The Internet has changed how customers are influenced by Technical Support, and yet many companies continue to deprive the department of the respect and investment it deserves. I believe that managed properly, Technical Support and the associated functions Training and Technical Documentation can deliver great returns with relatively modest investment, both in terms of customer acquisition and customer retention.
I realize my background makes me relatively unusual, in that I have experience in domains which are often quite exclusive of each other. Normally someone who rises to management through the ranks of customer services or technical support has little exposure to traditional marketing. Product managers typically focus the development and application of their products, but don't really pay attention to the bigger picture "customer experience" that encompasses a customer's overall engagement with a company, from first awareness through to post-sales support. Marketing people, on the other hand, often feel more comfortable with concepts and deliverables they can directly control (brochures, web pages, etc.) and seem to resist being involved with communicating more technical content. Meanwhile the temptation on the Sales side is to try to monetize any value exchange with the customer.
The problem with such specializations is that no one is looking at the big picture from the customer perspective. Customers don't experience a company exclusively according to how it is organized internally -- the customer experience blends all these interactions (product functionality, evaluation and purchasing experience, learning curve, support when encountering problems, etc.) as one holistic experience. This point has been brought sharply into focus for me, not just as a customer myself and casual observer, but because I've worked in all these domains at one time or another, so I can see the issue from multiple points of view.
Two observations I would like to make are:
Therefore I offer the suggestion to view technical support, training and technical documentation as all playing their role in marketing and selling, in addition to helping customers figure out how to use your product.
There are some interesting ways to both improve the customer experience of technical support, while also making it more efficient. A dedicated Support workflow system will help bring automation and consistency to the handling of inbound phone calls and other customer contact, offering a specialist ticket management system. The built-in reporting that often comes with such systems not only helps identify where improvements can be made to the support process, but also can shine a light on product issues or documentation deficiencies. There are a number of good systems available -- I've personally had good results using the one provided by Parature.
One aspect to look for when selecting a Support ticket management system is an integrated knowledge base. Many customers look online for answers first, and call only as a last resort. If it is easy to turn "tickets" into knowledge base articles, then it is much less burdensome to populate an online resource. Also if the knowledge base is integrated with the ticket response system, operators can quickly send links to already-answered questions (making support much more efficient).
Investing in preemptively answering questions is also well worth it. Integrating tutorials (especially videos) into the knowledge base adds significant value, and improves the ability for customers to "discover" features they need.
Typically the Technical Documentation department operates independently from the Technical Support team. However I have found significant advantages to bringing them together. For one thing, there is a lot of valuable content in the online help and reference documents which should be easily discoverable in the knowledge base. Also, given the ebb and flow of the product development lifecycle, the Technical Documentation team may have spare capacity at times to directly add to the knowledge base. Plus, the closer the Technical Writers are to the front-line of customer support, the better they appreciate how customers are using the product and their documentation, and this can greatly benefit the quality of their work.
When creating a valuable resource for customers, it is quite common for Sales to want to lock it up so it can be monetized (e.g. made available only through a maintenance subscription). Although sometimes this makes sense, often this is overlooking the importance the resource can play in attracting and convincing prospects, and the role in encouraging active use. I have often made the point that active use is what drives customers to subscribe to maintenance, and not the withholding of information unless customers pay to subscribe.
The Training department, if operated as a profit center, can also raise objections to having a large quantity of information freely available. Sometimes these objections are completely valid. However often there is a buying behavior associated with paying for training which is independent of which resources are available free. Often customers who want to attend a class or who want to pay for onsite tuition are placing a high value on the direct experience with an instructor, and want to learn through a concentrated, well-structured course. Meanwhile, customers who prefer to learn on their own, using self-paced materials, may never choose to attend a class. At the end of the day, it is my experience that you can run a profitable training business and also offer excellent, freely available self-paced learning materials.
Ultimately the strategy to invest in and make available technical support resources depends on the needs of your specific business and customers. Before making decisions, look hard at how prospects really make purchasing decisions, and challenge conventional (and possibly out-dated) ideas of how they are fed information through Marketing and Sales. It could be that a little investment in what is often an overlooked department can pay dividends long term.