Technical Support Role

The technician support role is similar to the field technician role except that it is mostly doing work in house rather than in the field. This section just goes over differences from the field technician role. The technical support role consists of all the same tasks as the field technician role except that work is done in house.

Here are some other details for the technical support role:

• Answer customer calls: Technical support answers customer calls to the support phone number of "hotline". When a customer calls the following tasks should be performed:
  • Get the customer name and look up their record using search or view. Go to the Search or Views section to see how to find the customer.
  • See if the customer is active. Businesses with technical support usually use customers as active for those on support contracts and inactive as out of support. Another way to see if they are active is to look at the Warranty or Maintenance expiration under Install info or for specific customer equipment in the Customer Lists>Equipment section.
  • Open a service order. If you are at the customer select Actions>New Service Order. In SME6.2 you can select New Item>Service.
  • Fill out the service requested or the information the customer is providing about the issue.
  • Find a solution for the issue. You can look in the Help Desk for answers to the problem or somehow use your skills to find a solution.
  • Fill in the services performed.
  • Optionally fill out the labor time spent on the service order and record as a labor item under the labor tab.
  • Close the order.
  • If this is an order that is billable, set an activity to the accounting person, or convert to an invoice.
  • Take the next call.
• Customer sends in an email for support: This is exactly the same as above. However for the service requested, copy the email information (ctrl-c) and paste into the new service order under service requested with crtl-v.
• Customer inputs an Issue through Web Connect:
  • See the open issues by selecting crtl-I
  • Go to a specific open issue. If you know the solution to the issue, fill it out in the Solution tab.
  • Send an email back to the customer with the solution. Note: SME does not automatically email back to a customer from within SME, you must manually send back an email that a solution has been provided to their issue.
  • If the issue requires field work, convert the issue to a service order with Actions>Create Service Order.
  • If the issue requires a new installation or replacement of their product, convert the issue to an Install order or Proposal.
  • With issues, the issue may go back and forth with the customer until the issue is resolved. Once resolved, change the issue to closed by selecting edit and then checking the closed box.