Tech support: The red headed stepchild that has to go

HP'S DECISION to shut some US and Australian HP centers and move them to India is a result of accountant fever but it's a shortsighted decision that could cause a number of the high tech giants to fall.

Accountants have an important, nay invaluable, job within any corporation. Their job is to stop waste and keep the company profitable but unfortunately, they are sometimes given too much power in hard times.

And since they have absolutely zero knowledge of things technical they don't see the difference between a $17,000 Hyundai and a $60,000 Porsche. Have you ever seen a bean counter driving a flashy car? No, they see a car as transportation, getting from point A to Point B. They generally don't understand things like the quality of service or quality of manufacture.

Tech support is described by accountants with the same phrase, no matter which comany it is, as a "Cost Center." Meaning that tech support costs a lot of money, without bringing any revenues in. This is a frighteningly shortsighted view. What they don't understand is that support isn't the "cost center" but absorbs the costs of the mistakes of other parts of the company.

For instance, if the quality of manufacturing drops on a Friday afternoon and sub par equipment ships, it's up to support to fix that problem, and that costs money. If engineering chooses a crappy piece of equipment to save $20 in production costs, support has to ship replacements. If engineering develops a particularly wonky bit of code, which department is charged for the thousands of hours of phone support to rectify it in the field? Let me give you a hint, it's not engineering.

So what our lovely bean counter lads and lasses see is tech support spending millions on man-hours for phone support, and even more in expensive equipment shipped for free. They like the sales department a lot more, because they charge for what they ship. You don't see sales staff being shipped to India do you, although there's nothing to stop it happening. Infrastructure costs would be much less than a phone support call center, the difference in labor costs would be even greater (salespeople are often paid more than tech support engineers), and customer service wouldn't be hampered by adding language, cultural, and geographic barriers to the already difficult job of troubleshooting difficult problems. Why is support the red headed stepchild that has to be shunted out?

Have you ever heard of a company called AST? At one point it was one of the largest computer manufacturers in the States. It was big for one reason and one reason only, the quality of its support. The word on the street was: "If you're new to computers, you need to buy an AST. They'll help you with any problem you have." And this was true for many years. Then they ran into the problem that Gateway had had, that Dell has been experiencing for years, as well as the likes of Compaq and Hewlett Packard. Success. This is the one problem major consumer electronics firms have had in these heady times. Support will always be a major percentage of your total sales, especially as quality suffers due to the increases in production. And as your sales increase, support costs are going to increase at a greater rate. AST didn't fund this cost center like it should, and without large cash reserves for the lean times, it folded like a bad case of sardines.

Service is what will make or break a company. Due to the complexity of today's products, and the fact that most engineers today come from the planet of nonergonomicus, land of the flashing 12:00. Few people can take a piece of electronics out of the box and get it running without a little help. Not to mention faulty products. And after spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on a DVD player, computer, stereo or some such, when you call the support number, you want help with the least amount of hassle. When you don't get the help you need, more than likely you're going to hold a grudge. What this means is that you're not going to buy that company's product again for the rest of your life, considering how many options there are.

Once a company loses a customer it stands the risk of losing him or her forever. Ever noticed the "Under new management" signs in a restaurant or hotel? They are there for a reason. And after having lost a certain percentage of customers they still have to fight with their competitors for the remaining customer base. Therefore, while it may not seem like it, tech support is one of the most important divisions within a company. And your customers have very simple needs. Answer the phone with the least amount of "Press 7 to go to the 8th level of Hell", have friendly people answer the phone, and do what you can to solve the problem. Even if you can't fix it, the fact that people are trying means more than anything else to your customers. The flipside to bad customer service alienating your customers forever is that good customer service wins you a permanent customer that will talk your company up to anyone who will listen.

The best way to illustrate the importance of customer service is high-end companies servicing other high-end corporate customers. These customers/companies (and more importantly the accountants of these companies) feel that paying up to 50% of the cost of the equipment itself, in some cases, for better than average service is not only worthwhile, but also necessary. It's just as important for your consumer customers, and in some case they'll pay for it. But if you promise a certain level of service, you have to give that service, else your customers will drop you like a fungus-covered hot potato.

It makes more sense to move divisions like sales and engineering to India. The cost benefits are greater, they do not have to deal with upset customers continuously and have longer deadlines. India is a hungry country - they work hard and think smart. But in the case of support, particularly the high complexity, time sensitive, and stressful world of software support, you need someone closer to home, closer to your own situation to solve these problems.

Load up guys. If you're going to shoot yourself in the foot, you'd better get cracking.

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