Benefits of the Follow-the-Sun model for Technical Support

When working with a complex product which is deployed globally, it makes sense to consider the feasibility of utilizing a Follow-the-Sun model for Technical Support.  Technical Support is the team that works escalated customer issues, those issues not easily solved by Level 1.  Level 1 teams tend to be established in the country or region where major product growth occurs.  Tech Support teams tend to remain co-located with the product development teams.  While product footprint grows, the afterhours demand for Tech Support begins to increase.   It is important to watch the ‘inbound call volume’ and ‘time to restore’ metrics.  The Engineer on-call solution might have to become an Engineer on-duty solution.

I have managed ‘engineer on-call’ and ’engineer on-duty’ solutions.  They work great for the short term but don’t scale well as the global product footprint grows.  It becomes even more complicated if through acquisitions, there are geographically separated product development teams, each working on different products in your company’s portfolio, each with its own Level 2 and Level 3 teams. 

By creating one or two regional Tech Support office locations; co-located in existing sales offices in Asia and Eastern Europe for example, you can replace all US based overnight solutions with just one or two small teams.  Each Tech Support team location, US based, Asia, and Europe would work during their respective daytime hours to support all requests globally requiring product specialists.

I have had great success implementing Follow-the-Sun and ensuring Technical Support competency at remote locations.  There are many important considerations but with proper attention, the FTS support model can ensure that your Technical Support solution is World Class and continues to be World Class as your company grows. 

Advantages include:

                Reduced cost by consolidating all afterhours Tech support

                Reduced ‘time to restore’ metrics

                Reduced employee turnover due to shift work

                Creates the best contingency plan for handling US based Tech Support facility shutdowns

Team Building – Choosing the best Candidates for Technical Support

What are the best criteria to use for choosing candidates?  It all depends on which phase of the team building process is at hand and the manager’s ability to be a leader.  I suggest to all of my clients that they view their team members as chess pieces.  The biggest correlation between the two is the fact that chess pieces or team members have unique abilities.  All of the unique abilities combined make the team very effective problem solvers.  One team member might be great at handling the pressure for restoring product functionality to 9,990 users, while another team member has the patience to comb through data to determine the cause of the remaining 10 user issues.  One team member likes to travel to customer sites, while another team member works best solving customer issues remotely.   And similar to chess, there is a finite number of team members.  The manager’s job is to understand each team member’s strengths and unique skills as they pertain to the department goals and use those resources to get the job done.  I suggest that the manager performs this analysis themselves rather than rely solely on behavioral assessments.  The reason is that the manager needs to take ownership for the decisions he makes about his team and assessments are data points, not a final report.   Unless the manager wrote every question himself, the standardized assessments defer ownership.

An advantage of the hiring manager performing more of the early sorting steps is the discovery of new unique candidate abilities.  Technology is always changing, so are the skills your department needs in order to be effective.  Review the candidate’s ability, assess the value, and determine whether this will make the team stronger.  Resist the temptation to grow or replace team members with a clone.  Certainly a common foundation of knowledge or experience such as a Bachelor’s Degree or military service is helpful.  Limiting the sorting to an absolute set of requirements though precludes any chance of discovery.  The most knowledgeable and effective engineer that I ever worked with never went to college. 

The Often Underestimated Requirement of a Technical Support Engineer

Superior product knowledge, strong communication skills, patience, and listening skills.  Ability to problem solve and be able to diagnose problems with very little information…

So begins the typical job description for a Technical Support Engineer.  Years of experience dictate the grade level of the position as does the formal education requirements.  Very often missing from the description is the candidate’s ability to troubleshoot.  You might say that it is included in the phrase ‘ability to problem solve and diagnose  problems with little information’.  I would counter that it should be but it isn’t because of an underestimation of what troubleshooting is. It consists of applying logical thinking to create a comprehensive list of possible causes and eliminate each possibility until the true problem is found.   It is impossible to create an accurate list of causes unless you have accurately defined what the problem actually is.  Defining the problem and then applying logic to solve it is absolutely key to proper troubleshooting.  I can’t tell you how many times in my career I have seen smart people waste time problem solving because of this.  It is an acquired skill mostly dependent on experience and mentoring.   Effectively applying this is a significant value add for any organization and from a customer's perspective, is a differentiator between vendors.