Certifying or Qualifying Support Contacts
I'm interested in learning about best (or even good) practices with certifying or qualifying the people who can call for support. Or, if you've found this to be more trouble than it's worth, I'd be interested in hearing about that too. Thanks
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Haim Toeg on -
George - this greatly depends on who uses your software and what you expect to achieve by doing this. If you have desktop products then you probably want to qualify the users allowed to call in and make sure the customer has a qualified help desk to take care of their own users. If, on the other hand, your product is only used by sysadmins in the bowels of the datacenter limiting support contacts can be counter productive. If you can elaborate on your specific situation you may get more focused responses.
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Permalink Reply by David Canelis on -
Hi George, this is a really noble goal, especially if you have a complex or infrastructure type product. Untrained users can really crater a support team. I have found that trying to require qualification or certification for support contacts is extremely hard to enforce, even though it is in the customers best interest to do so. I think making training and helpful content as "consumable" and "frictionless" as possible is the most positive way to achive a win-win scenario. encouraging the custmoer to create their own center of expertise, as Haim suggests, is another solid practice.
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Permalink Reply by Francoise Tourniaire on -
I have some clients who successfully integrate their certification programs into their support offerings by granting discounts to customers who use certified contacts. But policing such programs is not easy. What if a certified contact leaves? How much leeway does one grant the customer to come up with an alternate, certified contact?
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