Pondering the BIG Questions.

I've been thinking--yes, I do that, at least occasionally--about technical support in general quite a lot lately. Not because that's what I do, at least not entirely. I've been thinking about the industry, the whole ball o' wax. Let me clarify.

I spend a lot of time on industry forums as a spokesperson for Puget because I want to help people. Yeah, sometimes sales happen because I'm on there and they like me, and that's all well and good. However, I'm actually on there for a more simplistic reason--I don't want people to suffer when they either can't get support, get bad support, or don't know where to go for help. I'll give you an example.

There's a guy who let himself get talked in to building a PC because everyone on the forum kind of pressured him to do it. (You get that a lot--because there's a large volume of enthusiast builders on these sites, every inquiry about manufacturers is met with derision and screams of 'build it yourself'. Most people either resist or ignore them. He didn't.) When he started having problems while building, he posted on the same forums and was met with...silence. All the jerks that had told him he needed to build all of a sudden had nothing at all to say to him. They left him high and dry.

He sent me a private message, asking for help because I'd seemed so supportive in the forums. I gave him my IM and email, and told him to contact me so that we could chat one-on-one, and that I'd help him fix the issues he was having.

The email I received in return pretty much epitomizes why I do this for a living. It was one sentence long.

"I don't know what to say or how to thank you--without your help, I would be completely lost."

That, people, is why you should be in tech support. Not because of the money, but because you can make a HUGE difference in someone's world by merely sharing information. Computers and technology have become so integrated into everyone's lives, they literally are lost without it...and tech support reps are the only hope some people have of finding their way out of the desert.

So, I have been mulling this over, and as usual, wondering why larger companies don't put enough real effort into their support experiences. Wondering why they're completely destroying people's faith in the process when it's a great opportunity to build business and relationships...which in turn will produce more business. I know the answer, but I ponder the problem regardless. It's all about profit and loss. Hence...outsourcing becomes the best solution.

I understand, truly, why large companies outsource to other countries. The price of doing support is HUGE, especially if your product is so-so and breaks a lot (duh). There has got to be a decent way to bridge the gap between support costs and benefit so that outsourcing is no longer a mandantory alternative for larger companies.

I don't know what that solution is right now--and if I can ever figure it out, someone will probably pay me large amounts of consulting dollars to implement it.

Until then, I guess I'll stick to this sector of the industry where I can make a difference, and I'll keep posting on the forums to help all of those people that can't seem to find help anywhere else. If I can keep just one less person from blowing his PC up with a sawed-off shotgun....well, that's a good start.