The Uses of Social Networking in Tech Support

In one of Steve Boese's recent blogs he posts what seems to me to be a really decent idea. His thoughts are with regards to supporting a new enterprise-wide IT solution. He talks about the different phases of support. When a company first roles out a new technology most of the support revolves around making the system work. The end users most often have "how do I do. . . " questions. The answers are most often easy and quick to come across. After the initial roll-out phase, the company will then enter a functionality phase. Instead of wanting to know how to do something, the end-users will then want to know what more the program can do for them. This can be call the "but can it do. . . " phase. After most of the questions are addressed, Boese says most of the support issues die off. As time goes on they come back with a vengeance.

The issue here, is that natural attrition leads to a loss of talented individuals who understand how to make the program sing and dance. Now, we're back to the "how do I. . . " questions.

Steve's proposal is to form a sort of wiki for the end users. He argues that most of his questions after the initial roll0out phase are very repetitive. In fact, they are questions that almost always can be answered by other employees who have had the same problem. Steve wants to introduce structured, monitored forums where people can discuss problems that they've had and how they've solved their problems. This could have many benefits for the business.

The first would be that rather than everyone needing to wait for an answer from one place, they can often get the answer faster from an online forum. Second, Steve points out that a system like that would build a stronger, more shareable body of organizational knowledge.

Given all of the benefits and the relative ease with which a forum could be started I don't see any very good reasons not to give it a try. If such an program takes hold, then great. If it doesn't, the company has lost relatively little in terms of time and capital. The only down side I could see is if an over-zealous management tries to reduce costs by relying too much forums and cuts the tech support all together.