When you work in a small team and you support hundreds of users, communication is vital.
The Cause
Over the past year, my team has picked up several new users and applications to support with our software configuration management (SCM) process. As word gets out about the services we provide we continue to get new users and more applications. Being such a small team, this presents a problem with support.
The Problem
With the new apps, new users, we simply can’t keep up. Small requests that would take a second to complete are sometimes ignored because we spend our time on support. Why? Mainly because we fail to advertise our documentation that will help reduce user calls.
The Fix
The first step is to clean up our documentation. I have been taking a look at what we got and organizing the flow of the documentation for the benefit of the end user. To find out how to fix the problem, you have to know if you are the cause.
The second step is to advertise our documentation. I have included links to the documentation in my email signature, and now I simply answer half of a users question and refer them to the documentation for more info. I have also began to test a news feed to publish tips and faq items. These news items will be auto-delivered to a users email box if they subscribe.
The third step is to make everything useful. My team deals with a lot of information. Sometimes it can be too much for the end user to take in. After cleaning up the wiki for the users, and creating a publishing process to share commonly asked questions, tips, and other info to reduce calls, I am updating the users reports.
We provide a internal web site where users can get all the info they need on their projects. Basically, they live off this site. I have begun to update the usability of this site and add a few things. These few things I am adding are all of the above. Available on their reports are a new look, new navigation method, and dynamic information being fed to them. It has already received great feedback in testing.
What’s Next?
Complete testing of the internal site. Continue to gather user statistics from our Wiki and use that to provide even better service to our users. Of course all of this is just a consolidated, recap view of what I have done but it has worked thus far. Once I get the site pushed out, I think it will be ever better. I can finally go back to surfing the web at work instead of actually working.