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The difference between an average and a great customer support is not millions of dollars in revenue. You are thinking about the difference between a terrible a

The difference between an average and a great customer support is not millions of dollars in revenue. You are thinking about the difference between a terrible and a great customer, and with 1 in a million scenario. There are some situations where great customer support brings the company tremendous value and opportunity. But these situations are so rare and few that investing in great customer support (for high price) is not worthwhile. An average person should do. If good customer support is really bringing in value, then they should be able to negotiate for more pay. If they leave, the company should see losses. But that never happens.

gaius 10y ago
Of course it is. Everyone remembers getting shitty offshore technical support from company X then a few years later you're the engineer making recommendations or the CTO signing off POs and you think "I will never deal with X again". I've got my list, I bet everyone reading this can think of their own X's too...
- avindroth 10y ago
  Of course it is. What do you mean by it? That the difference between great and average technical support is worth millions of dollars in revenue? Everyone remembers getting shitty offshore technical support This seems hardly generalizable, but beyond that, I agree with you. Shitty tech support is never excusable. Pay for average or above-average tech support. Those you can train in less than a month. Don't break your back paying for "great" tech support. This is a silly directive, because it's so obvious once you are in the shoes of an executive, having to recognize tradeoffs in every decision. Unless your company is large enough where the tradeoffs make sense, paying for stellar tech support is an inane investment. You can say a lot to the leader as a follower, but once you start leading, you must dance around the intricacies of decisionmaking. EDIT: Not quite sure, but your assertion based on the so-called "list" of shitty tech support seems to be a case of selection bias. There were probably many cases of reasonable tech support, but you haven't made a list of them :P
  - 54mf 10y ago
    "Pay for average or above-average tech support." Yes! "Those you can train in less than a month." Can you train a senior developer in a month? Can you train a true full-stack developer in a month? Can you train a "10X" developer in a month?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - gaius 10y ago
    Yes that is what I mean by "it". "Average" tech support is pretty bad is why. Companies either care a lot about support (i.e. their reputation), or they don't care at all, there is no middle ground in my experience... Companies with good tech support are good all round.
Bartweiss 10y ago
Reinforcing this, B2B customer support is vastly different than consumer-facing customer support. Screwing up B2B support genuinely can cost millions in a single incident, which is why service level agreements and reliability standards exist. Compare that to the service level of your average help line (somewhere between "maybe if you're lucky" and "go die"). And of course, entities like ISPs don't count in the first place when they're immune to competition. There are customer support reps making six figures. They tend to go by names like "service engineer", and actively solve problems the customer can't, rather than just guiding someone through a reboot process. In extreme cases, customer support is the development team - if your business is worth enough you'll end up talking to someone who actually made the broken product. As you pointed out, it's not an accident that the companies with useless, call-center customer support are the ones not worried about losing a consumer or two.

gaius 10y ago

Of course it is. Everyone remembers getting shitty offshore technical support from company X then a few years later you're the engineer making recommendations or the CTO signing off POs and you think "I will never deal with X again". I've got my list, I bet everyone reading this can think of their own X's too...

avindroth 10y ago
Of course it is. What do you mean by it? That the difference between great and average technical support is worth millions of dollars in revenue? Everyone remembers getting shitty offshore technical support This seems hardly generalizable, but beyond that, I agree with you. Shitty tech support is never excusable. Pay for average or above-average tech support. Those you can train in less than a month. Don't break your back paying for "great" tech support. This is a silly directive, because it's so obvious once you are in the shoes of an executive, having to recognize tradeoffs in every decision. Unless your company is large enough where the tradeoffs make sense, paying for stellar tech support is an inane investment. You can say a lot to the leader as a follower, but once you start leading, you must dance around the intricacies of decisionmaking. EDIT: Not quite sure, but your assertion based on the so-called "list" of shitty tech support seems to be a case of selection bias. There were probably many cases of reasonable tech support, but you haven't made a list of them :P
- 54mf 10y ago
  "Pay for average or above-average tech support." Yes! "Those you can train in less than a month." Can you train a senior developer in a month? Can you train a true full-stack developer in a month? Can you train a "10X" developer in a month?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- gaius 10y ago
  Yes that is what I mean by "it". "Average" tech support is pretty bad is why. Companies either care a lot about support (i.e. their reputation), or they don't care at all, there is no middle ground in my experience... Companies with good tech support are good all round.

Bartweiss 10y ago

Reinforcing this, B2B customer support is vastly different than consumer-facing customer support. Screwing up B2B support genuinely can cost millions in a single incident, which is why service level agreements and reliability standards exist. Compare that to the service level of your average help line (somewhere between "maybe if you're lucky" and "go die"). And of course, entities like ISPs don't count in the first place when they're immune to competition. There are customer support reps making six figures. They tend to go by names like "service engineer", and actively solve problems the customer can't, rather than just guiding someone through a reboot process. In extreme cases, customer support is the development team - if your business is worth enough you'll end up talking to someone who actually made the broken product. As you pointed out, it's not an accident that the companies with useless, call-center customer support are the ones not worried about losing a consumer or two.