Technical Support is the new Mail Room

Remember the stories about successful business leaders who started in the Mail Room? 

• Dick Grasso (NYSE)
• Barry Diller, Michael Ovitz, and David Geffen (William Morris)
• Mike Medavoy (Universal)
• J. Lawrence Hughes (William Morrow)
• Ned Tanen (MCA)
• Jeffrey Katzenberg (Paramount)
• George Bodenheimer (ESPN)
• John Borghetti (Quantas)
• Tom Whalley (Warner Bros.)
• Don Hewitt (60 Minutes),
• John Bachmann (Edward Jones)
• Simon Cowell (EMI records)

The old Mail Room was in the critical path of all interdepartmental and customer communication.  The Mail Room personnel navigated a maze of personalities and witnessed communication styles used throughout the organization.   They could learn the crucial dividing line between what matters and what doesn’t in an organization.   The Mail Room was the perfect department to bring new blood into a company.   It was a low rung position that offered bountiful learning opportunities.

Which group of employees in your company know every customer and know every product flaw?  Which group of employees have to accommodate all of the flavors of customer personalities (particularly when the customers are under stress)?  Which group of employees must absolutely  provide some sort of answer back to the customer?  Which group of employees know which customer facing departments are ineffective at doing their assigned functions?  Of course I am describing the Technical Support team which is in the critical path for customer communication.  Technical Support teams witness it all.  What better place to introduce new hires to the inner workings of you company.  Never underestimate the importance of a powerful Technical Support team.  It is the safety net for catching issues that fall through the cracks.  All companies have cracks.  Many companies however commoditize Technical Support.  Metrics are overly applied to measure results and the true value provided is lost.  Instead, create a program so that all new hires spend some period of time in Technical Support.  Provide mechanisms where Technical Support can improve new product testing cycles.   Take advantage of the trust that Technical Support has earned from customers to sell additional products and services.  Take advantage of Technical Support to groom the future leaders of your company. 

Technical Support vs Customer Support

I want to take a moment to explain the terminology difference between Customer Support and Technical Support.  Customer Support or Customer Service as a function is a first level communication between customers and a business.  In most cases this connection is via the telephone.  A consumer calls customer support to check account balances, add/delete services, or report an issue.  In the last twenty years, we have seen many customer support functions replaced by computers.  An excellent example is when you call your local pharmacy for a prescription refill.  A computer answers the phone, asks what you want, when you want it, and creates the work order for the pharmacy staff.  Banks use computer driven automated attendants to provide balances and even let you pay bills.  Customer Support has been commoditized so that costs per call can be driven down.  Call Centers have been outsourced to companies that have hundreds of agents available to handle consumer calls, volume optimization.  Cost reductions can be realized when these Call Centers are setup in low wage countries like India.  When a consumer is contacting support because of an issue or problem, Customer Support will attempt to resolve the issue.  If the problem cannot be solved at this first level, the issue must be escalated. 

The second level is considered to be the transition from Customer Support and Technical Support.  A considerable amount of product specific knowledge exists at this level.  The educational requirements of the agents is higher starting at this level.   The reasons why are quite simple. Customer issues reaching this level must be solved quickly.  Customer satisfaction and future customer purchases are at risk.   In this blog, I will be describing the roles and functions that Technical Support performs in an organization.  Some of the functions are absolutely critical to the success of the business and are not immediately obvious.  I will discuss how to leverage Technical Support abilities to increase service revenue.  I will discuss how to leverage Technical Support to help manage customer relationships and increase sales revenue.