Loading ...It dawned on me recently that programmers also do customer support. They have to help end-users get online at WiFi Hotspots and they need to help Hotspot owners set up new hotspots and help process payments to them. These tasks lie primarily with our technical division and accounting, but we rotate incoming phone calls to whoever is available.
Now, as any programmer would know, tech support is less fun than coding. The result of programmers having to do customer support is that they very quickly implement fixes that would prevent them from having to do customer support in the first place!
For example, it’s quite common for customers to have trouble sending emails from public WiFi hotspots. The reason for this is that most ISPs don’t allow mail to be sent from any client that is not on their network. A dedicated tech support representative can easily help a customer within five minutes to change some settings on her computer to use another mail server. The tech support guy would be quite happy with this outcome, as he’s done his job perfectly!
Not so with a programmer! A programmer has just had five minutes of his day wasted and has been distracted from doing something more fun. The result: The programmer spends an hour re-writing Skyrove’s firmware so that in future all emails will be automatically forwarded to a working mail server. The programmer never has to help a customer again with this particular problem.
Rinse and repeat this process, and you’ll soon find fewer and fewer customers phoning in with problems. Just imagine how efficient our banks would be if the consultants who dreamt up their systems were the same ones to provide customer support?
- None
We’ve noticed something similar at SynthaSite - if something isn’t possible or is hard to do for the user or for our support staff, the developers or systems administrators get dragged in.
Similarly, if a feature is hard to use for users and we get a lot of questions about it, then we’re encouraged to write a tutorial. Since writing help is a lot harder than writing code, often the feature ends up being made easier so that less writing has to happen.
At the same time, I don’t think developers or systems people should have to do front-end support.
Firstly, they’re not trained for it or aren’t in the mode for it, and that means you’ll have customers who confuse their terseness/directness for a lack of respect or caring.
Secondly, those job types generally require focus time, and having to check on things constantly is going to break that. On the other hand, if they only check every hour, or only in the morning, then you won’t get the speedy response to support that your organisation wants to be famous for.
I’ve been astounded by how quick and helpful the support here at SynthaSite is, and like any other job, it’s about finding the right people. In previous companies, dealing with support had been a bit of a drag, but when your support people are as passionate about achieving their goals (ie, happy, useful, users) as I am about mine, then I have a lot of time for them, and will go the extra mile to make their lives easier and their goals closer.
(And, hey, if they can do the work, and enjoy doing the work, and it means I can focus on my work instead of support, then everyone enjoys themselves, and the users get both good support and good technology.)
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