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Application Support is tricky business. Often companies and individuals develop most wonderful web applications and just presume that people will be able to work with it themselves. Worse, people try applications and because there isn’t enough application support available just give up after some time without really exploring all the features and services of the software. So any kind of application support plan needs to clearly address two areas – 1. Help people when they are stuck with a particular feature of the software or web application. 2. Help people get the most out of the application by introducing them to all features of the application. This isn’t the easiest to achieve. However, an honest attempt at achieving these objectives is the biggest favour an application developer will do for himself. Having worked on both sides of this fence, I wish to give you 5 things you must keep in mind when plotting the plan for providing support for your application. 1. Know that your application will be tried by different people at different times. Not only is this a matter of different time zones but also the different times of the day that people like to tinker with new things. Therefore, you can never have an application support plan which isn’t in some form 24x7. 2. Often when planning for their application support needs, companies will completely base their plan on a single mode – Email or Telephone or Live Chat. That’s a big chance you are taking on infrastructure/system working and your users not needing immediate help. I have always found that having a two prong strategy is best. While the combination of email and telephone seem best, it’s not always practical. I have found that email and live web chat combination is a much better option for web application support. 3. Look at your costs closely. Support isn’t always a direct revenue driving exercise. Therefore, it is best to keep the costs on it low. Outsourcing is a good option for this. Ask your provider for dedicated personnel plan or shared support plans. Scale up as your needs grow. 4. Do not wait to get the first customer before you set the support options up. You need support setup atleast a few weeks before you are ready to roll the service or product out. 5. Work on training your support people. It helps to have a good support policy document. So that your support team knows what to do and what not. If you are looking for affordable 24/7 tech support partner for your business, TechSupport.in is the right answer. They are in the offshore industry for around 14 years now, providing technical support, software testing and consulting services to a large number of clients round the clock.
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