Customer Service and Technical Support

Strategically Improving Support 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."       Read article 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.

Call 508-481-1190 or email us now for a no-obligation initial consultation.