As a customer, how do you feel about this tech support scenario?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I work for a small software company and I’m a bit curious about how people perceive us. We’re pretty tiny so we don’t have a lot of fancy tools to measure customer satisfaction - but, people seem generally happy with us.

My specific role is tech support manager (technically I manage the support area, it’s my “baby”, but I handle it personally - I don’t have people under me) and I also do software testing. The vast majority of customer support is done by yours truly, though other people do pick up the phone now and then if I’m on the line or at lunch or something. So, I have a lot of freedom as to how to present the company, and I feel responsible for doing

Generally, when it comes to most issues, I can just resolve them or instruct people on the use of the product. There is a significant but small percentage of cases which are simply unknown territory - the software is failing in a previously unknown way, or it’s failing and existing methods to diagnose the problem have failed. Because of the nature of our software (mostly drivers), it’s possible for many things to impact us, and for us to impact many things, so the scope of our support is pretty large.

Obviously, as much as I’d like to, I can’t solve every issue. Generally our policy has been not to turn away unresolvable cases (barring those that clearly aren’t related to us, e.g. hardware failure) until we have one or more people on the dev team take a second look. I like this because different people on the team can have a lot more insight into a particular component, or may remember a similar problem in testing, or whatever.

During this process, I like to be pretty honest with people. If we get to the point where I’m talking with development, I like to fill people in that:

1 - We haven’t encountered this problem before (or it’s otherwise exceedingly rare)

2 - We’ve exhausted standard troubleshooting and anything else that seems likely to fix it outright, but we’re interested, and still definitely in it to fix it

3 - We’ve escalated the problem to the development team and will continue to work with you

At this point, things are experimental, so it usually takes us a few tries to get any likely candidates. Sometimes, we may have to go back for information multiple times, though we try to ask multiple questions at once if we foresee some potential routes. We really try to do right by people, and if we just plain can’t fix it – or if someone just don’t want to keep trying, or doesn’t have time, or whatever – we generally just give them their money back, even if they bought it a long time ago. We’ll even often go through escalating a trial user’s case just to see if that ends up helping them decide to buy, and because we might get more insight into the problem that leads to repairing future customers’ issues or fixing a bug.

Personally, I think it’s pretty awesome that we can do this for people and I like the system that we have. However, it occurred to me, I’ve never really dealt with being on the customer end, so I’m curious as to what the perception is for someone who’s actually in that position.

I’m sure there’s a lot of “maybes” and “well it depends” types of answers, but I’m looking for a gut reaction or a general feeling. All things being equal - you’re dealing with nice, helpful, seemingly knowledgeable people who are responsive and pleasant - how do you feel if someone in tech support tells you that they’re working with development on your case? Hopefully one of the options is close!

2

Also, if you’d care to expound on your answer, I’d be curious as to how technically savvy you feel that you are and if you have any professional technical background. We tend to get a lot of people who are more sound in technical knowledge than the average person, because of the nature of our software.

3

I work in Tech Support and can’t answer the poll since we have developers as part of our support group. Seriously, all software has bugs and sometimes you gotta look at the code to figure out what the heck is going on. Just how it is. Some of our code is highly specialized and I will get a developer who is not on our team to look at it.

I don’t tell the customer who is looking at it. They don’t care. They just want to know that SOMEONE is looking into it and that you are going to resolve it.

4

I voted for the first option, but I may be skewed since I work for a very small company that develops Web apps, and we work pretty much the same way. So I like it when I can tell that your train of thought and action is the same that mine would be.

It’s just maddening to explain to people who don’t care to understand WHY IS THIS NOT FIXED RIGHT NOW?!

5

I’d like it, but only because I’m a developer and if I knew I was talking to another developer, we could use the Big Words and skip all the stuff that we both know won’t work (no, I am NOT rebooting for the third time!, etc)

When we’re talking laypeople, I don’t know about that. I’ve know a lot of developers who can’t communicate worth a crap, and I don’t know that it’s smart to let them talk to customers.

6

I’m using software right now at work with a persistent bug that adversely affects my performance (I need to restart it each time the bug comes up). After sending a bunch of screenshots of error messages to the CS rep over the course of weeks, someone finally called me directly instead of our contact in the office and did one of those remote screen viewing thingies to see the error occur. I reproduced it and she admitted she was stumped and said she’d forward it to the developers.

That was months ago. Bug is still there, no word back. For all I know, she threw the message into a hole. Or the developers are using it to keep their donuts off the desk. So, no, “sending to development” doesn’t impress me.

7

I voted, No, other reason.
I’m happy to know you are working on it, but I don’t care about the details.
It isn’t unprofessional to tell me, but it isn’t really necessary.

8

I worked with new statistics software and the hardware interface and I wanted to know that the software developers were going to work on the software problems. I sure the heck didn’t want to stay in limbo. I also worked with other precise measurement machines that had their software problems. I expected to be told if the developer was going to work on the problem or I needed to tell the company president that the machines couldn’t do what we needed, because the software wasn’t going to be fixed. I often used advanced functions most users never touched. This influenced what we could contract out work for. You get a big push from me to tell them the developer is going to work with their problem.

9

I used to work first level tech support for an ISP - I’d appreciate knowing it was going to Devs, and not just being handballed from tech to tech on the floor

10

I chose “Yes, because I feel more confident in a company that rigorously pursues software defects,” but having spent an exorbitant amount of time on the phone with tech support over the last year, I’d like to add a caveat. If you find yourself frequently having to check in with the development team, the company may want to consider whether they’re adequately preparing for customer needs during the development process.

In my case, I work for a franchise of a national chain that unveiled a new platform for all our data-tracking, reporting, etc. In addition to releasing late and with half the features crippled or non-functional, they did their testing with users who input less than a tenth of the data I (as the data person for the largest franchisee) need to use on a regular basis. At this point, I actually bypass tech support completely, and speak pretty much directly to developers as typically they need to make a change to the platform to fix the issue. It’s hugely frustrating as much of this wouldn’t have been an issue had they actually asked their largest users how they were using the system and how they were actually running the day-to-day operations (which did not match the assumptions they were making).

That probably has no particular relevance to what your company does, fluiddruid, but I’m offering it in the spirit of venting/ cautionary tale :slight_smile:

11

Heck yeah, it means something. I know too many tech support people who only seem to know what’s in their script. I like to know that someone big is working on it. Plus, if it went to the devs, I assume it’s going to take longer to happen, as the devs are probably busy with other things.

Oh, and I am not in software at all, other than trying to learn some scripting/code in my spare time. Unless you count fixing people’s computers for a pittance.

EDIT: thus I’m between 1 and 4, and went with 4. I’m sure you are intelligent, but, I hate to say that, as a rule first tier support are all script followers at minimum wage, and any middle ground support mostly seems to be more focused on non-software based solutions. I wish it were otherwise.

I sincerely hope you are better than the tech support I’ve encountered. I tend to find that I usually can solve things better myself or with Google.

12

I work in IT, supporting a good-sized agency, and I much prefer to talk to the product developers. Many of our support contracts provide that we go directly to second-level support – we don’t need to go through the “have you plugged it in” checklist – and we get escalated from there up to the developers quite often. It’s a win-win both ways - we get good support, and they get detailed reports of exactly how the product is failing in the field.

13

I’d be a bit depressed because it sounds like you are probably not going to be able to fix my problem, and if you are it’s going to take a while, though it’s nice that you are trying.

14

I said yes, other.

I like the fact that support is being honest with the user. Just being told “We’re working on it” is annoying and leads one to suspect that nothing useful is being done.

I am a developer. I once worked for a company where software change requests could be automatically generated from help desk tickets, and I got some sometimes.

15

Very interesting, guys. Keep it coming, thank you!

No offense taken; we are truly the exception. I explain to people on the phone on pretty much a daily basis that yes, for really real, we are not in Bangladesh and yes, we really are in Iowa and yes, that means all of our customer contacting staff are too.

I’d like to think we are better - it’s hard to get much worse than someone reading off a script. I used to work for an outsourced outfit like that – it blew. “Turn it off and on then call us back…”

We’re not big enough to have tiers though. If we ever do, I’ll definitely exert all the influence I can that we never get like that. The thing is, if someone emails us, they don’t know how big we are and they don’t know we’re not like that - it’s only what we can come across in our correspondence that matters.

16

QFT

To my non-technical ears, “the developers are looking into it” translates to “Well gee, that’s a weird glitch, isn’t it? We’ve never seen it do ***that ***before, let’s poke it with a stick for a while and see what it does.” (I’m sure my IT-worker friends would have a different response, however.)

Regarding the developer info, I’m sure is great for you guys to fix bugs for later versions, but for me, it probably means that whatever is broken is probably hashed up but good, and I’m SOL for the forseeable future.

That said, I’d rather know WHY my fix isn’t coming instead of wondering for days whether your IT department even got my help-desk ticket, and actually intend to recognize me as a human being sometime this year.

First instance, I am sad that my stuff is creatively buggy, but not upset with you personally.
Second instance, I feel intense desires to find your office and set it on fire.

17

I think it is also different when your high-level support people are the ones anwering the phones (like here). We’re small so that’s how it is.

(Plus all the customers know me so they trust me.)

18

Nope. That’s pretty much what we mean :smiley:

19

I’m a web developer at a small dev house - the devs are the tech support here! :wink:

It depends on the size of the company. Some of our clients use a local web host with <10 employees and pretty much all my tickets get elevated immediately because if I need to contact them, it’s something that needs a server admin. There aren’t any tech companies around here large enough to have a dedicated support department, really.

But if I called up our telco and they told me it was being elevated to a developer? I’d think it was an isolated problem the techs didn’t know how to fix/lacked access to fix it.

The most important part of that process is keeping me updated. If the ticket languishes for a week, I think you’re just BSing me and wanting me to go away. I always make sure to email clients even if it is just to tell them another developer is working on it.

20

I said, “Yes, because I feel more confident in a company that rigorously pursues software defects.” But I feel compelled to share a story of a tiny software company really going all out for me. Unfortunately they are no longer in business, but I think their product was bought by one of the big software companies, so I hope they ended up with a chunk of change.

This was back in the early 90’s, and my lab had purchased some specialized image analysis software for my PhD research. It was working well, but there was one thing that I couldn’t figure out how to get it to do. I called tech support on Friday, and they agreed that it really ought to be able to do that, but they couldn’t figure how how to do it either.

In Monday morning’s mail was a diskette with a new version of the software, that now had the capability I needed. Apparently the tech support person told the president of the company, and he spent his weekend doing an update to add the functionality I needed. It worked, too.