Should engineers also act as Tech Support? This question crops up quite regularly. I doubt this problem is an issue for engineers working in large companies which have dedicated customer support teams. Engineers in most start-ups and small companies are likely to face this problem. Although my primary experience in Industry is with regard to software products, I suspect engineers in all other fields also have to deal with this problem.

My short answer to the question is: No. Like all good engineering answers, the proper response to the question is: It depends. To get a better understanding of the issue, the original question must be rephrased because it is vague. Should engineers also act as Tech Support? This question implies that doing Tech Support is a regular part of the engineer’s job and that is why my short answer to the question is a simple ‘No’. Let’s rephrase this question: Should all engineers have the experience of doing Tech Support for the products they design and build? This phrasing has different implications and my short answer to this is “Absolutely Yes”. Engineers will greatly benefit from the Tech Support experience but it is certainly neither necessary nor beneficial to handle Support issues regularly.

There is a list of ‘Pros’ for this question over at Stack Overflow. From a cursory look, the reasons cited seem good, but a deeper examination reveals flaws in every claim. I will examine these claims here.

1. Gaining Exposure to User Perspective: It is true that spending some time with end-users is useful for developers to get a different perspective on the product. However there are far better approaches to gain this knowledge than doing Tech Support. Product Managers should be the key link between the developers and the end-users. Good PMs should not only relay user feedback to developers but should also ensure that developers get the chance to interact directly with end users. Trade shows, technical conferences, user groups, focus groups etc. are great places for getting much better feedback than doing Tech Support.
2. Gain Domain Knowledge: Once again, this is a bogus claim. Most Tech Support calls come from clueless end-users with RTFM-type questions. Even in non-RTFM cases, the end users rarely call in with anything insightful that would even remotely contribute to the growth of the developer’s domain knowledge. And once again, there are much better ways to gain domain knowledge.
3. Marketing Benefit for Company: Having good Tech Support is definitely a huge marketing benefit. But where does it say that this good Tech Support should come from your engineers? Management in many start-ups and small companies seem to have the notion that only the best engineers can provide the best tech support. They need to re-examine the lost productivity by having highly paid engineers do tech support.

Overall this tech-support & engineers issue is one that needs balance. From an engineer’s perspective, I would highly recommend that all new engineers spend some time doing Tech Support. This is very useful if you are new to a company that has an established product. This will be a quick way to learn a lot about the product since you will be under pressure to provide timely responses to customers. The initial few weeks or months is also a good time to get your domain knowledge and user perspective. This is especially useful when you switch companies and move to completely new industry.

There is another crucial thing you will learn by doing Tech support: the ability to spot the bad 2% of your customers. Seth Godin explains this beautifully and paraphrasing it here is unnecessary. “But if you try to delight everyone, all the time, you’ll just make yourself crazy. Or become boring.” (The bold italics are mine.)