Sunday, February 19, 2006
Customer support 24/7 - promise or reality?
My customer from Malaysia went to Africa for one week to train their staff there on the software we have developed for them. That's something we really love to see happening because first hand feedback can be obtained very easily this way. Unfortunately, my customer got so nervous from that simple training he was supposed to do that he forgot many things about the software, even features he personally requested.
Suddenly, he was writing me email saying that there are many bugs in the software and he has a presentation in 1 hour for all managers. We exchanged few emails and I realized, its not bugs but just simple problems in business flow he is facing. Somehow, he did not understand what I was trying to tell him over email. I believe a bit of stress can do wonders. So I took him on skype as I thought it would be more efficient conversation. It was about 10pm in Malaysia when we started to chat over skype as he didnt have mic to talk and Internet connection in Africa was a bit slow.
As there was no training manual cause the application was really small and simple, I had to navigate him over skype through some basics. I managed to quicky screenshot the application and send it over to him so he can see how search screen should look like when trying to get some results, etc. He was immediately trying and after half an hour of intensive "chat" everything seemed OK. This was first country where our software was supposed to be used and beginnings are always more difficult. However, I realized how different it is when customer just browses through the system and confirms that everything works fine (which is a responsibility of a client to go through and final test the solution) and when real users try to use it for the first time. Suddenly, so many things come up we have not seen before. Once again I realized how important our agile software development approach is in developing proper software solutions that work for end users.
Nevertheless, my customer went for the presentation and after one hour I got last message from him that everything went fine and there were no bugs or errors of any kind during the final training with managers. I felt releaved. Its not that just we are promising 24/7 customer support, we actually really do it. Not talking about the fact that at the same time I was navigating another customer in Singapore though his system too. All thanks to Skype.
Suddenly, he was writing me email saying that there are many bugs in the software and he has a presentation in 1 hour for all managers. We exchanged few emails and I realized, its not bugs but just simple problems in business flow he is facing. Somehow, he did not understand what I was trying to tell him over email. I believe a bit of stress can do wonders. So I took him on skype as I thought it would be more efficient conversation. It was about 10pm in Malaysia when we started to chat over skype as he didnt have mic to talk and Internet connection in Africa was a bit slow.
As there was no training manual cause the application was really small and simple, I had to navigate him over skype through some basics. I managed to quicky screenshot the application and send it over to him so he can see how search screen should look like when trying to get some results, etc. He was immediately trying and after half an hour of intensive "chat" everything seemed OK. This was first country where our software was supposed to be used and beginnings are always more difficult. However, I realized how different it is when customer just browses through the system and confirms that everything works fine (which is a responsibility of a client to go through and final test the solution) and when real users try to use it for the first time. Suddenly, so many things come up we have not seen before. Once again I realized how important our agile software development approach is in developing proper software solutions that work for end users.
Nevertheless, my customer went for the presentation and after one hour I got last message from him that everything went fine and there were no bugs or errors of any kind during the final training with managers. I felt releaved. Its not that just we are promising 24/7 customer support, we actually really do it. Not talking about the fact that at the same time I was navigating another customer in Singapore though his system too. All thanks to Skype.
