My name is Jeremy (February 17, 2009)
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Loading ...As many of our valued clients will know, we at EIRCA are going through some very big changes at the moment with many parts of our organisation coming under scrutiny from yours truly as the new manager for the Technical Support (”Signature Support”?) team.
My name is Jeremy and I am a geek.
As a self confessed geek, I would like first to define the difference between geeks and nerds: Geeks get things done.
Aside from the obvious, my itinerary for the next number of weeks is to introduce and champion several changes in the support protocols at EIRCA Ltd. The first item on the agenda is the introduction of a support SLA, and a new level of support on all fronts.
General support is the forefront of my agenda, and we will be offering a 4 hour guarantee for responses unless very specifically defined by a technical support agent in the ticket. Credits will be issued to a clients account if we do not hold up our end of the bargain. My original plan was to have this come in to effect on Wednesday February 18th but I was a little over zealous on my estimation as it was pointed out to me, as it should be, that we can not have an SLA without paperwork. That paperwork is protect both our clientbase and ourselves. The last thing we need as we are venturing forward with this revamp is to be caught on a technicalities such as “but you didn’t say coding questions weren’t covered!”.
I have requested to our management team that they have that paperwork ready for me on Monday. They’ll do that for us.
The new additions to the support options are two fold:
1) ‘Higher level’ support. The name is terrible, but I am sure Simon or Callum will correct it later. What this means is: If you are a reseller or shared hosting client that needs constant “priority support” such as responses in less than 2 hours, or general coding assistance, you can now get this type of support. Don’t confuse this with Emergency Support. Emergency support will remain free and mindblowingly (spell check police: I apologise) fast.
2) Pay per play (my term, temporary): Think of this in the same way as one of those pay-as-you-go phones. It’s exactly as it sounds: If you require a support issue to get priority support, you can now pay a nominal fee to get it escalatedagain this does not include emergencies. Emergency issues such as server outages will always get you a lightning fast response. This option is for those of you that, for example, have a general question that simply needs answering as if it was an emergency. The management team will give you the correct verbeage but I think you’ll grasp the concept from this blog entry with regards to what I am trying to introduce. My personal recommendation is that the Pay Per Play option is charged at $3.
For those that recoil at the very notion of paying for technical support, please remember that this option is completely separate from the points addressed above. You’ll still have your SLA, plus the ‘higher level’ option.
The team assigned to higher level and per per play support instances will be completely separate from the on staff general support guys. There will be no cross over at any time of the day. If you submit a pay per play orhigher level ticket, you are submitting a request to different staff members than you would get by submitting a general support request.
The introduction of these support options is one of the primary reasons the management team hired 11 new personnel. to offer separate levels of support, we must have multiple teams. We now have multiple teams.
If anyone has any suggestions or comments, please email me at the address that was sent to you all Yesterday.
I will post more on the changes during my shift tomorrow.