Technical Support Management

Most of the Best Practices Processes described in this Web Site are dependent on solid, robust, consistent IT applications to make them effective.  Further, IT vendors are constantly innovating which gives the opportunity to improve Best Practice processes.  A good example is the emergence of SAAS (Software as a Service) offerings which provide a lower cost way to get started, and maintain an IT infrastructure, as well as constant application software improvement.

Fundamental to which tools you select is that you keep in mind the need to have a 360° view of all the customer interactions with your company.  For example, doing entitlement requires your customer service representatives have access to the products purchase, license and support agreement DB.

The major categories of applications are:

            Service Management - the core system for entering, tracking and measure performance in the issues you receive from customers.  For large companies this functionality has become a standard feature set of ERP/CRM solutions. 

            Phone System - the inbound call routing to your service representative.  The growth of VOIP (Voice over Internet) has substantially reduced the telephone costs, and made easier to have consistent worldwide telephone infrastructure.

           KnowledgeBase - for capturing the learning from each support incident for internal and external usage in future issues.  It is possible to start simply with tools in Service Management offerings and to move to very sophisticated tools for larger environments.

            Quality Monitoring - for recording and playback of customer calls. 

            Survey Tools - for capturing transaction customer satisfaction feedback.  There are excellent services that will perform this function for you.

            Staffing/Scheduling - for predicting call loads and planning staffing.  Critical for implementation of the Direct to Support Representative incoming call model.

            Chat - for interacting directly with a customer via a PC interface.  A issue generation mode for consumer companies.

            Remote Control - for support representative direct operation of a remote users system - through the companies firewall.  This is a significant new innovation to assist in resolving more complex issues on a customer's system.

For a small to medium sized company finding a selecting these tools can be a challenge.  Kristin Robertson has given you a great starting point with her Support Center Tools List under her Free Resources.