DISCUSS: TW and tech support

["hope.d.cascio" <hope -dot- d -dot- cascio -at- ARTHURANDERSEN -dot- COM>]

Jane Bergen wrote:
My first thought is to have tech support simply give me a list
periodically of the questions that come into their department and the
resolutions. I would then be able to make sure that my documents and
online help were addressing the problem areas .... including errors,
omissions, and clarifications. I want to make this as easy as possible
on the tech support people to ensure that they'll cooperate with me.
Giving them a ten-point questionnaire for every tech support call would
be nice, but unrealistic.

At our office, just about anyone, including tech support and testing, can log a
system issue report, or SIR.  If something isn't calculating correctly,
whatever, you write one of these up and it's categorized in a database
according to the part of the product it came from.  Then those responsible for
developing that portion check these SIRs and fix the problems, and log on the
SIR how they fixed it.  Those of us in Knowledge Transfer (the tech writers)
also get SIRs if the help is not meeting user expectations, or is incorrect.
We don't necessarily "fix" all issues, at least not immediately (one that came
to mind was a user who wanted us to post all our online help on the Internet in
Adobe Acrobat format) but at least we're getting feedback from users who c
ontact tech support.

Hope Cascio

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