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!

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?)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.