Hello! My name is Egor Shatov, I am a senior engineer of the ABBYY support group and a course speaker at Digital October. Today I will talk about what are the chances of replenishing the product team with a technical support specialist and how to properly organize the transfer to a new position.
Jobs in technical support are eagerly filled by young professionals who need to gain experience, and professionals from other fields who want to dive deeper into the field of IT. Many want to make a career in a company and are ready to learn, work hard and work hard - perhaps in a product team.
Why are tech support staff good?
Often, user requests require in-depth analysis. To figure out why the application crashes, the page you need doesnβt open, or the promotional code doesnβt apply, a technical support employee has to dive into the details: study the documentation, consult with colleagues, build hypotheses about what went wrong. Thanks to this experience, a person, firstly, deeply studies the product or its module, and secondly, gets acquainted with the questions and problems that users have.
In technical support, other important qualities are also developed: communication skills, the ability to work in a team. Often deadlines in technical support are tougher than in other departments, so employees learn time management and learn how to manage their work processes.
Many companies initially recruit people with a background that is conducive to continuing a career in IT. For example, ABBYY support usually comes to graduates of technical universities, people who previously worked in technical support or former ENI specialists.
Employees who work in support of large customer service or simple products can gain enough experience in a year to move to other departments of the project; in more complex products, this path can be completed in two to three years.
When to go for employees in techpod
It happens that your department has a task, but there are no resources to solve it. And the opportunity to hire a new employee - too. If the task is of easy or moderate complexity, you can contact the head of technical support and ask him to allocate a fighter who is interested in development and can devote part of his working time to your task.
Such a combination of duties must be agreed not only with the head of technical support, but also with the employee himself. It should not turn out that a person works for two for "thank you". You can agree with an employee that he will work with you for several months, and if the results are good, he will be taken to the product team.
For many positions, product knowledge is a key requirement. It is much more profitable to hire an experienced technical support employee for such a position and quickly finish training him than to look for a specialized specialist in the market, and then wait for many months until he immerses himself both in the product and in the team.
Most often, they move from technical support to the position of a tester. But this is far from the only career trajectory. A techpod specialist can grow into an excellent SMM manager, analyst, marketer, developer, and so on β it all depends on the background and interests.
When a techpod specialist is not an option
The search for personnel in technical support does not work well if:
- You have a simple product. The bulk of technical support requests are not related to the operation of the product, but to the features of the service (delivery, return of goods, etc.). In this case, employees do not have to delve deeply into the product.
- Position is critical to business. For such a vacancy, you need to take a person with relevant experience.
- In the emergency department. A novice who is just entering the course of the matter will not bring any benefit himself, and will distract others from work.
How to choose employees
Interest in development is perhaps the main selection criterion. If a person constantly strives to deepen his knowledge, is not afraid to expand his range of tasks, take responsibility, and generally performs well in his current position, he is suitable for you.
It is most convenient to shift the choice to the head of technical support: he is always aware of the strengths and weaknesses of his employees. For example, if a person communicates effectively with users, writes beautiful letters, he has a very high customer satisfaction rating, the manager can recommend him to the marketing department. And for the position of account managers or technical management, he will offer people who know how to negotiate, independently solve emerging non-standard issues and organize their working time.
How to grow professionals
Let's say you decide to work for the future: you have chosen an employee and you want him to come to you in six months. Such a person can be gradually - with the consent of his manager - loaded with tasks for your product: first, test ones, if he copes successfully, then serious combat ones. You can start with an 80/20 ratio (80% requests and 20% additional work) and gradually increase the share of your tasks in the total volume.
A person will get involved faster if you open access to the knowledge base for him, create conditions for communication with people in other departments that are involved in your business processes: with logisticians, analysts, developers. A great professional can grow from a young specialist.
Source: habr.com