WHEN THE SERVER CRASHES...

WHO DO YOU CALL?
Technical support, that's who. As the information technology servicesindustry takes off,it is time these problem -solving engineers get the credit they deserve

In today's highly competitive business business environment, customer service is one of the strategic differentiators for commpanies, whether they are in the hospitality, healthcare, finance or technology industries.

Take, for example, one of the fasterst growing industries today - information technology enabled services (ITES).Gartner Dataquest forecasts the worldwide IT services market will grow from US$568.9 billion (RM1,934 billion) in 2003 to US$762.3 billion (RM2,591 billion) in 2008.

However, the feverish pace of growth required in emerging sectors like ITES has resulted in some confusion about the delineation between customer service and technical support roles.

It is crucial that support roles are clearly defined for the industry to operate seamlessly. This is because enterprise businesses rely on the ability of their IT resources to maintain the high availability and long-term health of thier IT environment.

Today, support services are largely grouped under a common umbrella of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) or call centres, and the roles of the technical support function is largely misunderstood in the ITES value chain.

Along with the predicted growth of ITES, technical support is part of the next emerging undustry within it. And the role and complexities involved in enterprise level technical support needs to be better understood so that the IT industry ca remain competitive and viable.

WHAT IS TECHNICAL SUPPORT?
Technical support is closely linked to key issues of enterprise management, security and business processes. It helps to ensure business continuity for enterprises and professionals.

The technical support team - when partnered with internal IT department - acts as an extension of a company's technical health and suplements assistance. It provides prescriptive advice and guidance on IT issues such as performance concerns, disaster recovery and configuration assistance.

The technology that large organisations use to build and develop their products requires timely and critical problem management because it impacts their business directly.

When a technical problem occurs, a company's typical first line of defence is its internal support professional team.

This support battery of IT professionals may have a range of people with skill sets varying from customer service specialists,consultants to product developers who dployed the application or product.

This internal team analyses the technical problem and decides - given the complexity and criticality - to engage a third-party technical support team for further assistance.

Meanwhile,the company continues to lose money, time and productivity for every minute that the online retail website or e-mail server isdown. It realises that it cannot afford to remain in this situation.

This is where the technical support team from the actual product company steps in to work hands-on with the customer to accurately help diagnose and solve the problem.

We tend to says "solve the problem" as if it is easily achieved.

A technical support engineer, on average, may only solve a single problem in a day, due to the level of complexity that he faces.

Incident resolution can often take between 24 and 48 hours. These are not issues for the first or second line of defence.

CAREER IN TECHNICAL SUPPORT
Many engineering is graduates today may not be aware of the career possibilites in a technical support role.

The current curriculum at the technical colleges is, for the most part, not primarily designed to educate students on the entire spectrum of available career opportunities in the IT industry.

The misconception that the technical support role may not be as strategic or challenging may be lowering the bar for this role.

As a result, it is often difficult to hire high-quality technical support and customer service talent that enterprise customers deserve.

In reality, individuals in the technical support role today need even stronger technical knowledge, as support engineers are required to understand a customer environment before working on a support solution.

They also must have excellent troubleshooting skills and strong competencies to understand, analyse and arrive at complex solutions in the shortest time possible.

Apart from technical and analytical skills, the ITES industry needs people who are passionate about taking on challenges, and posses good diagnostic, customer service and problem-solving skills.

Changing customer scenarios require technical support employees to challenge themselves and innovate constantly.

In turn, the industry should recognise them for the integral role they play towards ensuring the highest customer satisfaction levels.