the magic, art, and
science of customer support

Part I: The Customer

by Christopher M. Russo
<[email protected]>

Chris Russo manages engineering at GTE Internet-
working. His focus continues to be satisfying the customer — whether that be a Web developer, a systems administrator, or an end user.

Often disregarded, misunderstood, or simply not thought of, the focus of good customer support is absolutely critical in any support organization, whether it's a back-end server room or a desktop-support group. This article is one in a series dedicated to exploring the nuances of the customer-support focus and helping us to improve our organizations and ourselves.

Whether you are aware of it or not, as a system administrator or a manager of a group of system administrators, you are actually selling a very complex and valuable product every single day. That product is your skills and experience with integrating, maintaining, and repairing complex computer systems and networks.

Many of you might be thinking, "Well, I work for a company, and I'm not a consultant, so I'm not really selling my services to anyone." This is a normal and common reaction, but let's take a moment and explore this issue more deeply.

Your company has elected to hire you for some amount of money to perform system-administration tasks and responsibilities. Your company has also set aside a certain amount of money each year to provide you with the necessary tools, hardware, and software that you need to do your job. In many cases, this money is allocated by taking a certain amount of budget money from each department that will be using your services. The point here is that someone is paying for your services, and an exchange of money for goods and services implies that the person paying is a customer.

So in the simplest form one could say that your customer is your company. As long as you do your job reasonably well and don't insult any senior executives you should be fine, right? Wrong.

As a system administrator, your customers can vary significantly and are never just the company as a whole. At times your customer is your boss, at times it is that man down in accounting. Sometimes it is the senior executive vice president of the company, or it may be a person on the phone who has purchased your company's product. It may even be a whole room full of people in a training session that you are teaching. Everyone is a customer!

In one way or another each of these people is paying you for your services. Your boss is paying your salary. The man in accounting has a portion of his department's budget allotted to you for your salary and equipment to do your job. The senior executive vice president is very likely to be budgeting for your entire department, and the person on the phone has purchased not only your product, but also the support that goes along with it. Each person in that training session has probably spent a fair amount of money, as well as some precious time, to come and be taught by you. Everyone is a customer!

Have we made this point clear enough yet? Everyone, everyone, everyone is a customer!

To better understand this concept, let's look at a scenario that could happen to you in everyday life. Let's say, for example, that you sit down one day and turn on your television set and it doesn't work. Well, after you smack it a few times and realize that isn't getting you very far, you pick up the phone and call your local television-repair shop.

You make an arrangement with the pleasant-sounding gentleman on the phone and hop in your car with your TV and drive down to his store. Thankfully, the shop is warm and comfortable as it is very cold out today — even your down coat does not really seem to compensate. The man seems to know who you are and happily picks up on the conversation where you left off on the phone.

After inspecting the television, however, the man says that he is afraid that he cannot repair that model because of the age of the design and suggests that you may want to try purchasing a new set or contacting the manufacturer directly for some alternatives. He hands you the phone number and address of the manufacturer on a neatly printed card and explains that they are closed for the day but that you can probably get them tomorrow morning. He gives you a nominal bill to cover his costs and time and sends you away with a pleasant smile. Disappointed, but excited about an excuse to buy a TV, you hop back in your car and speed off to the nearest vendor of big-screen televisions!

So, big deal, right? The man at the television repair place was nice, friendly, and helpful. So overall you were a customer once that day, and possibly twice when you take into account the 85-inch plasma-screen television that you bought from your local TVs-R-US.

There is, however, much more to it than that. In every action throughout the day, you were using a product of some sort that you purchased. You purchased your chair and television from a nearby furniture place. The heat in your home was provided by fuel that you buy from the local oil company. The electricity you are using to ineffectively power your broken television is purchased per kilowatt-hour from the city electric company. The phone service to call the repair shop is paid in a combination of a monthly fee and usage rate. The car, which you purchased from a local dealer that you trust, is being fueled by gasoline from a station that is convenient and clean. The roads you traveled on are funded by your tax dollars, as are the policemen who are kind enough to give you speeding tickets. The coat, which you find warm, but not quite warm enough, was bought from a big-name vendor of such garments. Finally, you paid for the heat, light, and expert opinion of a man who told you (as you heard it, anyway) to rush out and buy an 85-inch plasma television set, which you bought at a big electronics chain.

Whether they realize it or not, most people are customers all day long, every single day of their lives.

The thing to keep in mind here is that if at any point you felt that any of these goods and services were not up to your standards, you might not return to purchase them again. What if the oil company failed to deliver oil consistently? You might switch to gas. What if you bought your car and it was horribly unreliable and the man who sold it to you seemed to be a charlatan? You'd probably buy a different model from a different dealer next time. What if the roads were constantly riddled with potholes? You might decide to take a different road, or more likely vote for a different town or state official who would fix such things. The coat? You paid over $200 for that thing — I'll bet you'll buy one from a less glitzy fashion outlet next time, won't you? However, the man at the TV repair shop was very nice and helpful — you'll definitely have to remember to recommend him to all of your friends.

"OK," you're saying."Interesting, but so what?"

The point that we're working toward here is that your customers at work are no different from you. To state it simply, if you provide poor customer service, those that are directly or indirectly paying for your services will inevitably find someone else who will do the job better. In other words, you will be "redeployed."

This principle does not stop at the individual. If an entire department suffers from the ailment of poor customer support, the head of the department will be fired or, more likely, individual groups within the organization will fund their own support staff and ask you not to return. Ultimately this means that your organization will be serving fewer customers and you may ultimately be downsized or find that the satellite departmental support groups may wind up eventually absorbing yours into their structure.

As an exercise, spend a couple of days going about your life thinking of everything you do and how you react as a customer. When you go to your local drug store to pick up a couple of things, think of why it is that you choose this drug store over the other ones. Is it the selection? Is it the courteous service or perhaps the speed with which they fill your prescription? Consider why it is that you do not go to the other drug stores. Is it because they are farther away? Perhaps the lighting is a little too dark for your liking. Maybe the dead rat in the corner of the room was an element in the decision process. What about the snarling old bat of a pharmacist behind the drug counter — the one who will yell at you just as soon as look at you? What about the grocery store? The post office? Why do you choose one movie theatre over another? What about restaurants? Do you choose to go to one fast-food restaurant over another because its food tastes better, or is it because the second restaurant is always forgetting to give you your fries?

Don't limit your thoughts of customer interaction to stores, restaurants, and service bureaus, either. If you think about it, you can even consider something seemingly as little a "product" as the weather as a thing to which you are a customer. If the weather is nice, then you will enjoy the product and will use it as much as you can to make you happy — opening windows, going outside to play with your dog, etc. If the weather is terrible, you will probably opt to stay indoors, turn on heat or air conditioning, possibly use humidifiers or dehumidifiers, take vacations, and, in extreme cases, move. Why do New Englanders tolerate all those hellish winters and humidity you can cut with a knife? What is New England's "selling point"? What does it have to offer? Why do people choose to purchase New England's "product" over that of, say, the desert?

What about friends? Cold and heartless as it may seem to some people to analyze their friends in this way, think of what services your friends are selling to you in being your friends. This is a particularly interesting one, because in this case you can think about why they are purchasing this "friendship service" from you as well.

After you have worked on this a couple of days, sit down with a pen and a piece of paper and try and put down several examples of things you thought about that were particularly interesting to you. Name a service you were a customer of and then note all the reasons why you purchased that service. Then note a competing service and name all the reasons why you do not purchase that one. Finally, for each specific service, try to prioritize what the core components of your choices are when buying that service. You may consider discussing this with someone; it will help to solidify your thoughts on the topic. When done, keep this paper handy, as I will be addressing the priorities of customer service in the next article.

And, while you're at it, enjoy your new television.