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December 21, 2003

Comments

Numit

Yeeeahd, it's csool

David Locke

One of the places where BI is being applied is at the help desk. Help desks use the technology to query unstructured data. The hits are then placed in an authorial request, so a writer can turn the results into a coherent document.

Back in Windows for DOS 5.0, I remember being directed in the manual to call technical support for info on how do something. So I did. I made that call. They turned me into an expert and a committed customer. This wasn't accidental. They built the system that way around a content distributional strategy.

Typically, a tech rep can only help 80% of the callers. The rest are over his head. There have been many times where placing the call triggered my recall and I solved it myself. Other calls were about taking the emotion out of the situation, so I could solve the problem myself.

I rarely call help desks anymore. They can't help me. And, I'm not going to pay for help unless I can depend on it to be useful and worth the expense.

In one of my employers, technical support was built into the offer. We were not allowed to document the applications in a manner that would have reduced tech support calls. I won't say that we enabled the need for more calls, but as a company policy, the UIs couldn't be that good and neither could the documentation.

Design the roll of your technical support operation.

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