It’s a no-brainer that for most of the engineering graduates, "technical support" is full of negative pregnants. Like call centres, where they are expected to handle calls from irate customers in the United States, pretending to be Dick or Tommy, when they are really Dheeraj or Bajranglal. And taking a whole bunch of drivel from said customers.
No wonder, then, for many engineers looking for a job in the IT industry, the thing to do is to write software code, or develop that killer app, and not take calls. Preferably for companies with names like Microsoft, IBM or Oracle.
Incidentally, the above companies have large technical support teams. Microsoft has 5,000 engineers (yes, you heard right), in its technical support teams around the world, including 1,000 in India, mostly in Bangalore. That’s 10 per cent of Microsoft’s workforce of the 50,000 worldwide. To get an idea what the hoohah about technical support was all about, I met up with Mr Manish Sinha, managing director, Asia Pacific, of Microsoft’s Global Technical Support Centre, who knows a thing or two about, well, technical support.
"Our technical graduates somehow don’t consider technical support as a career option because they believe it is linked to the ITeS industry. The truth is that a technical support engineer, particularly at Microsoft, is involved in some of the most critical parts of a customers’ business, from manufacturing to sales to payroll," Mr Sinha, a 12-year veteran of Microsoft, said.
"Speaking for Microsoft, the only real problems faced by clients, who could be in Europe or even in the United States, get ramped up to the Global Technical Support Centre. Problems, which could lead to the client’s business coming to a standstill, resulting in a loss of revenue," he said. According to Mr Sinha, most companies have their in-house technical support teams to help clients keep their businesses running.
How does technical support work? "The client usually emails the details of the problem he is facing with our technology, and the GTSC engineers in Bangalore simulate the scenario faced by the client. The problem is de-constructed and then re-constructed by the engineers, who design the solution, which is then sent back to the client," he said.
"Microsoft takes technical support very very seriously, and the hiring process is extremely tough because after 13 weeks of training, these engineers will be facing critical questions on how to keep the technology running from clients, who have a lot riding on the technology," he said. "Guys and girls must have a passion to fix technology, when it breaks down."