tangentalizingly delicious

Friday April 21, 2006

I’m not talking about Steve Jobs, I’m talking about people who prolong phone conversations to near infinite lengths, one last thing at a time.

Customer Support is a tricky issue for me. On the one hand, I’m reasonably certain that developers who have to support their own software will ultimately write better software. On the other hand, there are some seriously ignorant people out there, with whom I’d prefer not to spend my time interacting.. uh… with. Whom. Something.

The company I work for now offers essentially unlimited support for a flat annual fee. In the long run I’m sure they come out ahead, but without any sort of limit on support, there are a couple of sheeps who happily overgraze.

At Rob’s Dream Company (a notional corporation), issues of support sort of plague me. On the one hand, I really want to offer great customer support. On the other hand, I don’t think I want to get boned by customers who aren’t willing to invest a little bit of effort experimenting with whatever it is we’re supporting.

I like to think that issues of support will be minimized with great software, and I think some of the ones that I have to deal with on a regular basis here will be. My current employer’s applications are complex (both because they do a lot of things and because usability is most definitely an afterthought) and reading the manuals of the top three applications is fundamental to being able to use them even remotely effectively.

Frankly though, even the greatest software is going to have some problems, people are going to need some help, and someone somewhere is going to have to help them out.

I’ve discussed the idea of Customer Advocates here before, the idea of people who are the voice of the people who open cases, and actively work to get what’s best for customers done. I’ve also, I think, raised the spectre of developers doing support (millions of voices just cried out in terror) although to be honest that’s much more likely at “Rob’s Small Dream Company (a notional corporation)” solution rather than at “Rob’s Mid-to-large sized Dream Company (a notional corporation)”.

Also, as a software package matures I think less is gained by having developers supporting their software. The big advantage in it is that often times us developers are completely disconnected with the way real people are using our software, and I do feel that interacting with customers is the best way to actually understand their needs.