The Problem with Follow the Sun 24 Hour Tech Support
I’ve worked in a lot of IT environments and very often we’ll purchase 24×7 vendor technical support. That sounds like a great idea in theory. You get ’round the clock support so no matter when a critical issue pops up, you’re covered.
There’s a dirty little secret that they don’t tell you about though. It doesn’t work.
24×7 “follow the sun” tech support works a lot better in theory than in practice. Here’s the real deal – for simple problems this works great because you call up at any time, talk to someone for a few minutes, explain your problem, and they tell you how to fix it. If you’re a junior systems guy then that’s probably handy.
But in real life, the problems that you’re going to stay until 3 AM to fix are not going to be the simple ones with the five minute fixes. They’re going to be the hairy ones that even the vendor has no idea how to fix. So that’s the problem. The tech support folks at the vendor are going to have to do their own research. And speak to colleagues internally.
All this takes time. Time to explain the problem to the vendor. Time for them to go over appropriate log files and debugging output. Time for them to do their own internal research. Discuss it with their colleagues. Forumlate a plan of attack. Ah, but by then it’s 5:00. Well you’re not going anywhere because your boss wants the problem fixed. But your buddy at the tech support line is going home to eat dinner with his wife and 2.5 kids.
But don’t worry! Remember? You paid for 24×7 support. Just because your initial tech support guy is going home doesn’t mean you’re up a creek. Except it does. Because now when you call back in, you’re going to get assigned a new tech support representative.
And here’s where you get doubly screwed. In the old days 24×7 tech support centers that meant that there was a day shift, a swing shift, and a graveyard shift. So the normal day time people would be punching out as their replacements came into the office. Usually there’s an hour or so overlap so that nobody’s sweating when it’s time to leave and the relief shift hasn’t shown up to answer the phone. And it’s good for handoffs where the techs from one shift can bring the techs from another shift up to speed on any open issues that are critical.
But that’s not how we do things any more in the IT industry. It’s disruptive to have to staff people at night. So instead the 21st century thing to do is have a “follow the sun” model where you have on shift in North America, perhaps one shfit in Australia, one shift in the UK, etc. Since it’s more or less always daylight somewhere, nobody has to work at night. If it’s night time in America, my call is routed to Europe or Asia.
But the problem is that now there’s no sense of “hand-off”. My original tech who went home to dinner probably has no idea who is working in the UK or in Asia. He’s not going to call them to brief them on the problem. He may have never talked to those people in his life. After all, they don’t work when he works and they live on another continent.
So now as a customer I’m screwed. Because even though I’ve paid for this fancy 24×7 tech support, for anything complicated I have to restart the briefing session every few hours when the new shift comes online. By the time I’ve got everyone briefed, my original tech support rep is back in the office for the next day’s work.
There’s got to be a better way.