Product Support
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Remember, nobody calls product support to say "Everything is great! Have a nice day." ;P "If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done." - Peter Ustinov
Mike Mullikin wrote:
nobody calls product support to say "Everything is great! Have a nice day."
Actually not quite true... but it is the exception to the rule. You can get some really nice thank you notes, to you or your boss (the latter being best usually). We're still small enough that support is handled by developers, which can be very tiresome at times, but recently there has been a several very complimentary emails sent to our bosses (and fwd back to us), that make the time worth it. At least to me. However, all that being said, I would never work solely on product support. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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I am curios about a product support position that has been offered to me. Has anyone ever worked in product support? What's it like? Time is the fire in which we burn.
I did telephone support for several years before moving into programming. It is the BOTTOM of the BARREL. You get NO respect. People dump on your all day long. You're expected not only to solve the technical problems, but you are expected to be a therapist for people's frayed nerves and bad attitudes. People will yell at you, curse at you, and they will blame you personally for their computers not working. And to make it worse, they will only tell you the parts of the problem that they want to tell you. You will have to figure out the problem without full information, which is doubly difficult. It is THE PITS of the computer field. I promised myself long ago that I would never do support again.
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I am curios about a product support position that has been offered to me. Has anyone ever worked in product support? What's it like? Time is the fire in which we burn.
is it phone based or is there a bit more separation? what is your target audience? are they offering lots of money? some of the time i work in forum based tech support for programmers, so some of them manage to tell you what they are doing, and what the problem is without me having to ask :) on a good day things work, progress is made, there is fun to be had trying to work out what the problems are and what is going on. however the "it does not work", where it takes 6 question and answer passes to even find out what "it" is are not so good. put it this way, how does hanging around the lounge answering "all" questions sound to you? this sound give you a clue :) zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness
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Mike Mullikin wrote:
nobody calls product support to say "Everything is great! Have a nice day."
Actually not quite true... but it is the exception to the rule. You can get some really nice thank you notes, to you or your boss (the latter being best usually). We're still small enough that support is handled by developers, which can be very tiresome at times, but recently there has been a several very complimentary emails sent to our bosses (and fwd back to us), that make the time worth it. At least to me. However, all that being said, I would never work solely on product support. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
You can get some really nice thank you notes...
True, but all "thank yous" are in response to your efforts on a prior problem. ;) "If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done." - Peter Ustinov
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Mike Mullikin wrote:
nobody calls product support to say "Everything is great! Have a nice day."
Actually not quite true... but it is the exception to the rule. You can get some really nice thank you notes, to you or your boss (the latter being best usually). We're still small enough that support is handled by developers, which can be very tiresome at times, but recently there has been a several very complimentary emails sent to our bosses (and fwd back to us), that make the time worth it. At least to me. However, all that being said, I would never work solely on product support. _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
However, all that being said, I would never work solely on product support.
that sums it up perfectly! zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness
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I am curios about a product support position that has been offered to me. Has anyone ever worked in product support? What's it like? Time is the fire in which we burn.
It's not bad if you don't mind talking to people with problems all day. An on the positive side every great once and awhile people have problems not caused by thier own stupidity. -Richard
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Jeffry J. Brickley wrote:
You can get some really nice thank you notes...
True, but all "thank yous" are in response to your efforts on a prior problem. ;) "If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done." - Peter Ustinov
Mike Mullikin wrote:
True, but all "thank yous" are in response to your efforts on a prior problem.
No, not really. Because we work both sides, support and development, adding new features has resulted in some of the best thank you notes because it went off without a hitch (in mission), we work with the customers, test and evaluate on their data, and try to get everything fully tested before it goes live -- the customer does get to see the buggy side of development because they are participating in the final testing, but they also get a more stable product. Since we are not the only player in the field, our customers can be side by side with SimDIS, Mak Stealth, and others.... while our customers are still going strong, the people next to them are crashing, or cussing, or both.... THAT has generated some of the best email. We even had a few of the people who were side by side with our customers start asking questions.... how in the world do you get 20fps when the industry standard gets 4fps? because we wrote it the right way. ;) [they would be more hurt to know I am using multi-rendering, so 20frames per second on the screen means about 80-100 frames per second internally] I think we have been very lucky, at the same time we also work hard. :) _________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) -- modified at 11:10 Thursday 6th April, 2006
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is it phone based or is there a bit more separation? what is your target audience? are they offering lots of money? some of the time i work in forum based tech support for programmers, so some of them manage to tell you what they are doing, and what the problem is without me having to ask :) on a good day things work, progress is made, there is fun to be had trying to work out what the problems are and what is going on. however the "it does not work", where it takes 6 question and answer passes to even find out what "it" is are not so good. put it this way, how does hanging around the lounge answering "all" questions sound to you? this sound give you a clue :) zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness
Actually, I was just told that it is a second level support meaning that I won't be dealing with phone calls. Someone in the first level will bring the problems to me. However, I am still required to communicate with clients. It appears that the developers have been doing both, providing support and developing. That overwhelms them (which is understandable) so they want to create a support team. Most of the jobs that I have had were not what I expected. They tell you one thing and then when you start working, you find out that it is something else. In my current job I was told that I was going to design templates so I jumped at the opportunity. I find myself reading project descriptions, performing technical reviews, negotiating prices with developers, etc. I don't know where the templates are. Now in terms of money, I still don't know what they will offer for the product support. I am not that thrilled about the job itself. It's the idea that it my lead to a higher position that entices me. Time is the fire in which we burn.
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I am curios about a product support position that has been offered to me. Has anyone ever worked in product support? What's it like? Time is the fire in which we burn.
Toni78 wrote:
I am curios about a product support position that has been offered to me. Has anyone ever worked in product support? What's it like?
Unless you particularly want to do it, chances are good that you won't like it very much. Regards, Nish
Nish’s thoughts on MFC, C++/CLI and .NET (my blog)
The Ultimate Grid - The #1 MFC grid out there! -
I am curios about a product support position that has been offered to me. Has anyone ever worked in product support? What's it like? Time is the fire in which we burn.
Try the archives here http://www.userfriendly.org[^]. The tigress is here :-D
