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How would one sharpen their tech support skills?
July 22, 2005 4:40 PM   RSS feed for this thread Subscribe

A tech support survey:

What do you believe are the top skills (be as specific as possible, like setting up wireless network, removing virus/spyware) that would be most valuable to someone trying to get a tech support position (or do private consulting)? What corresponding software would match these skills, if applicable? Are certificates worth it? Any other advice about being fairly tech savvy for typical end-users who need guidance would be helpful, as well. Thank you for your time.
posted by mic stand to computers & internet (11 comments total)
The top skills? Ability to work with people, and explain concepts quickly, simply and thoroughly. Ability to learn quickly and react in the right way when surprised. Past computer experience, and computer literacy of course, but just about everything else can be taught ... the skills I interview for are never ones that can be learned from books or demonstrated with certificates.
posted by SpecialK at 4:49 PM on July 22, 2005


I work in tech support for a company that makes software for very large companies. We don't deal with end-users much, we deal with the on-site administrators of our products. Just FYI.

For my job, the number one most important skill to have and to convince the interviewer that you have is the ability to learn new software quickly and thoroughly. Clients are constantly finding out new ways to use and break our product that we never dreamed possible.

In terms of specific software packages, we usually note what those are in the job posting. I've seen people be successful getting and keeping the job after only reading the introductory materials to those software packages' doc suites. If you note in the cover letter that you have familiarity with the software, and then are honest and educated about your experience with it in the interview, it's successful here.

Certifications are useless here and everywhere else I've worked. Initiative is far more important.
posted by Pacrand at 4:50 PM on July 22, 2005


The top skill is trouble shooting. If you can't figure out what's wrong you can't fix it regardless of how brilliant you otherwise are. This is the skill that your average MSCE droid is sorely lacking in.
posted by Mitheral at 5:24 PM on July 22, 2005



I've been doing tech support for years, and it's all about the ability to learn fast. You may know everything there is to know about BSD, but you don't know ANYTHING about the company's product you are going to support.

Convince them you are a fast learner and you are patient and you are in.

yeah, what specialK said.
posted by menace303 at 6:28 PM on July 22, 2005


First, let me point you to two articles I wrote a couple of years ago. There are now better articles on the topic out there, but you still might find some value (I still get "thank you!" emails from people who used them).

Now: I agree with the above commenters and will add specific skills:

Troubleshooting anything that's plugged into a cable. Know your Ethernet, USB, Firewire, what they can and can't do, where to get new drivers, how to deinstall old ones, where you can find error logs (many people don't know, for example, where to find the USB error log in Mac OS 9 and OS X: sometimes the device causing all the trouble is named right there). Know what's hot-swappable and what isn't (my entirely incorrect behavior follows my dictum that everything is hot-swappable as long as no one else is looking).

Understanding how people work: many times the best questions to ask aren't related to what the problem is but are related to what the user is trying to do and the result they want. The reason this is so is because people are horrible diagnosticians and will say things like "I can't print" in response to "What's the problem?" when you might hear something like "I'm trying to make labels" when you ask "What are you trying to do?" More general questions about how people work that I used to always ask (I don't do tech support any more) were: "What were you doing a minute ago? What were you doing an hour ago? How long have you been working on this?" That bunch will tell you how much patience they might have left: if they've been trying to solve it for an hour, take the hardcore get-out-of-my-way route and just solve the problem.

Know how to define terms. You probably have a good grasp on jargon, but can you define it over the phone in such a way that n00bs know what you're talking about? Can you describe an icon? A window? A radio button? Do you know what the common icons look like without having a computer in front of you?

Know how to give directions. Also good over the phone: be able to tell them how to move the mouse on the screen, and where, and what kind of click to use, and how to executie keyboard commands. Get it down: "Hit function eff four" means squat to lots of people. First you may have to define the F keys vs. the function key. Then you may have to specify that they hold down the Function key with one finger and hit the F4 key with another.
posted by Mo Nickels at 7:01 PM on July 22, 2005


Troubleshooting and deductive reasoning are the most important support skills. Most failed support incidents would be successfully resolved if the support person were capable of thinking in a straight line, applying deduction and not subject to belief in mysterious and incomprehensible technological forces.

The worst support people I know -- and I know some bad ones -- struggle with the process of elimination. The best excel at it.

Everything else is merely a matter of knowing the correct facts about the technology at hand. That's just book learnin'.
posted by majick at 7:38 PM on July 22, 2005


I should add that deductive reasoning and logical thinking is a rarity in the technical support world. Having such skills make a candidate stand out like a superstar.
posted by majick at 7:39 PM on July 22, 2005


I did tech support for some big firms in NYC and was appalled at the lack of search skills among some of the older, "wiser" techs who didn't grow up on the web. In my case, I got experience working in the IT group of my college, and learned a lot from my co-workers and students in the IT program. What I found to be just as important as basic troubleshooting skills & techie knowledge is knowing where & how to find solutions to problems you haven't run into before.

Even the best tech support guy doesn't know every single issue, every error message of every supported program, etc, but they will know how to find answers, even if it's as simple as googling an error message. This probably sounds obvious to the MeFi crowd, but to some people (even IT supervisors--especially IT supervisors) this is considered "resourceful."

You should know to go to support.microsoft.com (or whatever the Apple equivalent is), vendor websites & support forums, read FAQs, etc. If it's at a big company, they may have a Remedy-type system that has a similar function (and it can be invaluable for organization-specific problems). Nine times out of ten (maybe more like 99 times out of 100), someone else encountered exactly the same problem, and just like you, had to hunt down a fix.

I have seen some barely computer-literate people hold jobs as support staff because they know just a little bit more than the users, and they know how to use Google.
posted by Brian James at 9:16 PM on July 22, 2005


From my tech support experience, it seemed like the most important thing was being able to log trivial cases into the ticket-tracking software. Of course, I was pretty much up to snuff on all other aspects of the job.

Also, Google error codes. Look for other people (on forums, etc.) that have had the same problem.

This is assuming you're doing some sort of "general tech support" thing. If you're only supporting a handful of specific applications, you really don't need much other than familiarity with those applications and the ability to speak English.
posted by trevyn at 1:39 PM on July 23, 2005


I've done both private tech consulting and tech support for a biggish ISP. While many of the same skills are important, as people have already mentioned, the jobs are different in important ways.

If you work doing tech support for a company, often it's very important to reflect whatever the company line is w/r/t their products and services which can sometimes conflict with actually helping someone who you are on the phone with. So, if Company X wants you to spend less than five minutes on a phone call, that will limit what they think of as "good tech support." If Company Y requires you to go through a flow-chart series of steps, that will affect what they think of as "good tech support" So, if this is the sort of job you are after, being able to learn a set of internal rules, procedures and norms is almost as important as having good smarts to begin with. They can and will train you on specifics, so being willing to learn, a good problem solver and personable while still beign able to control an interaction are good skills.

If you do private consulting, you are trying to solve problems, encourage confidence in your abilities, and perhaps encourage your clients to become better/smarter/more capable users of technology. In this case, having a good bag of tricks with you [carry cables, software, hardware, storage, disks, tools, backup drives, power cords, &c.] as well as an ability to tease out a solvable problem from a muddled and often incomplete set of facts, makes you seem maybe even smarter than you are. If you manage to be able to do this without insulting your client [even if you client is eminenetly insultable -- tact can sometimes be a big part of this] you are in business.

That said, the things people want me to do for them out here which I wouldn't have expected [I'm in a rural area and work with a lot of novice users] are: I can't stress what Mo said enough, you'll do a lot of support over the phone. Be able to plainly describe things and be able to see what a client is doing even if they're bad at describing it. If you can tell someone "Oh, go to the File Menu, Choose Open and then a box will pop up which says blahblahblah and you want to look for this box and click that..." you'll be helpful and seem smart.
posted by jessamyn at 1:58 PM on July 23, 2005


Deductive reasoning and a good memory.

The best techs can very quickly check the most common possibilities, but also remember the uncommon possibilities that they've run into previously. (or at least remember enough about them to find them in their notes, or via google)
posted by mosch at 1:44 AM on July 24, 2005


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