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The Art of Software Support, by Francoise Tourniaire, Richard Farrell
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Includes detailed, practical recommendations for structuring and operating a support organization. This book will be invaluable to managers whether they are building a support organization from scratch, or seeking to improve an existing operation. Covers all the major principles of designing a customer-focused support operation. Describes call management models and implementation. Presents techniques for measuring support center performance. Shows how to develop the right support structure and support programs for your organization. Considers the role of outsourcing. Discusses how to manage support people -- and manage the resolution of software bugs. Compares tools for software support. Shows how to involve the support organization in new product planning, training and testing. Includes sample user's guide, checklists for resolving calls, determining staffing levels, and cost-justifying a support center budget. Managers, executives and support engineers involved in software support.
- Sales Rank: #1745283 in Books
- Published on: 1996-11-08
- Format: Facsimile
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .90" w x 6.90" l, 1.27 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 352 pages
From the Publisher
The practical, end-to-end guide to designing and operating help desks and software support centers. This book compiles detailed, practical recommendations for structuring and operating a support organization. It will be invaluable to managers whether they are building a support organization from scratch, or seeking to improve an existing operation. Learn all the major principles of designing a customer-focused support operation. There is comprehensive coverage of call management models and implementation, and techniques for measuring support center performance. Readers learn how to develop the right support structure and support programs for their organization, and when and whether to outsource. The book includes an insightful discussion of how to manage technical support staff effectively. Other topics include: how to manage the resolution of software bugs, compare tools for software support, and involve users in the development process. The book includes a sample user's guide, checklists for resolving calls, determining staffing levels, and cost-justifying a support center budget. For managers, executives and support engineers involved in software support.
From the Inside Flap
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This is a book about the design and operation of software support centers and help desks. It is a book primarily for managers, but also for executives and support engineers who are involved in the world of software support. In it we take you through the important areas of concern that every support operation must address. We cover the major principles of designing a customer-focused support operation to help you put your customers first as the cornerstone of your strategy for business success. Throughout the book we offer detailed, practical prescriptions and recommendations for structuring and operating a Support organization that can be used either to help you build one from scratch or to help you improve an already existing one.
As an executive, you will gain the background you need to make the solidly informed decisions on proposals brought to you by support managers. As a support engineer, you will gain a window on the larger world in which you work and see what lies in store if you choose to move into management as a career.
In writing this book we had help from many people. We are grateful to them beyond what our words can tell.
Our thinking on management has been greatly influenced by Fernando Flores of Business Design Associates. From Ken Williams at Intel and, later, Ingres we learned much about the art of people management. Barry Shamis contributed his expertise in that most important of management skills, recruiting. Sue Shields shared with us the fundamentals of world-class support as practiced by Hewlett-Packard. We benefited from many conversations on customer service with Ron Kaufman.
Our colleagues and associates at ASK and at Sybase provided much of our learning. They gamely accepted our experiments and questions and always generated more.
David Aune, Chris Davis, Chris Doell, Richard McIntosh, Roy Moore, and Darcy Van Vuren reviewed the manuscript, pointing out errors and contributing their experiences and insights where ours was lacking. Special thanks to Richard and Roy who went through the entire book and, especially, to David whose detailed suggestions contributed much to its final content. Sumi Sohari and Rafael Coto of Action Technologies, Inc. assisted us with the Basic Action Workflow Process Builder software used for the Basic Action Workflow mapping in Chapter 2.
Many thanks to Bill Rose, the ultimate and tireless advocate of software support as a profession, with whom we consulted when first starting out to redesign support at Ingres and from whom we first heard the richly descriptive phrase for the start of every day in the support business . . . “It begins.”
We thank also Sandy Emerson of Sybase Press who encouraged us in this endeavor and helped us find our publisher.
Mark Taub, our editor at Prentice Hall, took a chance on two unproven authors. We are grateful for his trust and his straightforwardness in working with us.
Our warm thanks to Eileen Clark who patiently and thoroughly reviewed our manuscript and turned it into a book.
Oakland, California FRANCOISE TOURNIAIRE
November 1996 RICHARD FARRELL
www.supportline.com
From the Back Cover
56945-9
The first complete, real-world guide to building and running help desks and software support centers.
Quality software support is now a fundamental differentiator in satisfying both your external and internal customers. And in today's high-pressure, heterogeneous computing environments, it's more difficult to deliver quality support than ever before.
The Art of Software Support' gives you proven, best-in-class integrated tools and techniques for structuring and operating a customer-focused support organization—and for overcoming the crisis mentality that's so common in support organizations. Whether you're starting a software support or help desk organization, or seeking to improve the one you already have, you'll find invaluable guidance on:
- Choosing and implementing the call management model that's right for your organization.
- Selecting tools—including phone systems, fax systems, knowledge bases, customer tracking applications, and other software.
- Measuring support center performance.
- Packaging support programs that can make your organization a profit center.
Learn when to outsource—and when not to. And discover practical, easy-to-implement ideas for every stage of the software lifecycle, from new product planning and testing, to managing software bugs and fixes. The Art of Software Support also gives you time-and-money-saving tools you can use right now, including:
- A sample user's guide.
- Call resolution checklists.
- Worksheets for determining staffing levels and justifying budgets.
Perhaps most important, The Art of Software Support offers practical help with the tough challenge of supervising support people. You'll learn how to determine staffing levels, hire the right people—and keep them, even in difficult times.
Whether you manage software support, or you're a support engineer working “in the trenches,” The Art of Software Support will dramatically enhance your effectiveness.
Most helpful customer reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Loaded with info but makes a few incorrect assumptions
By James Mohr
Tourniaire and Farrell do an **excellent** job of discussing the various aspects of software support. However, they make many assumptions that every company functions the exact same way. Coming from the support department of a major software vendor, most of what they talk about is geared to that business. Therefore, a great deal of what they say does not apply to internal help desks.
Having both been on the phones and managed software hotlines **and** internal help desks for the past 15 years, I know there is no one way to run a hotline/help desk that applies in every case. You need to take the information they provide and weigh it against your own experiences and the way your company works in order to get the best out of the book. However, the book does address the pros and cons of various approaches which is more than many other books do.
What is missing is a more detailed treatment of call management (the actual work on the phone) and not problem management (the handling of the customer's problem). Therefore, check out Call Center Management on Fast Forward, by Brad Cleveland.
If the book had been more open to the possibility that not all companies are the same, I would have given it the full five stars. However, this is still one of the very best books on the market and I would still recommend this book highly.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
Great for Call Centers and Internal IT Tier-2
By Linda Zarate
This book is aimed at software product support specialists working for software vendors, but is also applicable to internal IT tier-2 support specialists (application support analysts). Some of the information contained in this book will give internal IT help desks ideas on customer satisfaction, support models and help desk management. However, this is not the book's primary audience.
My review is from the viewpoint of an IT service delivery specialist. Product support specialists will have a different, but loosely related, set of requirements.
The theme of this book is achieving customer satisfaction. This surfaces early in the book and recurs throughout. Since customer satisfaction is the foundation of support, regardless of from whom of where it is delivered, I found this to be one of the highlights of the book.
Call management models outlined by the authors were valuable to me, and I found myself writing notes in the margins and highlighting paragraphs. I skimmed call management implementation because it is outside of the scope of my speciality, but did note that this information would be of interest by anyone who is setting up an internal IT help desk. It goes without saying that this material will be of keen interest to product support organizations that are setting up a call center. One nice touch here is the advice on disaster recovery planning - this is too often overlooked by all organizations and showed the attention to detail that the authors gave when writing this book.
The discussions on packaging support programs and product call center support organizations gave me insights into the challenges faced by software vendors. These insights have armed me with information from which to craft an approach to effectively deal with vendors who are typically at tier-3 from an internal IT point of view. Another section that I found particularly useful covered managing software bugs and code fixes. This material is directly applicable to internal IT tier-2 support, regardless of whether they are dealing with internal developers or outside vendors. There are some gaps here, though. For example, I would have liked a discussion on configuration control boards, prioritization of fixes and enhancements, and configuration and change management. These subjects are important to software vendor product support organizations and internal IT tier-2 folks.
This book also provides sound advice on selecting, justifying and implementing call center tools. Some of these tools are specific to product support call centers (and to an extent, internal IT help desks), such as phone systems and knowledge bases. Other tools, such as bug tracking and problem reproduction environments, are useful to IT tier-2 specialists as they are to call centers.
I found some of the appendices to be especially valuable: Appendix C, determining staff levels, and D, creating and justifying a support center budget, were excellent reading that added to my own professional knowledge.
Overall this is a valuable book that has multiple audiences. Aside from the gaps I mentioned above, I think this book needs to be updated to reflect the growing requirement for e-support. While I was tempted to give 4 stars based on the noted shortcomings, this book is so thorough and rich with ideas and advice that it deserves 5 stars. I only hope that the authors update this book with a second edition that addresses current realities of software support.
23 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
Fantastic source of guidance for providing software support.
By A Customer
I'm am (slowly) reading this tremendous wealth of information in order to ponder and absorb as much as possible. So far, it's been like gold to me.
I manage a support organization for a US$40M/yr engineering software company and the advice and guidance found in this book is extremely practical and applicable to what I do every day. It's been helpful in the way it presents several options and objectively weighs the PROs and CONs of each. This has provided a good "sanity check" to confirm that many of my initiatives to-date are sound. It has also suggested practices I had not previously considered, but which make so much sense now that I've read and thought about them. I have already started to implement several such practices to improve my support organization and my staff is ecstatic. Finally, there are some useful tidbits that I cannot act on at this time, but which I will come back to later as we continue to grow and expand our business. I am sure to refer back to this insightful and well-written piece over and over again in the months and years to come.
If you manage or direct a software support group, this book will help you put in place the processes you need to provide effective and cost-efficient customer support. And if you help staff a support group, this book will get you noticed by giving you a lot of great ideas to propose to the boss and perhaps make that move to the next level along your career growth path.
I would definitely buy this book again and highly recommend it.
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