Delivering World-Class Technical Support by Navtej (Kay) Khandpur & Lori Laub, softcover, 322 pages, 1997, $55

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Overview

A total guide to developing, managing, and marketing a world-class technical support organization. When shopping for computer hardware and software, one thing that every customer looks for is quality technical support. Written by two technical support experts, Delivering World-Class Technical Support tells you everything you need to know to plan, develop, market, and manage a top-flight technical support operation that wins and keeps customers.

Drawing on their extensive experience at award-winning technical support organizations, Kay Khandpur and Lori Laub tell you everything you need to know about:

• Which services to offer or not;
• How to recruit, train, and motivate technical support staff;
• Using the Internet and Web to connect with and service your customers;
• Work distribution, scheduling, and other organizational issues;
• How to budget for and staff your department;
• Selecting the right tools for increased productivity;
• How to price and market your support offerings;
• Measuring and improving department performance;
• Using technical support to gather valuable customer information;
• How the efficiency of technical support impacts your company's bottom line; and
• Outsourcing and partnering technical support to third parties.

Delivering World-Class Technical Support shows you how to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of your technical support department while winning new customers

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
   • Technical support
   • Technical support organization
   • Functions in a technical support organization
   • Customers of technical support
   • Technical support management
   • Audience for this book
   • A word on style
   • Structure and overview
2. Strategy and direction
   • Strategic value of technical support
   • Roles of technical support
   • Economics of technical support
   • Industry trends
   • Implications for technical support
   • Trends in support delivery
3. Process and infrastructure
   • Requests, issues, and resolutions
   • Categories of support work
   • Mix of support requests
   • Overview of support processes
   • Goals of support processes
   • Validation process
   • Support delivery process
   • Knowledge process
   • Inbound and outbound systems
   • Inbound and outbound systems technologies
   • Workload considerations for organization
   • Common organizational models
   • Distribution of work
   • How work is performed
   • Priorities and severities
   • Service level agreements
   • Escalation
   • Account management
   • Hours of support availability
4. People and culture
   • Creating a culture
   • Staffing and hiring
   • Recruiting
   • Training
   • Setting Goals
   • Motivation
   • Career Paths
5. Performance and measurement
   • What is performance?
   • Managing performance assessment
   • Other categories of measurements
   • Segmentation and measures
   • Location and dispersion
   • Averaging generalization
   • Using measures
   • Characteristics of a good metrics system
   • Designing a metrics system
   • Measuring organizations
   • Measuring people
   • Measuring processes
   • Measuring products
   • Measuring customers
   • Measuring competitors
   • Implementing a Metrics system
6. Planning and budgeting
   • Planning and budgeting overview
   • Planning and budgeting in technical support
   • Workload drivers
   • Forecasting techniques
   • Segmented forecasts
   • Estimating gross staffing requirements
   • Evaluating support automation technology
   • Investments
   • Queuing models
   • Scheduling
   • Other investment items
   • Planning revenue
7. Products and Tools
   • Products to support
   • Support’s role in design and release process
   • Tools-high tech and high touch
   • Access tools
   • Process tools
   • Combining access and process tools for improved customer satisfaction
   • Enabling tools
   • The Internet
   • Consider the purpose
8. Positioning and marketing
   • Selecting a strategy
   • Doing the analysis
   • Developing your service offerings
   • Pricing your service offerings
   • Marketing and promotion
   • Establishing customer relationships
9. Partners and affiliates
   • Outsourcing your support operations
   • Providing multivendor support
   • Supporting the companies partners
   • Sources
   • Notes

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Title Index
Subject Index
Author Index
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