Service with Pride: We’re Tech Support
Who are we? We’re technical support, that’s who. Let me break that down for you, as those two words don’t even begin to convey who we really are and what we actually do. Most people either couldn’t or wouldn’t want to handle our job. We can, and we’re proud of that.
We’re the tip of the spear. When anything goes awry, we’re the first into the breach. We like the front line. The view is spectacular. We like being the first to see things — even bad, scary things.
We’re ambassadors for the company. We’re the first point of contact for whoever uses our company’s goods or services. We don’t get the happy job of demonstrating the product to enthusiastic crowds at tech fairs and conventions. We meet the people who have a problem, who are upset, who aren’t having a good day already. We get the ball five to fifteen yards behind the line of scrimmage. But we don’t let that bother us. It’s our job to put the smile on the customer’s face by the time we’re through, especially if they met us with a frown. We’ll get there with courtesy, poise, knowledge, persistence, and humor. We respond quickly, politely, and with empathy. We’re all over it. We take control of the situation and let the customer know from jump that we take their problem seriously. They know right away they’ve come to the right place–when they bought the product, and when they need it fixed.
We’re knights in shining armor. We wear plate mail, +5, with a fire resistance enchantment. We know we’ll be dealing with upset people. We don’t mind; we understand. We just think of how we’d feel if our game console locked up, or our gadget didn’t work, or if our program crashed right during the last boss battle. We apologize, we empathize, we get through the situation smoothly and diplomatically, and we help you on the path to recovery.
We’re lookouts. We spot trends, quickly see things that start to go sideways. We expect the unexpected. We communicate with the rest of the company to see trouble nipped in the bud. We make sure solutions actually resolve in the field.
We’re a communications nexus. We’re the conduit between the customer and the engineers, sales teams, designers and developers that provide the product. We take the technically complex and break it down into bite-sized pieces newbies can handle. We translate geekspeak into plain, easily understood English on the fly.
We’re detectives. We get information from people. We ask the open-ended questions. We’re the eyes and ears of our development teams. What error message did you see? What did you see right before it happened? What else was running at the time? Has this happened to anyone else in your organization? We get answers. We have inquiring minds, and it shows. We’re engaged, we’re going to find answers, we’re going to fix this thing–and the users know it.
We thrive on imperfection. The world is imperfect–that’s why we exist. It didn’t work, it crashed, it won’t load, it failed. That’s our starting point. But we see opportunity here. Things break. People know it. But it’s what we do there, at that moment of failure, that makes the difference. We ride boldly and smoothly right into the breach, take control, serve the customer and support them, and help our company recover the ball and run with it. That’s not something you see often in the world today — but you’ll see it here. We make the company look better than it did before the “Bad Thing” happened. We put the steel, magic, and mana into “service after the sale.”
We strive endlessly. We’re never finished with anything. Everything is always a work in progress. We constantly sharpen, hone, refine, retool, evolve. We’re not afraid to take a look at a process “finalized” last week and point out where it needs changed again. And not for the first nor the last time. We’ll delete a paragraph containing a sentence we agonized over last month, if that’s what we think provides the best customer experience. We take criticism with grace, because we know there’s always room for improvement.
We’re technical support, and we love this job.
Benjamin Stockton
Project Manager