Strategic Long Term Improvement in Overall Effectiveness
Technical Support is often an orphan in strategic planning. No one really pays much attention to it
or to its needs until customers start complaining about their inability to get the full use from their
equipment they expected.
By that time it is usually too late to to do much more than throw resources at the problem. This
results in heavy and unexpected expenses that often severely affect not only profits but also the way
potential customers view the product
So, you'd like to do things differently. How do you go about ensuring Technical Support is able to
do its job?
The basic concept is surprisingly simple. It has 3 legs that ensure stable and consistent results:
1. Initiate a formal New Product Introduction (NPI) process
This ensures Customer Service / Technical Support are equal partners with
markerting, engineering, product development, and others in planning for and launching new products.
It also helps build serviceability and maintainability into the product.
2. Institute properly designed policies, processes, and procedures
These should ensure all problems not resolved within an appropriate
time period are escalated to management attention, with expert technical resources handling the technical
interface to the field.
3. Problem Managers must interface with customer management
This keeps customers informed of progress (or lack thereof.) If left uninformed,
the customer can (and often does) imagine a doomsday scenario and reacts accordingly, even when the problem is
being "fixed." Sometimes, a regular and scheduled conference call with management, customer management, and
technical staff is astonishingly effective in averting a crisis.
"None of these ideas involves "rocket science"; all are easily implemented. The key to success in careful attention
to business process and cross-functional interfaces, as well as to the "human" interface with all involved.
Once in place, these efforts will minimize or eliminate any significant incremental
costs, the ROI on these efforts can be quite impressive."
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for more on the subject
Roy Sequeira has extensive multi-national experience in all aspects of technical support. He has created
effective support organizations and advised on improving the effectiveness of others.
Please call or email if he could help you - and your customers - get the most from your Technical
Support organization.