Technical Support Management

In today’s complex product environment, no company stands alone with the delivery of their product. Today’s products rely on other company’s products to operate, whether that is technology embedded on an OEM basis, or various platforms needed to operate your product. In addition, companies rely on partners to sell, implement, and/or support their products, or to build new products on top of or as extensions to your company’s products.

To assure a successful customer experience it is necessary to augment the company’s development partner, and channel delivery partner programs with Customer Support Specific programs.

Platform Partners – for other company products embedded or required to operate with your program, you want to join and participate in their Partner programs. This will likely include offering their training as a part of your technical support representative training program. If you are active in the Enterprise Software market, you should investigate joining TSANet, who has programs to facilitate multi-vendor support processes.

Delivery Partners – the support relationship with partners will be dependent on the type of Channel Delivery agreement that is in place, and Customer Support should be active in forming the Channel Agreements, to assure the proper commitment for support. Following is a high level description of the business arrangement, and it’s impact on support:

OEM – the partner embeds your technology in their product and represents it as a core part of their product. Because of this they assume support responsibilities as if it were their product. Your role is one of providing updates/upgrades, and defect fixes.

Value Added Reseller – the partner adds value in the delivery of your product. This can range from providing consulting, implementation services, training to building and delivering new products that use your product as a base. The key is that they are in a resell relationship. In these cases, the partner is in a position to provide first level of support to the customer. You can build the level of support the partner will provide into the discount structure for your support price.

Implementation Partner - the partner extends your Professional Services reach by offering training and consulting resources skilled in the implementation of your product.  Arrangements can vary from the partner being a sub-contractor to your PS organization, to the Partner being the prime. 

Distributor/Reseller – pure distributors provide limited additional service. Key is to ensure they are selling the appropriate support offerings as a part of the sale.

Joint Sell – in this case both companies are involved in the selling and implementation process, so your normal support offerings apply.

Terms and Conditions – will be driven by the type of delivery agreement that is place. An OEM partner for example earns the deepest discount on both product and support services, while a joint sell partner would earn very little discount. A key part of the partner program should be a robust training program for the partner’s staff, from sales training to in-depth support training. Some of your internal support training offerings could be appropriate for OEM and Value Added Reseller Partners. If you have a Certification Program, include in the program an agreement that a percentage of the partners support staff will be trained. For your largest partners you should consider specialized programs like your staff on-site in their support center, or special assignments for their tier 3 staff to work on-site in your support center.

Roles & Responsibilities – it is important to work out a documented guideline of the respective Roles and Responsibilities for each of the partner program types above, and make it a part of the communication with new partners.