I know you’re curious; yes I am settling into my support analyst role quite well.
A modern librarian, you see, is more of a study help and technical support assistant than anything else. Less modern librarians - the ones I have known anyway - are generally pretty pleased to be able to help you too, though maybe not so speedy at aligning paragraphs in word (that has got to be the most asked question near a public computer).
My new role in support for a (principly) library domain software company is much the same, although the posers put to us are more akin to “why is my authority control button not working?”.
Anyway - in my new found role, being the supporter rater than the supported, I am beginning to think that both ends of the phone-line have misunderstood each other. Maybe I work for a drastically different sort of company, I’m not sure - this is the first company I have worked for where I am not cleaning the toilets or emptying waste bins - so my perspective is perhaps a little naive. But… I am starting to wonder why the customer perceives a tension between us.
As a customer once myself, I have found that the support of people who know more than me is valuable. I have brought a server to it’s knees with seemingly innocuous 6-lined SQL queries. I know what it is like to ring someone and admit that actually I think it was me that set that script going that is hogging the server’s resources. I have been the one who uploaded a file full of the wrong sort of carriage-returns and stopped anyone being able to login.
Perhaps I shouldn’t admit all the above when my employer likely reads this. But I think it is this openness and ability to admit mistakes - and be willing to learn from them that allows me to improve. Whatever my job title.
But what else did I as a customer do? I trawled the company’s website in search of little titbits of information that would allow me to gain a greater understanding of how the thing worked. I read enough to be able to write scripts that created thousands (and I mean thousands) of loan rules governing who could have what, where and for how long. I asked questions on the forum. I joined in queries on the email list.
Within Talis there are exciting moves toward a platform that will allow the creation of applications that will use founding principles (if there are such a thing set in stone) of the semantic web. It opens a whole new set of doors and opportunities, and it makes those who think about supporting those applications - both those built by Talis and those built by others on the same platform - think about the future. It’s web based - it could easily be global - So how do we support it 24 - 7?
This is where we come back to being a librarian, I don’t work in a library any more, but the library is still in me. If companies are going to offer the 24 - 7 global support that the customers might require, then they are going to have to offer the following:
- findable resources - i.e. the content is not just searchable.
- step by step guides / how to’s - knowledge broken down into little specific easy to digest pieces
- and perhaps most of all solicit, capture, encourage and incorporate the experiences of the user. They use the thing more than the developers ever will. They know how it works for them.
The mistakes I have made in the past, are mistakes that I can warn other’s of today. The things I have fixed in the past are the things that - if I capture them - will help somebody else tomorrow.
That’s 24 -7 support, and, much as it galls me to say…, Have you ever rung the Microsoft helpdesk?
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