My Customer Support Story
I have to admit that I’ve kinda felt left out of the whole customer support story loop. Everyone seems to have their “yay company x!” story for when they were able to get quick response times when they needed them and actually talk to people on the other end to ask what’s up.
Well, no more. Mine happened today.
I needed to sign a piece of code prior to it being released, so I got my hands on a VeriSign Code Signing certificate. I was (and still am) planning to sign using Microsoft Authenticode.
So, I mosey over to the VeriSign website, which includes instructions for doing this. The first step is to download the Microsoft Platform SDK — 1gb of stuff. 999.99mb I won’t need, but whatever.
I start through the steps — 1, 2, 3 OK, no problems. I get further down the list — uh-oh, something ain’t right. An instruction doesn’t match to the software I’m using. No problem, I send an e-mail to VeriSign asking for help.
No go. I get the, “it’s Microsoft’s toolset, not our problem” response — no once, but twice. grrrr…
So, I check out VeriSign.com, and get to their Executive Management page. I find the right person, guess her e-mail address and send off my query. No bounce, so I figure it got through — I didn’t expect to get a response, mind you.
I was proven wrong. Within 1/2 hour, the Executive VP of Security Services, a lovely woman by the name of Judy Lin, e-mailed me back, apologizing and cc’ing her head of support. The head of support then forwarded my mail on to one of her team leads, who called, left me a great VM, and I will be getting in touch with him to work through my problem later today.
AWESOME!
I’m sure this type of thing happens more than once a day. Some content is neglected on a large, sprawling website, a product mgr forgets to get copy changed to support new versions of tools that things rely on to work, etc, etc… It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is.
The more this occurs, the more strain that goes on support folks, boosting costs. If the software / instruction / links / etc… were up-to-date, I wouldn’t have taken up a total of 5 people’s time within Verisign. I’m not dogging VeriSign at all, because they totally came through, and I hope that my experience leads them to supporting “Microsoft Platform SDK for Windows Server 2003 R2″ in the future. It’s more of a general thought.
This all contributes to the product. A product is not just “upload a ZIP file and go.” It’s packaging, documentation, logistics internally, support, and making it easy to do business with your company.
Creation is only 1 component of making something successful. Arguably, it’s the maintenance of items that bite you in the ass. They have an easier time slipping off schedules to make room for new, shiny, bright, fresh, innovative features.
Don’t neglect the bugs and step-by-step updates. It’s all important to release a successful product.
