Roll Out Customer Support

When a product rolls out, there is nothing in the world that can prepare you for the questions coming. You think you have a pretty good handle on the actual questions related to the product. It's the unknown questions that will freak you out and just make you shake you're head and think, WTF. Since our roll out a couple weeks ago, we have encountered a handful of legitimate bugs. The sort of things your try and catch in testing, but somehow make it through to the release. I have had several good learning questions. One thing we asked our users to do is, before you even try to enter something in the system, call me. Then when a user gets an assignment, call me. We did this because, 1. our whole organization is migrating to this system and we'll have new users. 2., it's just a confidence booster for our users to see. Yes it really is that easy to use the new system.

Then we have the resistance to changers. No matter what you do, it's going to suck. I had comments of, "It's a complete failure for us.", "the system doesn't work for me", "I thought this was supposed to be better", "I thought this was supposed to be easier", and my favorite, "I'll ask this question, but I"m going to do what I want anyway."

I and some of the supervisors have handled everything very professionally so far. No name calling or people storming off, we have answered every one's questions politely and when a bug (aka feature) is discovered we put in on our punch list to fix. We've even had to delve into the corporate Active Directory system to fix a few accounts because a few distribution lists were incorrectly setup.

All in all. It's very time consuming and tiring, but so far so good. We are starting to look at phase 1.1 requests outside of bug fixes. Users are excited about that. I think we may have to do some basic computer training after a few of my experiences. One of my users, I swear after you could guarantee the computer was actually plugged into the wall for power, it should have been taken away from the user. It is disturbing to know that some people whose job is to work daily with a computer and process all the business on it. Couldn't turn it on if you asked him/her too, much less do something that required thought.

One general thing I will bring up probably to management is this particular video, Inbox Zero. After helping the couple users who have asked to have some e-mail inbox rules setup, which is legit request in my book. There is nothing easy about it. Our department can use a few trick on how to manage an inbox. It's part art, part science, but very good practice. Till next time when I think I'll start at ground zero with this project and step everyone through start to finish (and my slow death) he he.