Support

 

Support

 

If someone said to you that you are a necessary cost you would not  feel very secure. If on the other hand they said to you that you are the brains of the business and you make things happen you would be very happy to see that your efforts are recognised. Technical support is to service what strategic marketing is to the company overall.  Doing business, selling complex products or software is primarily dependent on first class technical support.  

 

No matter how comprehensive the information, running automated sophisticated equipment is still  difficult in the hands of the layman. You can improve your product quality any number  sigmas but in the end you cannot do without the technical support to the user. The industry will have you believe that anyone can run a personal computer, but when you talk to users you soon see that people need support when confronted by  abnormal events. 

The Pareto 80:20 rule means that of 100 problems, you'll need to support the 20 which are outside the onboard diagnostics and the user competence. This is the support operation which while lower in numbers is higher in knowledge.

In general terms, a field problem that cannot be resolved within day will not fall into the simple category and if left to the service engineer it may cost unacceptable downtime and frustration. so these problems must be escalated to the support engineer. This person will have been trained in the whole system by the engineering design people and with their deeper understanding will if not able to solve immediately, provide a work around or patch to the problem that will give time for thorough investigation that will lead to a modification and a revision or retrofit. Having a total view of the field,  the support engineer will see the whole picture and determine if the problem is a one off,  or if it is across the population in which case a modification may be needed.

 

At the same time, a pattern may develop where the problem may be specific to the individual engineer or customer that may require training or even reorganisation of the customer's environment. From these considerations, it can be seen that the support engineer is the overall technical manager of his or her product line. Where the field engineer may be a generalist covering a number of products and customers, the support engineer will be specialist trained on a single product line.

 

A hot line will also be available to the field engineer for help but this is distinct from the general customer help line. the support engineer will be available to the customer hot line consultant as well as the field engineer. When launching a new product, the support engineer will also be involved with the field where he is expected to evaluate the product performance and  support the few systems on alpha and beta sites.

 

Additional responsibilities of the support engineer include  inputs to documentation in collaboration with engineering as well as the recommended spares lists at different levels  from engineer kits to local area kits, and then depot stocks for back up.

 

You would think that the massive communication tools now made available  would by now have caused a major revolution in the field of technical services. You can now multiply the coverage of a single knowledgeable person. You can put the expert in direct contact with the end user thanks to the explosion of telecoms and computers. It is no longer necessary to send someone on site to see and confirm, let alone repair a problem. All you need to do is connect the customer to the support expert who can then teleguide the user. Granted, there may be certain skills in carrying out the repair  or adjustment, but this too can be overcome by sending a preadjusted module for replacement. Any one of the majority of  problems which are knowledge based can now be dealt with through the internet  Broad band can enhance this even further with video so that  both ears and eyes that can be put to use.

 

A person sitting literally at the other end of the world can guide you and simply all you have to do is use your hands  borrowed by the expert.

 

Costs are falling drastically. With service being based on parts and labour you can cut down the cost of labour through technology and parts can be more intelligently used,  so, no more shot gunning and lost wasted parts that are sent out for testing but never get back. On line real time conversation with video cameras if necessary can teleguide users to solutions.  Shrinking the field force is now here to stay. The support expert location can be anywhere in the world where knowledge exists. It seems then that all the new tools have impacted the service function more than any other within the company. Service which is costly due to manpower, has now become remote technical support.