A Guide for Those Who Are Considering Entering the Technical Support Field

Calls to the helpdesk are always frustrating to the user. It has to be - otherwise, they would not have called. Yet many of those answer the phones have forgotten that this is the customer service business, and the focus must be on the service and on the customer, not just on the customer's computer.

In light of that lack of support, here are a number of tips for those who may step into the software technical support field.

Tips for users and support staff to solve the problem:

1. Close the application and try again.

2. If this doesn't solve the problem, log off, then log back in and try again.

3. If in doubt, reboot the computer.

4. If still in doubt, you have the option to reboot or use a real boot.

5. If the computer doesn't come back up after the reset button was pushed, check to see if they hit the power button, instead of the reset button, though usually by mistake.

6. If you on the helpdesk don't know what the problem is, they certainly don't. So never admit that you don't know. Instead, offer to escalate the issue. This is a way to redirect the call to someone who can help. This "escalation" may simply be a transfer of the call to someone nearby who is more experienced in that area, not actually an escalation of the call to a senior software developer.

NOTE: In no circumstance should you hang up on the customer and count it as a completed call for your metrics.

7. If they call you by mistake instead of the correct phone number, instead of redirecting them to the correct helpdesk and leading them on a goose chase, try step 1. You get credit for the ticket, and they get helped.

8. Remember that to the customer, every problem is critical.

9. If you get three or more tickets about the same error, call the big guns in. The server/software is down or this is a serious big.

10. If the problem is big, such as on the server, it is amazing how many big problems are solved by step 1 on the server's side.

11. There is no such thing as too much server memory space.

12. There is no such thing as too little CPU power.

13. If the users have problems right after upgrading Windows or Internet Explorer, that's the cause of their problem.

Those are some simple tips for technical support staff as well as general users. These tips are good for use by anyone and can solve the majority of computer-related problems. Also, the more you know, the better off you'll be.