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Tim's Takeaways: Good Support Isn’t Just for Customers

It is with great sadness that my wife and I are saying goodbye to a dear member of our family, but don’t run for your Kleenex just yet. The dearly departed is not a person or a pet, instead it is our old furnace that has finally kicked the bucket. In fact, by the time you read this, we will have already been basking in the warm glow of a new furnace for over a month. Although I am not very happy about having to spend the money for this new mega toaster, and I am unhappier about having to wear a winter jacket while writing this, there has been one good thing about this whole frigid adventure. With the furnace on the fritz, I had the opportunity to work with a wonderful gentleman who has been helping us through this.

This man, let’s call him Jack, has been working with us every step of the way with this whole furnace debacle. He explained to me fully how the furnace was supposed to work, and why it was no longer operating correctly. He performed many different tests and tried several ways to repair the old furnace. Finally, when all of that didn’t correct the problem, Jack gave us some expert advice as to which type of new furnace would be best for our needs and connected me with the proper folks to install it for us. I can honestly say that I know more about furnaces now than I have ever known before, and I was completely comfortable with the final decision to replace the heater after knowing that we had done everything that we could to get the old one to work again. After all, some things just can’t be fixed and need to be replaced. To quote the movie Frozen, “Let it go, let it go…”

I have been working in PCB CAD tools customer support for years and years, and it isn’t that often that the tables are turned and I have someone who is supporting me. I’ve got to say, it was a pleasure being the recipient of some quality support. I learned a lot from Jack through all of this, and not just about furnaces. I saw customer support being modeled by someone who I consider to be an expert in the subject even though I know that he would never think of himself in that manner.

I have said in this column before that all of us are in the customer support game, even if we aren’t actively supporting our company’s customers. Whether it is your co-workers, your boss, or even your family members or your extended community, we all end up supporting others somehow. Good customer support practices are important whether we are manning a support line, or if a co-worker is asking us for help with a PCB layout. And with my furnace problems, I found that Jack was a master at support. Here are some basic principles of support that I observed in him that I believe would helpful for all of us in the PCB community.

First, Jack put me at ease with the situation. He didn’t try to buffalo me with technobabble, nor did he give me false hope. He patiently explained to me what was wrong at a level that I could understand, what his plan was, and how we would proceed from there. When his initial plan of attack didn’t fix the furnace, he outlined a new plan making sure that I understood the change in direction. In all of this he never lied or held anything back from me. When it became apparent that the fix he planned on wasn’t going to work, he admitted to it honestly and led us through to the next step.

To read this entire column, which appeared in the January 2018 issue of Design007 Magazine, click here.