A friend recently described the best Support person as being the very definition of a “Renaissance Man” because they can do just about everything. “Put an Engineer on the phone with a customer and they’ll be in tears but a really great Support person can relate to the customer AND solve the problem”. How true. When building out an early stage Customer Service or Technical Support team it’s important to consider two things in addition to their technical or category specific skills.
-
The technical ability that’s required can usually be taught or augmented. The interpersonal skills cannot, nor can the ability to see that Sales has a tough job getting unhappy customers to buy, or the Product Manager is trying to satisfy a lot of different needs all at once. When building a team of Support professionals consider how well rounded a person is. I see a lot of job postings that ask for an enormous amount of technical skill. While some of that is required it’s not as critical as you may think when you are just building out a team. Relationship skills are a very important part of it. Having an intimidating set of technical requirements may be unintentionally excluding some terrific candidates from even applying.
- Complimentary skill sets can be very powerful early on. When you consider just how much needs to get done at the beginning of the organization it’s a good idea to have the first few Support staff come in with complimentary skill sets. Item #1 above talks about the need to consider relationship skills along with technical ability. While true, that doesn’t mean having a very analytical, process driven, metrics-aware member of the team isn’t valuable. A good support team has to build systems, processes, customer escalation paths and resolution, customize case management systems, eat Twinkies, play video games, remember not to shave… wait. I’m getting off track. Where was I? Oh.. They have to write customer facing KB articles, attend meetings with Engineering, Marketing, Sales, etc. Being able to convey the right things to internal staff and external customers and partners in the right ways at the right times is important.
When looking to fill the next Support position take a step back and look at what’s causing the most pain in Service these days. It may be that the skill needed is different than you might think. It might not be in the end, but it’s worth considering for sure.
