn't playing nice, or an error code in a program that accesses your service. A simple search for the error message and the product will turn up more info quickly.

Even if it isn't the exact answer you need, it should be more info than you had earlier. And of course, write it down or bookmark it for the next time you run into that situation.

Ignorance Vs. Stupidity

Ignorance (n) -  lack of knowledge, education, or awareness 

Stupidity (n) -  the quality or state of being stupid 

Stupid (adj) - slow of mind : obtuse 

Tech Support humor has a lot of references to "stupid users" - but usually your customers aren't stupid. They're ignorant in the classic sense - they don't know and in many cases they don't even know that they don't know (remember Competency Level 1?)  We bandy the word "stupid" around, applying it to anyone who isn't as knowledgeable as we are, forgetting that we spend hours up to our elbows in the products we support. 

"Ignorance" is a weighted word, but it's more accurate in most cases than "stupid" - most people don't like to be called either. Fortunately, most people take "it's all right, you didn't know"... which is, of course, the definition of "ignorance". And then they're no longer ignorant. 

Experts and Expertise

"An expert is a man who tells you a simple thing in a confused way in such a fashion as to make you think the confusion is your fault."  - William Castle

 Just something for you to think about this time. What's the difference between being an Expert and having Expertise? Usually it's the approach when you try to communicate what you know to someone else.

The customer is listening

The majority of Tech Support these days happens over the telephone.  Most telephone tech support happens over a telephone headset.  It used to be that these headsets were pretty rudimentary and not all that sensitive.

However, that's not the case anymore. Headsets pick up all kinds of sounds - typing, writing (I get customers speculating on my typing speed), the sounds of your coworkers who are also on calls... and anything that you're doing with your mouth is picked up clearly on the phone.

This is something you should always be aware of - customers can hear heavy breathing, snuffling, coughing, wheezing, and most definitely eating and drinking.  There are some things you can do to mitigatge the sounds you can't eliminate - mostly by moving the boom "mic" away from your mouth a bit and calibrating with a friend or coworker - have them call you or you call them and then work to determine a "good" distance for your mic to be from your face.  The voluntary sounds are just that - voluntary.  If you absolutely have to take a drink or eat something while you're on the phone with a customer, excuse yourself and use the mute or hold button. 

Remember, they can hear us just as well as we can hear them!

Shameless Plug - The Tech Support Mumbler

We all need to blow off a little steam now and then, and while I'm not a fan of most Tech Support Humor, there are some strips I like because they're based more on people than on technology.

JD Thyme's Tech Support Mumbler is one of them.  Check him out!

Frustration!

In Tech Support, your job is to talk to people about things they usually don't know too much about.  If you're hovering around Level 4 competency (as most of us are somewhere about the third quarter of a shift) you may find yourself getting really tired of explaining basic concepts to someone who, bless their heart, just is not Getting It.

This is called Frustration, and it can be your friend or your enemy.  When Frustration is your enemy, you find yourself talking faster, talking louder, and repeating the same things over and over again in an increasingly futile attempt to Get The Point Across.  Your customer will pick up on it, and (usually) interpret it as hostility, and respond in kind. Eventually one of you will likely give up (and possibly lose a customer, or wind up with a demand to speak to a Supervisor).

You can, believe it or not, make Frustration your friend.  You have to be able to recognize when you're getting frustrated (which can take some effort on its own), but when you find yourself getting to that point, take it as a sign that you need to take your conversation in a different direction.   Can you phrase what you're trying to say to the customer in another way? Try asking what the customer sees on the screen, slow down, and your customer will be able to come "back from the brink" and work with you to solve the issue you're working on.

Search Amazon.com Books for frustration

Honesty and Tact

The most common type of question asked to a Tech Support rep begins with "How do I..."

Sometimes, the answer is, unfortunately, "You can't, not with this product."  It's a challenging situation - Sales reps will sometimes promise the customer that a product will do something which, to be frank, it can't do. Usually this is because the Sales rep isn't aware of the product's limitations.  However, once the sale has been made, and the customer gets the product, it's a Tech Support rep who will have to break the bad news to the customer.

In Tech Support, we need to give the customer accurate, truthful information about the product we support. This includes having the integrity to tell the customer truthfully that no, this product will not be able to do something.  The good news is that the "something" the customer is looking to do may not actually be the only way it can be achieved. Talk to your customer about the end result - What does the customer want to have happen? Once you know the desired result, it's likely you will be able to direct your customer to alternate methods or, at the very least, an alternate product.

Honesty is important. On the other hand, so is tact. There are ways to phrase things so you can be honest with a customer without saying negative things about your product, company, or the customer's own technical skills.  The more ways you can find to say things tactfully but honestly, the better a rapport you will have with your customers - and everyone else.

Build Connections

You've probably heard the saying, "It's not what you know, it's who you know."  In Tech Support, it's a combination of what you know and who you know.

It's the nature of the industry that products are so complex at this point that no one really knows how all of any one product actually works. This is more true of software-based products than hardware, but that's another blog post entirely.

One of the things you can do to make your job easier is to make connections between yourself and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) - people who know a particular product, or part of a product, backwards and forwards. Getting on friendly terms with a SME will give you a valuable resource when you hit the boundaries of your experience or knowledge with that product.

Build connections with the support staff - receptionists, facilities, security - of you become a person to them, you're someone they'll be more inclined to want to help you, even in circumstances where the issue is "I was dumb and ..."

Build connections with other departments in the company - that way if an issue goes beyond the product or service you're supporting, you have someone you can talk to who might be able to help, and that means you don't have to foist the customer off blind to another department. Customers like it when you can provide a clear path to solving their problems. You'll know who to ask, or at least who you can ask about who you should ask.

Build Connections.  It helps.

Your Job Is To Talk To People

Regarless of what Metrics-Obsessed Management Environments (MOME - yes I'm working on making this a meme) have to say about Tech Support, your job, at heart, is to talk to people and help solve their problems.

We tend to focus on the "solve their problems" part, which means we focus on the problem rather than the person we're talking to. This results in Script Monkey Syndrome - we have a fixed set of steps we need to go through, and some of us just read the steps off the script in front of us, expecting the person on the other end of the call to understand exactly what we mean when we say it and above all else, follow these steps (written by a tech) to the letter.

Of course, if these people could easily understand technical instructions written by technical people the odds are good they would not in fact be calling us.

Take a moment to get an idea of where this customer is, knowledge-wise. Use your script (if you have one) as a guide to the steps and not as something you just have to recite at the customer as fast as possible to Get This Person Off The Phone. 

Communicate.

Besides, if you do that, then this customer might learn something, and not have to call you again for this particular issue.

Happy New Year from 20 Years...

Here's hoping 2011 brings you more of what you want and less of what you don't want - and here's hoping that what I can give you as a result of shaking out my brain for tips, tricks and things that actually work helps keep you sane and employed.


Onward!

Oh, and here's a Titanium Spork.