Outsourced tech support

One of the things my company has struggled with is providing tech support 24/7. Small company, small budget, really can't do it well hiring people to do that on demand. So we tried working it with live during the day and into the evening with voice mail "after hours". Well things get lost, people are not happy because there is no help on hand right then. So we did a bit more research into the outsourcing it.

We are now in our third week of live support with the company we decided on, and I have to say it is going well I think. The folks doing it for us put on a nice demo when we approached them and all I could think was why can't I get our folks to do their stuff like that. These guys are in New York, accent and all. There was some setup time, getting the troubleshooting trees put together and so on. And as you might imagine, there is tweaking going on now as we make adjustments in workflows and info. There have been some oops in the early stages here but all in all, it has been good. I have to say these guys have been good to work with and are putting the effort into it. To be blunt about it, I have seen more effort, progress and documentation (history) from these guys than I every have from our own folks. And some of our folks is another story. Some are not very happy at all with the way it is going. Not because it is bad but because it is happening.

We have weekly meetings right now to go over items and I email them issues in the interim to either fix because it needs to be done quickly or so they can have it for the meeting. There is no blame from either side on items. Its just lets get this ironed out, what can we do to make it better. So I have to say, even though it has been some work and still is for a bit, it is turning out to be a good thing working with the folks at Fused Solutions.

So, while I am initially impressed with them I have to do the smart thing a reserve judgement for a bit to see if we continue this way or is it one of those "lets get um hooked" deals.

tk