When you manage a software development firm you are often asked which department costs you the most. Varied answers are available debating amongst “Development” and “Sales / Marketing”, but my experience teaches me that it is “Support”.
The people, policies and technology are often quite difficult to manage leading to increased “Support Calls”. The human nature asks for external as well as internal support within an organization.
Support Systems are often categorized by the nature in which they were developed.
Managing support requires:
- People
- Structure
- Ticketing System
- Knowledge Base
- Live Chat
- Documentation
Areas that need proper controlled forces are:
- Monitoring Frequently Asked Questions
- Educating Support Staff on the latest development advancements
- Managing Support Staff Ratings
- Maintaining appropriate backup staff for the areas of expertise
- Periodic Staff Evaluation on performances
Support ticketing trends / reports are measured using three main criterias:
- Average Response Time to address a ticket
- Nature of the support call
- Frequency of the support call
Support systems are formally designed a three tier architecture. The tier three support being the most complex and the tier one support being the comparatively simpler questions.
Any organization either big or small usually needs a support system and a dedicated department to answer the clients questions.
Spam control is one of my most challenging battlefields. I, receive an average of 40,300 emails every month from the internet.
In the last 3 months I received a total of 1,20,900 emails.
45,000 of these are delivered, meaning that 75,900 of these are Spam.
This translates into 3,03,600 Spams per year.
I use SPAM ASSASSIN
(#1 Open-Source Spam Filter) to identify spam using a wide range of heuristic tests on mail headers and body text.
Time Magazine has a list of the best inventions for the year 2007.
Click this link to read more
The areas where the inventions are being concentrated are:
* Applying solar energy to conservative use
* Building eco-friendly cars
* Using nano-technology
* Video Gaming, Mobile Technology and Space Technology (Rocket Science)
* Architecture Mobilization
The categories include:
* Cars and Buses
* Aircraft
* Space
* Robots
* Entertainment
* Law and Order
* Living
* Environment
* Architecture
* Fashion
* Computers
* Health
It sure is an interesting age to live in!
The Wall Street Journal: MIT Scientists Pave the Way For Wireless Battery Charging (Friday, June 8, 2007)
A team of researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported in the online publication of the journal Science, that they had demonstrated wireless transmission of electric power by magnetically coupled resonators. They dubbed their technology “WiTricity” for wireless electricity.
Resonator is an electrical circuit that combines capacitance and inductance in such a way that a periodic electric oscillation will reach maximum amplitude.
Consider the magnitude at which the WiTricity would affect the normal day to day life:
* Normal Person: Wireless Cell Phone / Laptop Battery Charging
* Doctors: Availability of devices which would not need an adaptor to charge but just the WiTricity Technology. Thus making the Doctors more portable.
* Patients: Heart Devices, Blood Pressure Monitoring Devices etc. will not need to be Charged on a constant basis using an adaptor.
This is progress. This is realization of patient safety. This is Technology for the next generation.
