This is only a preview of the June 2009 issue of Silicon Chip. You can view 31 of the 104 pages in the full issue, including the advertisments. For full access, purchase the issue for $10.00 or subscribe for access to the latest issues. Items relevant to "High-Current, High-Voltage Battery Capacity Meter, Pt.1":
Items relevant to "GPS Driver Module For The 6-Digit Clock, Pt.2":
Articles in this series:
Items relevant to "Build A Beam-Break Flash Trigger":
Items relevant to "PICAXE Humidity Measuring Using The HopeRF HH10D":
Articles in this series:
Purchase a printed copy of this issue for $10.00. |
Part II
In the first part of this story in May SILICON CHIP Barrie Smith
tipped us into the maelstrom of the funny yarns about Tech Support.
Now he gets serious and investigates how the major companies
handle the floods of enquiries and queries that rain upon enterprises
brave enough to market their products… and daring enough to back
them up with help and comfort for the buying public.
T
ech support can be confronting for the caller. It can also be
a challenge for the operator at
the call centre… but the feedback from
the buying public can be worth every
cent of the centre’s operational cost
in the way it channels into the hearts
and minds of the customer.
To get a feel for the business I spoke
to a number of companies: Adobe,
Canon, Microsoft and Sony.
Adobe
Adobe’s Asia Pacific area provides
support in English, Mandarin, Cantonese and Korean.
Adobe operators can access an internal knowledge base to assist them with
both technical and other information
to resolve customer questions.
Adobe describe this as a “living document”, compiled from three sources:
core product knowledge derived from
siliconchip.com.au
the development teams during product development; information gained
from the beta-testing stages of the
product; then the continuously-added
product information gathered after the
product hits the market.
Backing this is an on-line knowledge base providing customers with
the appropriate information to resolve
their own issues. Adobe feels the best
tech support resolution it can provide
is the one that does not involve the
customer contacting Adobe at all!
Canon
Canon Australia support every
consumer product the company has
ever made (and sold in Australia).
Some of that dates back a long time, so
they have customers ringing in with a
product that might have been last sold
in the early 90s.
Twenty operators and two team
leaders are based in the company’s
North Ryde NSW centre. Over many
years Canon has built up an information base that can also be accessed by
callers; much of this has come from
Canon Japan. In addition to that, an
internal knowledge base swells every
time a customer calls, possibly with
a unique problem and a unique solution… this is documented and added
to the knowledge base
Microsoft
Based in Singapore, Microsoft’s Customer Service and Support provides
more than 100 services, including
tech support. Backing this up is a mix
of resources in Australia, in the form
of customer service, support and field
engineering teams. Asia-Pacific callers
can access care hot lines operating in
10 languages around 14 countries in
the Asia Pacific region.
June 2009 91
You may find the long wait for a tech
support operator sometimes stressful
… but what about the operator?
Adobe admits that the role of a tech
support operator “can be a high-pressure job,” so they try to mitigate this
impact, even at the recruiting process,
by assessing the motivational ‘fit’ of
an applicant. If this indicates someone
does not cope well under pressure,
then they are likely not going to be a
successful operator.
Once on the job, Adobe attempts to
put fun into work and reduce stress
level, by running ‘events’ that range
from holding fun competitive games
during their breaks and asking staff
to arrive at work in costume.
Also admitting the stressful nature
of the job, Sony compares it to the
stress levels of aircraft controllers.
The company recruits “people who
really want to help customers. The
only thing that would ever stress
one of them out is if they get a really
angry customer. Then they can take
a couple of minutes off after that call
and go and have a chat with their
team leader.
Microsoft admits that by the time a
customer calls them, they must have
encountered difficulties with their
products or systems and are probably
desperate for a fix.
Their customer service and support teams have to handle different
challenges with various levels of complexity and they have to tap on a wide
range of capabilities to balance the
demands that come with the job. They
all acquire deep technical expertise,
strong problem solving ability, communication skills and cross-culture
knowledge and understanding.
Sony believes they have the right
levels of support for them now. Tech
support staff have access to the
information to do their jobs quite effectively, so they’re not scared of what
the next call will be and whether they’ll
know the solution or not …
The truth is, no-one who is calling
a call centre, is calling just to say
everything is OK.
92 Silicon Chip
A different sort of challenge is faced
by Microsoft, with its mix of globallyused operating system and office software plus hardware products.
Sony
A team of four product specialist
engineers at Sony’s head office interact with the various designer factory
groups. Then a further six branch tech
support people, in each of the capital
cities, between the service centres,
service providers, Sony and the customer during business hours.
This covers devices like digital
cameras, camcorders, TVs, VAIO
computers etc.
Sony’s approach differs in that it
uses two front line call centres and
from there calls can be bounced off
to the various other service centres.
Sony’s Tim Simons explains that “if
it can’t be resolved over the phone or
via the Internet then access to a knowledge base is made. This is growing all
the time.”
phone training, followed by product
training and then further customer
service training. Then they go into
a so-called ‘nursery group’ for four
to six weeks, dealing with a limited
product range.
More going on line for help
Regardless of their level – beginner or advanced – any user can face
challenges and need help, so need to
make a call to tech support.
It would be very hard to place an
average time for a phone call. More
and more customers are submitting
their questions online versus a phone
call. For one particular application,
91% of all issues were handled via
the phone with only 8% online —
nine months later the phone calls
had fallen to 63%, with 37% online.
Customers are increasingly preferring
to go online for assistance, with companies focusing considerable efforts
on making more tools and information
available there.
Training
Tricky Questions
For Adobe, training of operators
can take anywhere from four to eight
weeks. Even then, past the initial training there is ongoing education on a
regular basis. This is mostly computerbased training and, depending on the
detail and importance of the new information, can also be instructor lead.
Training covers new tools, processes,
software skills etc or new product
information or upgrade releases.
Canon’s company training is “quite
intensive”. Recruits start off with
about a two-day induction training
program, a sort of ‘welcome to Canon’,
emphasising the ‘quality first’ approach. Then they get an overview
of all Canon products, followed by a
buddy system where they’ll sit with
experienced operators, watching them
deal with callers.
In general, Microsoft adheres to a
20-70-10 rule as guiding principles for
training: 20% instructor-led, 70% on
the job and 10% mentoring.
Before every major product launch,
a set of well-designed readiness routines are put in place to equip operators with all the knowledge, skill and
tools necessary to serve customers.
Tech support staff receives additional educational training courses as
well as internal technical conferences.
Sony begins with a two-week induction, including some system and
Typical questions include assistance with installation, help on how
to use a specific feature, dealing with
error messages and issues when a
feature fails to work as expected, often
when interacting with a second party
product, be it hardware or software.
One of the trickier questions received frequently is when a customer
calls in and states that they need to
reset their password; this becomes
tricky since some customers have a
hard time explaining which password
they wish to reset!
Ocasionally slightly off beat queries
are received; for instance a call from a
customer “I purchased a very powerful
PC — do you have software powerful
enough for it?”
And then there are customers call
the support number by mistake. One
example is a customer who called and
started complaining about the amount
of their phone bill!”
Some of the tricky ones are where
customers do call in with a really
old product – like the query about
a veteran electronic StarWriter 60
typewriter.
Occasionally a customer calls in
and they’ll rattle off a model number
which tech support hasn’t heard of.
When they check the data base, they
find out it’s not even one of their
products!
siliconchip.com.au
Or the customer who called in saying he had given out his fax number
and people are faxing him and he’s not
getting any of the faxes. So after a bit
of trouble shooting it was confirmed
that the fax machine was working
fine – he had given out the wrong fax
number!”
And if they can’t help?
Microsoft has ‘escalation engineers’
who deal with more critical support
issues. There’s also a group of program
managers who work with the product
groups to ready our service infrastructure when new products are released
or updated.
Given that the company supports
a wide range of customers, questions
land on everyday use of its products,
as well as very technical questions
from customers who deploy the systems on a large scale.
Typical questions include installing
updates and configuration issues.
One customer had an ongoing,
nagging problem when their servers malfunctioned every evening at
around the same time. Sensing the
urgency in the case, Microsoft dispatched an engineer and flew him to
the customer site to take a closer look
at the problem.
While there were no visible system
errors or malfunctions, they finally
found the air-conditioning unit automatically shut off in the evening
and the server performances were
disrupted by the high heat and humidity.
In these days of integration with AV
products, connection between brands
is relatively straightforward. They
mate relatively easily across common
connectors but where the trickiness
comes in is probably more in the computer space which is where a customer
has got a Sony VAIO laptop and they
are trying to hook it up to an HP printer
or a Belkin modem or something like
that… that’s where it becomes a little
bit harder for tech support.
Improving the breed
The major benefit of running tech
support call centres, apart from happy
customers, is that the feedback from
callers is a valuable resource, ready
to be mined in the pursuit of product
development.
For one, Adobe’s product management teams ensure that customer
feedback is considered in new product
releases and that customers’ reported
issues are part of the planning process
for future versions.
Who You Gonna Call?
So your setup has gone bung, frozen,
flat-lined, dealt a mortal blow by a cause
unknown. You have to call Help HQ.
Once you’ve made the decision to call
tech support, make sure you have the following information on hand:
• Device name and model.
• Serial number.
• If the device is computer-based, what
operating system it is using.
• What other devices are linked.
• And finally, allow enough time to make
the call and get an answer.
In Canon’s case, customer feedback
is channelled to the marketing team
who send that back to Canon in Japan
and that feeds back into R&D.
Sony captures feedback on every
call that comes in to the call centre.
Any comment, whether it be the
manual, the packaging, anything is
passed back to the regional head in
Singapore every month.
So, it seems those long waits for an
operator to respond are worthwhile
in the long term and can sometimes
lead to an improvement in the breed…
a TV set, DVD recorder, digicam,
software etc.
SC
Call centre operators often have to deal with a mix of home users, hobbyists, prosumers, and professionals. Typical caller
questions include assistance with installation, help on how to use a specific feature, dealing with error messages and
issues when a feature fails to work as expected.
siliconchip.com.au
June 2009 93
|