Effective support for information users Essay Example for Free

Effective support for information users Essay Customers are an asset for any organization and to satisfy and retain them is every organization’s goal. The only way to achieve this goal is to build proper relationships with your customer through providing them appropriate customer service when ever they require. Customer gives you business because it is a cycle, if you fulfill your customer need then he will spread a good word of mouth for your organization otherwise they will give you a real hard time. Information technology has great importance in the business world today because the environment is very uncertain therefore innovation needs to be implemented rapidly. Every day we see something or the other coming up with new technology and to survive in this competent world we all have to cope with technological advancements, therefore customers tend to purchase technologically advanced products easily but the difficulty is in understanding the ways to operate these products. This is where they need help and it is a chance for the organizations to retain customers because customer will only stick to the brand which is providing him proper customer service. For this purpose IT organizations have customer service centers so that they can provide their customers with appropriate assistance. The bottleneck is faced when the employees on desk at the customer service center are not able to entertain the customers with what they want. This is usually due to the lack of information employees hold regarding the product and this leads the organization towards losing their customers. (Hoffman). Therefore in order to remove this bottle neck, the organizations should provide their customers with best service, for which they need to consider following strategies: Strategies to ensure that your customers are getting adequate technical support 1) Hire the right people with excellent communication skills. 2) Train your employees so that they are well aware of the product specifications and can easily deliver the information to the customer 3) Employee people with calm and good attitude because customers may be very frustrated or harsh at times still the employee has to remain very tranquil with him in order to avoid any further dilemma. 4) A company should make sure that on desk personnel are well aware of their goals, that is, they believe that it is their duty to entertain more and more customers, understand their needs and interact with them to provide more and more information so that they are satisfied. (Bayan) 5) Customers should be provided with a detailed guide book as well so that they can better understand the product and do not face any hurdles. 6) Customer should be provided with a very comfortable and friendly environment and he should be given great importance so that he can feel that the company really cares for his needs. (Anonymous) Socio-Technical Structure Socio technical structure is an organizational design which consists of a combination of people and technology. It includes the habits and attitudes of people; the way they interact and behave. The technical aspect of this structure includes the machinery processes and physical management. This structure includes hardware, software, people, surroundings data and data structure, law and regulations and procedures. According to this system all the needs of an employee should be identified and met which they bring along to the workplace. This system helps in motivating employees and raises their performance level by taking care of the characteristics that comprises social system. These characteristics involve their communication, involvement, performance, and team work, attitudes, behavior and job satisfaction. This system is emerged overtime through the employees of the organization and thus represents the culture of an organization and its social setup. (Whitworth) As socio technical system includes face to face work, which includes customer service therefore ensuring that your customers are getting adequate technical support and thus it is related to the socio technical structure because it fulfills the requirements, social as well as technical. Providing appropriate customer service by understanding customer needs and communicating positively with them satisfies the social requirement where as giving them technical assistance, that is, to provide information regarding the technical aspects of the product satisfies technical requirements. Any technological advancement cannot be successful if the technology does not take into account the human component because ultimately humans have to interact with the technological design therefore it is important to treat people and technology together within a system. This gives rise to social and technical subsystem in which social subsystem takes into account human needs and attitudes and technical subsystem relates to the devices, procedures and technical know how. The technological and social subsystem needs to be interdependent so that the organization can deliver the best to the customers. In this way the technology offered by the organization will be according to the needs of the customers and thus it would be a perfect fit. (Whitworth) Thus the most important strategy for any company to provide adequate technical support to customers is that it should develop a socio technical structure so that the technical assistance provided to the customers are in accordance to the social needs of the customers. REFERENCES Hoffman, R. (1996) Help is Only a Phone Call Away! How to get good service. The Real World. Retrieved October 15, 2009, from http://www. animatedsoftware. com/misc/stories/jobs/dbmscntr. htm Kay, D. (2004) Show, Don’t Tell: Remote Support Best Practices and Benefits. DB Kay and Associates. Retrieved October 15, 2009, from http://www. webbuyersguide. com/bguide/Whitepaper/Wpdetails. asp? frmCQ=Ywpid=NzU3Mwcategory=723sitename= webbuyersguidekc=newstech101607src=newstech101607 Setting up a successful help deskphysical considerations (http://articles. techrepublic. com. com/5100-10878_11-5112459. html) and Try these efficiency strategies when setting up a successful help desk (http://articles. techrepublic. com. com/5100-10878_11-5112468. html). Setting up a successful help desk (http://techrepublic. com. com/5208-6230-0. html? forumID=14threadID=146337 messageID=1623851). Whitworth,B. Socio-Technical Systems. Retrieved on 23rd July 2010 from http://brianwhitworth. com/hci-sts. pdf