Re:The Average User Checks Email 5.6 Hours Per Weekday
by BeetleB on Monday October 15, 2018 @10:27AM
(#18219928)
Tech support? What's that?
Most software is written for internal company use. In my last job, the software we wrote was used by hundreds of users in my company. No way is the company going to hire tech support people for internal software.
We were very aggressive in ensuring we don't get support questions all the time. We made some of the customers our tech support. Every "domain" of our software had experts amongst our users. So if any user had a question about performing X with our libraries, they were to contact the customer who was an expert in doing X. If he couldn't help, then that expert would contact us. Direct questions to us from new users were just replied to with "Check with the experts first".
This helped a lot in cutting down requests. But most companies/orgs, in my experience, will not be supportive of that type of tech support. We had to be very aggressive in it, and we had the backing of our and the users' department heads.
Most software is written for internal company use. In my last job, the software we wrote was used by hundreds of users in my company. No way is the company going to hire tech support people for internal software.
We were very aggressive in ensuring we don't get support questions all the time. We made some of the customers our tech support. Every "domain" of our software had experts amongst our users. So if any user had a question about performing X with our libraries, they were to contact the customer who was an expert in doing X. If he couldn't help, then that expert would contact us. Direct questions to us from new users were just replied to with "Check with the experts first".
This helped a lot in cutting down requests. But most companies/orgs, in my experience, will not be supportive of that type of tech support. We had to be very aggressive in it, and we had the backing of our and the users' department heads.