Does your helpdesk hack off power users?

Support services that treat all their callers as lacking in technical know-how can make themselves powerful foes, says Jon Collins

Power users are a vocal minority amd merit special attention when examining the business processes that drive technical support services

In a recent survey, we sought to determine whether power users’ support experiences for consumer products were worse than their experiences with corporate support. The majority of more than 1,300 respondents confirmed that their consumer support experiences were worse than their corporate experiences.

More importantly, some 69 per cent of respondents said that their consumer experiences often or always had an impact on their corporate purchasing decisions.

This is telling stuff, particularly as we know that it is often the power user who is consulted by other, less technically savvy purchasers of technology in an organisation.

And while they form only a small subset of the overall customer support call volume, most power users are involved in IT themselves and are frequently part of the decision-making process. They are a vocal minority and merit special consideration when examining the business processes that drive technical support services.

Many of the respondents in our study were frustrated with their encounters with ineffective scripts or front-line helpdesk staff who did not recognise them as power users and respond accordingly.

On a more positive note, respondents did not merely vent their ire, they also offered advice on what they would like to see to make technical support a more useful experience.

For example, they pointed out that not all power users are equal and most are willing to work with vendors and partners to help identify themselves and demonstrate their knowledge to get better treatment.

To help sort callers more efficiently, respondents suggested level-one technicians should start at a slightly more advanced level and only revert to the basics for those users who really are new to the technology.

Respondents also suggested a sort of triage system as a more appropriate response to calls.

Most companies put entry-level technicians on the call. Respondents favour having some level-two people on hand who can quickly diagnose those with advanced questions to expedite escalation.

The challenge for vendors and their channel partners lies in working out how to recognise power users and how to treat them differently. Many large vendors we spoke to have already begun to pilot programmes for corporate power users, giving them direct access to level-two technicians or faster escalation paths.

The smallest companies actually scored better ratings from respondents, who felt that small companies stayed closer to users and provided a more individual service. This suggests that channel partners are themselves in a strong position, since most of them provide more local service like a small company or are themselves smaller organisations.

Additionally, vendors can only track power users from the viewpoint of their own products whereas resellers often work with products from multiple vendors and can provide a broader spectrum approach to identifying power users, especially in mid-market companies.

Business partners who can help identify and leverage power users would be a boon to the larger vendors, as well as giving themselves more opportunities to differentiate and add value to their own clients.

It might not be easy to identify and handle power users, but the rewards are undoubtedly there for channel partners that want to step up to the plate.

Jon Collins is service director at Freeform Dynamics.