The World of Supporting the It Customer

I'm going to begin this book by saying I have a very deep respect for the men and women who everyday go to work, sit at a desk, put a headset on, log into the queues and start their day helping people throughout the world with customer support. While I wouldn't want to wish the job on anyone, it takes a special kind of person with a heart of gold, the personality of a saint and the determination to not have a hot head get under his or her skin and try ruining an otherwise perfect day. You people are amazing! With that said, this book is about the millions of people whose sole purpose in life is to keep people happy at their own expense. Yes, they are trained to handle irate and frustrated customers with the understanding that the person on the other end of the call is just mad or don't understand why something isn't working as promised but the rage, four letter words and violent threats still hurts. In case you are wondering who I am, well, I'm the old fart who stopped counting how many times I've been around the block. I've seen, worked and supported the people who take your information, ask some very specific questions about why you're calling, determine the severity of your call and assign the call to the appropriate queue. I'm the guy who worked tier level three support during the launch of Windows XP. I'm also the guy who handled 3000 cases at Microsoft while being part of the support group for the Visual Basic Enterprise edition. I earned the reputation of handling the toughest cases and the go to guy when my fellow support specialist got stuck resolving an issue. As for me personally, I'm a Vietnam Veteran who served my time in Vietnam between 1969 and 1970. And I've been problem solving since I was born in 1949. Yep, I'm 70 years old and I'm constantly learning something new every day. Even right now. Retirement is not my new religion. I began my IT career at Microsoft back in 1996 handling cases with many others holding degrees - I have none - who were supporting the Enterprise version of Visual Basic from 4.0 to 6.0. I never officially support .Net. By the time that product was being launched, Microsoft was beginning to thin out their customer support teams by replacing us with offshore teams elsewhere in the world. I have no regrets. I needed that push out the door to finally realize I could stand on my own two feet and a consultant and a professional software developer. Programming and creating tools that have impacted a wide range of customers throughout the world is something I'm very proud of and constantly coming up with solutions that help others solve problems keeps me young. Problem is, I probably am the one person who knows too much about the IT customer service and support. So, I'm struggling a little to reduce what I know. Cutting some of the boring and mundane daily grind and will be focusing on the how and why customer support is one of the greatest jobs anyone can have. I've decided that this book will be written from the perspective of someone looking for a new job. I think I accomplished it. To all of you who worked in IT customer support, thank you for your dedication and service. Merry Christmas all!