Support

The other day I was adding a terabyte of storage through a NAS device on my network at home.  There was a question I needed to ask and tried both the manual and the web site, but neither had the answer I was looking for.  Since I was still within my warranty period, out came the phone and within a few minutes I had the answer I needed.

There are a lot of products that require you to install, configure, or even assemble before you can actually use the product.  Computer equipment is notorious for this, but so is almost anything electronic.  Even the desk that I use at home, assembled by my wife and I, came with instructions on how to assemble it and, if we had problems, a phone number to call.  (Recently found these instructions due to the sump pump/water heater problems we've had at home.)

The quality of the assembly instructions varies quite a bit as well.  The less expensive the product (i.e. cheap stuff) usually comes with instructions along the lines of "unpack, set up, turn on".  Other products go through detailed instructions.  The instructions for the desk were excellent and told exactly what we had to do at each point.  Lego is much the same as it shows you step by step how to build a castle or dragon or spaceship.  (VCRs are the exception in that no one really knows how to set the darn time on them.)

So, I guess from my perspective the quality of the installation instructions and the ability to call support are really important pieces of quality products.

So, why are the instructions that the Deployment Team receives so, well, lacking in terms of details.  When I was Yvonne's backup I noticed that people would just attach some SQL scripts and submit the request.  No indication of even which database to run the scripts against.  Sure, I could make some assumptions, but to be honest, I really don't like guessing when it comes to data fixes.  An extra few characters, the name of the database for goodness sake, goes a long way towards answering questions.

For more complex installations having someone that we can call would be handy.  No, necessary.  If you've got something complex that you are installing (more complex than a set of IKEA shelves) then make sure that someone is available to help us out if there are any problems.  It may not be necessary.  No, shouldn't be necessary, but if there is a problem it would be nice to be able to talk to someone about it.  Maybe I'm getting old (yes, that was my 45th birthday earlier this month), maybe I'm getting cranky (based on my emails this month that is a guarantee), or maybe I am just becoming more demanding, but if you've got an important or complex migration coming up, you better have decent instructions and someone we can call if there are problems.  If not, you can expect a cranky, personalized email.