Troubleshooting
Communication Planning
When communicating complex information as a Support Specialist, it's essential to use effective communication strategies to ensure that the customer receives your message, concisely, and well-received. Here's a list of different communication strategies for handling complex information:
1. Active Listening:
Begin by actively listening to the customer's concerns and questions.
Show empathy and understanding to build rapport.
Paraphrase or summarize the customer's issue to confirm your understanding.
2. Maintain a Positive Tone:
Stay patient and maintain a positive and friendly tone throughout the conversation. Some of our more technical customers may contact us once they have exhausted all other options.
A positive attitude can make complex information less daunting for the customer.
2. Simplicity and Clarity:
Break down complex information into simpler, understandable terms.
Use plain language and avoid technical jargon.
Provide step-by-step instructions when necessary.
3. Visual Aids:
Use visuals like diagrams, screenshots, or flowcharts to illustrate complex concepts.
Visual aids can simplify explanations and make it easier for the customer to grasp the information.
4. Personalization:
Tailor your communication to the customer's knowledge level. Here at Kinetic Data, you will be working with clients with different levels of technical experience. Some customers will need precise walkthroughs, while others may want to be given a general direction.
5. Chunking Information:
Present information in manageable chunks. If you find yourself writing a long email, see if the customer would be willing to meet for a meeting to walk them through it.
Avoid overwhelming the customer with too much detail at a time.
6. Provide References and Documentation:
Offer relevant documentation or links to resources for in-depth understanding.
This empowers the customer to explore the topic further at their own pace.
7. Admit Limitations:
If you don't have all the answers or the issue is exceptionally complex, it's okay to admit it and promise to seek further information or escalate the issue if necessary.
8. Follow Up:
After walking through an issue, follow up with the customer to ensure they are satisfied with the resolution and offer further assistance if needed.
9. Record and Share Knowledge:
Once you have provided a solution to a customer, document it and share the knowledge within the company. This may help engineering address troubled areas within the platform, help consultants better understand how a solution is built, or provide insight for other Support Specialists.
10. Ask for Feedback:
Encourage the customer to ask questions and provide feedback.
Ensure they are following the explanation and address any confusion promptly.
11. Closing with a Recap:
End the communication with a recap of the key points and actions.
Summarize the solution and any next steps.
By employing these communication strategies, Support Specialists can effectively convey complex information to customers, ensuring a positive and productive support experience.
INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS
You may find you need help diagnosing or solving a problem. As a Support Specialist, you must work cross-functionally with engineering, DevOps, and professional services.
There are several Spaces in Google to communicate a support issue that a customer may be having. If the issue concerns the application (licensing, a bug, infrastructure-related, or the task engine), these can be directed to the Team — Support Tickets for Engineers. If the issue involves what has been built on top of the application (bundle, integrations, workflow, and forms), the correct channel is the Team — Support Tickets for Delivery. One of the team members from either group should respond to the request as soon as possible.
Common Issues
Below are some common examples of support issues reported by customers. Due to the custom nature of our platform, these examples may not be exactly the same, but the underlying reasons could provide insights to the root cause.
1. Workflow Issues:
Problem: A user needs help setting up notifications for outstanding requests that are still waiting for approval or for the right team to close them.
Best Practice:
Review the customer's request details and understand the end goal the customer wants to achieve.
Send documentation providing context and how-to to approach their issue.
Ask to see logs or errors if they get an error message.
Ensure the proper configurations and users are set up to achieve the customer's desired result.
Communicate with the customer regarding the status and resolution.
2. Performance Degradation:
Problem: Users report slow system performance or their task engine is not processing.
Best Practice:
Monitor system resource utilization (CPU, memory, disk, threads).
Identify and address any resource-intensive processes.
Check for ongoing system maintenance or background tasks.
Analyze network latency and server response times.
Communicate with IT teams to optimize system performance.
This will typically happen to customers in a cyclical pattern, such as year-end inventory or other instances of large amounts of incoming data. Adding reminders to customer accounts for these periods can help prepare for the influx. Contact IT to have additional resources provided.
3. Data and Integration Issues:
Problem: Data is not syncing correctly between Kinetic Data and other systems.
Best Practice:
Examine integration configurations for errors.
Check data transformation and mapping settings.
Review integration logs for error messages.
Verify the data source for accuracy and completeness.
Effective communication with the customer is essential in all these troubleshooting scenarios. Keep the customer informed about the status and progress of the troubleshooting process and ensure that issues are resolved as quickly and efficiently as possible. Following these best practices will help Support Specialists effectively troubleshoot Kinetic Data and provide exceptional customer service.
4. Renewing and Expired Licenses
Best Practice:
Consult the Customer License Expirations shared calendar and be aware of upcoming renewals.
Find previous license details to use when creating the new license.
Contact consultants to determine where the renewed license should be emailed and who will update it.
Diagnosing and Troubleshooting Techniques
Below are some situations that may be encountered and how to approach them.
Simple How-To
Qualification: These requests are typically a client needing to be directed to the right resources. These could require clarification as to why they may want to approach a specific task. Our goal is to ensure we recommend best practices as much as possible.
These tickets should be solved with an email.
If documentation does not exist, bring it to the attention of the Technical Writer so we can make it available to others.
Offer a meeting only if it seems beneficial to walk through together.
How-To Request, but Needs Internal Assistance
Qualification: Some requests may need more context on how a particular environment or solution has been set up. These issues most likely need the assistance of the Delivery team since they have hands-on experience with a customer’s custom solution.
Gather as much information from the customer as possible. This may mean asking for error messages, logs, or a walkthrough of what has been done until this problem occurred.
Post in the Support Channel for the Delivery team to identify who is familiar with a customer’s solution.
Situation with Unknowns Upfront
Qualification: The customer needs more information to understand the full scope of the problem they are having. In this scenario, the request may lack context, or information on their environment cannot be replicated.
Respond with an email to schedule a meeting.
Before the meeting, work with internal resources to create a list of questions to ask. It is possible a developer or consultant may need to join the meeting with the customer.
If unable to solve the problem over the phone with the customer, let them know when to expect a response. It’s important to follow up for more complicated issues even if the message is “We still have not yet discovered a solution.”
Depending on the complexity of the solution, either email the solution or schedule a follow-up meeting with the customer to review it.
If there is no response, create a reminder to follow up with the client the following day.
If there is no response after two additional days, notify the Customer Success Manager for additional follow-up.
The situation with Heavy Developer Involvement
Qualification: Due to the issue's complexity, communication must occur between the client and the development team. This most likely revolves around a bug that requires a developer to review it with the customer, especially if it is hard for us to replicate it in our environment.
Email the customer to schedule a meeting between an available developer, support, and customer (this should align with the issue's priority. If this is not affecting a production environment, we need to be mindful of developers' sprints).
After the meeting, document all the relevant information and enter details into the ticket.
Email any quick questions that do not require a lot of technical depth.
Email the customer a summary of the call and a timeline on when to expect either a solution or additional follow-up.
When a solution from our side is completed and needs to be implemented on the customer side, email to schedule a meeting to review the solution together and include any documentation/resources.
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