The Good Tech Support guide

I've been doing top-tier tech support for a few years now.  When I say 'top-tier', that means I've generally moved off of end-user support, and assist people on a design perspective.  Generally the problems one runs across at this level, there is not a known fix for an issue, and one must be discovered or designed.  I thought I'd make a list of things I've learned that make a tech support person better, and to that end, give everyone else a bit of an edge when trying to get the most out of a tech support person.

Tech support is not customer support.
If the customer seeks consolation, they should contact a sales rep.  It's not the job of tech support to apologize for every bug.  It's generally a waste of energy to unload your frustrations on a tech support person, because they are limited in what they can do for you.  It's the sales people that get the commissions, and are the ones that will bend over backwards to keep you happy.


Tech support deals with the product as it was designed, not as it 'should' have been designed.
There are countless decisions that go into a products design, and a tech support persons role comes in after all of these decisions are made.  Calling up the tech support person to complain that the application was programmed using ActiveX, when JAVA should have been used, is a waste of everyone's time. 

Use Snag-it
I make guides all the time, good ones with really nice screen shots, and hyperlinks.  I used to laugh at Snag-it, cause it did a function that windows has included.  I learned though, that using Snag-it can literally halve the time it takes to make a really nice user guide.  Download it and learn the features.  It even is fully functional for 30 days, and well worth the purchase after that.

Master as many remote desktop platforms as possible
On my PC right now I have Crossloop, Remote Administrator, Remote Desktop, RealVNC, and LogMeIn.  Learn when to use each one.  With Crossloop, they don't have to go into their firewall to let you in, but they have to be at their PC.  With LogMeIn you can find out all about what their system is running in the background without them knowing.

Know your manual
If a customer calls for assistance with something that you know is in the manual, help them out, and let them know where in the manual the answer to their question is.  People will learn to RTFM if you constantly call them on it.

When a customer starts the call with "Hey, can't you do X?".... that means they already did X, and are wondering why their product is broken.

Virtual PC 2007
This another must have if you're walking inexperienced people through complex steps.  You install every operating systems into virtual PC's, and save snapshots of their states.  Then when a customer calls up, and they're using Windows Vista, you load your Vista state in a window, and walk them through installing something, and then don't save your changes, and are ready for the next call.

Be friendly...
Until you realize someone is trying to take advantage of you.  Be clear and polite and say that you're not going to do something for someone, if you're not comfortable with it.  There are people that will get you to do their job for you if you let them.  There are people out there that want you to brain dump.