The Art of Software Support

Rating:
Summary: Support from the Ground Up
Review: For all the importance of Call Centers, Help Desks and Support Networks, not much attention is given them in industry literature. It's almost as though these functions are an afterthought, as though the first support call might come in and someone would say, "Oh, yeah. We need someone to answer these, don't we?"

This book is the first I've seen that looks at the building of a Support Center from the ground up, from budgeting to staffing, to training and retention, support software to development and dissemination of updates. It does so logically, step by step, providing sound reasoning and justification on each page, even to the point of including a complex and reasonable metric for determining staffing levels.

I thought Tourniaire and Farrell fell somewhat short of giving the Support field a complete analysis, concentrating as they do on larger call centers rather than giving weight to the whole spectrum of support providers, like Internal Help Desks or smaller tech centers. Their initial thesis, on the Front Line/Back Line vs. One Hand models of support, is sound, but limited, giving no attention to the possible hybrids or any other models of support center. On the other hand, their description of the call completion cycle is thorough and unlike any I've seen. I also like the idea of writing a "Support Agreement" for one's clients, so everyone knows up front what is and is not covered.

Overall, this is a very fine book and I would recommend it to Support professionals, especially to anyone just starting a new Call Center. Better to have all the info to start than to try and switch focus after ramping up.

Rating:
Summary: Support from the Ground Up
Review: For all the importance of Call Centers, Help Desks and Support Networks, not much attention is given them in industry literature. It's almost as though these functions are an afterthought, as though the first support call might come in and someone would say, "Oh, yeah. We need someone to answer these, don't we?"

This book is the first I've seen that looks at the building of a Support Center from the ground up, from budgeting to staffing, to training and retention, support software to development and dissemination of updates. It does so logically, step by step, providing sound reasoning and justification on each page, even to the point of including a complex and reasonable metric for determining staffing levels.

I thought Tourniaire and Farrell fell somewhat short of giving the Support field a complete analysis, concentrating as they do on larger call centers rather than giving weight to the whole spectrum of support providers, like Internal Help Desks or smaller tech centers. Their initial thesis, on the Front Line/Back Line vs. One Hand models of support, is sound, but limited, giving no attention to the possible hybrids or any other models of support center. On the other hand, their description of the call completion cycle is thorough and unlike any I've seen. I also like the idea of writing a "Support Agreement" for one's clients, so everyone knows up front what is and is not covered.

Overall, this is a very fine book and I would recommend it to Support professionals, especially to anyone just starting a new Call Center. Better to have all the info to start than to try and switch focus after ramping up.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic source of guidance for providing software support.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Nice book containing ready to use info
Review: I've read this book and recommend it. It can be read through and used as a reference. The authors know their subject and provide insight based on their own helpdesk experience.

Rating:
Summary: Best Available Software Technical Support Book
Review: Strong coverage of Escalation, Service Design, Measuring & Metrics, Scheduling, Staffing, Kinds of Support, Surveying Clients, Workflow.

Weak/silent on Phone Skills, Call Monitoring, Time Management, Teamwork, Support Systems.

Rating:
Summary: Best Available Software Technical Support Book
Review: Strong coverage of Escalation, Service Design, Measuring & Metrics, Scheduling, Staffing, Kinds of Support, Surveying Clients, Workflow.

Weak/silent on Phone Skills, Call Monitoring, Time Management, Teamwork, Support Systems.

Rating:
Summary: Great for Call Centers and Internal IT Tier-2
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: This is the Software Support Bible
Review: This is not a paid commercial. I do not know or have any affiliation to the authors or publisher. This is the complete book for Software Support. Regardless if you are running a small, medium or large size call centers the fundamental structure and operation is the same. This book is the Software Support Bible. I have read most of the books on support and this one is the best. The authors (Francoise Tourniaire and Richard Farrell) are to the support field, what Yoda is to the force. Ok.. That's the only analogy that comes to mind. Well anyway you get the point. You won't be disappointed. Hats of to the Editor (Eileen Clark).

Rating:
Summary: Loaded with info but makes a few incorrect assumptions
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Loaded with info but makes a few incorrect assumptions
Review: 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.