You know, being a software support guy is a tough job.
And I know it’s tough. I used to do it, although what I did was more like bug fixing rather than one-on-one customer interaction-oriented support. Considering my personality, bug fixing was probably a much easier job than the one that first line support people do.
Nobody ever calls into support and says, “Things are working great! Thought you should know.”
You’re more likely to get calls from people asking, “What’s a backspace key?”
I remember back at IBM, I once heard my manager tell a customer, “No … the backslash key, the one above the enter key that also has the vertical bar symbol on it. Not the one with the question mark. No. No. Not that one. No. Aargh!”
You couldn’t always tell from his voice when he was getting pissed off, but you could always see it on his face. Here’s a guy that knows more about NFS packet loss than anyone on the planet and he’s dealing with this nimrod who can’t find the ‘\’ key.
And it was really funny watching him steam up. At least I thought it was at the time.
Anyway, that’s all just a long way of saying that I know it’s not easy. And personally, it means a lot to me when customers react positively - when they say things or send notes to us about how great our support is.
So if you’ve gotten good support from some software company recently, please send their CEO a note. He’ll appreciate it.
- Curt Finch, Journyx CEO
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