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Remote Administration vs. Phone Support?
Korgan asks: "I work for a company in which our primary focus is phone based support and helpdesk operations. Lately I have been involved in the trialing of several products that essentially allow agents to provide support across the Internet using remote administration using an ASP model. Examples of this type of technology in action are DesktopStreaming and ePeople. Does the community have any ideas and suggestions as to what they think would be the benefits and detriments of remote administration over phone based support?"
In my humble opinion, remote administration is much more efficient than phone support from the obvious standpoint of communication. Many times phone support can be hampered due to the miscommunications which can occur on both ends of the phone rather than a knowledgeable user who can access to the system and diagnose the problem in a matter of minutes. The major problem with remote administration, however, boils down to a simple matter of trust: most companies don't.
"The primary target of this is the corporate end user. I have been asked to provide reasons to the MD of the company that would qualify savings and improvements in KPI (key performance indicator) and SL's (service levels) and to justify why the initial expense would prove to be an overall savings in the long run. Things along the line of reduced problem resolution time, faster response, increased technician productivity and the like have already been considered. I am sure that there are many more reasons out there for a remote administration tool/service being more practical, cost effective and generally better than the standard phone based support most corporates employ."
"Give a man a fish he eats for a day, Teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime,"
I prefer this version: "build a man a fire, and he's warm for an hour, set a man on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life"
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If we remote control a user's PC, we don't have to leave our desk to fix a problem on a computer at the other end of the building. If it's something complicated, we can do the work from our desk, without having to tell the end-user how to do it.
As an example, we had a new member of staff yesterday who had to have email set up. Rather than tell her "type this in this box, then click on OK" (after figuring out which box it is...) I was able to type in the details from my desk and only had to get her to type in her password. The email program was set up in about a minute; doing this by talk-through would have taken at least double that.
In short, you save on staff time, so you don't need so many staff (ie, savings for the company). The staff don't get so stressed (have you tried talking someone through tech support?) as well.
The only potential downside is that staff don't get as much exercise as they don't have to leave their desk, possibly leading to eye-strain (staring at the screen all the time) and other problems. These can be alleviated by rest breaks and properly designed workstations.
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The "ASP" biztalk aside (that's just a funky workd used here for a webserver with request forms), these seem to be standard helpdesk companies which use a remote management tool (like VNC, ReachOut, pcAnywhere, CCM, etc).
You basically allow the help desk to remotely control your employee's client PCs. This means that - if you do not throw a dedicated line or big VPN solution - every single PC has to be addressable to internet. Even with a well designed firewall in place this introduces quite a risk for DoS attacks against the clients.
So if you open your company to be remotely managed by external help desks keep an eye on your security needs. Especially take care that you do not open a backdoor through the help desk system (your_net --> VPN --> help desk --> VPN --> other_net) and that liabilities and NDAs are safe and watertight for you.
Remotely managing clients can ease administration quite a bit (as posted before), but can become quite a hassle if the system does not work properly.
And make sure security does not become second. The admin tool either must require the user to confirm session shareing and enable him to immediately regain full control (by pressing a(ny) key) in case of problems - or enforce login as different user (which will log out the current user if he does not abort that with confirming a "really logout" popup box). Otherwise you will not be able to tell who did this or that possibly unpleasant change.
When you actually speak with a user on the phone (or better yet see them face to face), you have a valuble opportunity to *educate* them so they won't repeat their mistake. Sure, you can send them an email after you remotely fixed their problem, but they probably wont read it and they almost certainly wont retain anything from it. In fact, they learn better if you simply tell them what to do and let them actually execute the steps to fix it.
Phil Agre has an excellent guide to helping people use computers that anyone working in a support or helpdesk position should read.
We use Novell NetWare and ZENworks. It rocks for app distribution, workstation inventory, and remote administration. ZEN 3 has even more features, plus you can integrate your Linux machines into the NDS tree.
s /w hatsnew.html
http://www.novell.com/products/zenworks/desktop
"No prints can come from fingers / If machines become our hands." -- Jack Johnson
But beware "social engineering". To avoid this, if you have a software update to upload, you call the customer and tell them to call you back. This way they know they are actually getting the update from you and you will know if someone is trying to mess with them.
The last company I worked at (which did industrial automation) did just this. PC Anywhere on the users machine and when they had a problem they called us, turned on PC Anywhere, and we connected and fixed the problem. Then they turned off PC Anywhere. Very secure, as they only allowed access when there was a problem and only after thay called us and we told them to do so. And much faster than getting on an airplane and flying from Utah to Maryland, or wherever they were.
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And in a corporate environment, I would agree, this is a slightly better paradigm. However, quite commonly the MIS guys here have a tendency to *mess things up*, so I actually want them to seek me out before they change, fix, or do anything to my computer. As an engineer, I have had countless hours of work lost because MIS came in and did something unannounced (and either rebooted my machine without saving things, or saved things in a non-standard way - so as to make me chase them down for my files).
./ bursts), and examine my machine, I prefer to at least be told, questioned or otherwise asked first...
While I welcome MIS to scan my usage (a lot of
On top of this, we commonly put/pull project machines on and off the network. When we had to find MIS to configure network settings for us (something they wanted to do at one point) I tell you, it was a pain in the ass. I tell you, in this case, the fish thing really holds true.
Also, I'm sure the employer would not want it's support engineers wasting valuable time teaching users the ins and outs of the OS, not to mention the user wasting their time learning about their computer when they have more important work to be getting on with.
Having worked in both MIS through college and now working in engineering, I assure you, your employer wants the most productive employees possible. 15 minutes of explination on an OS issue which prevents this problem from ever occuring again, is well worth the money. Loosing 50 to 100 bucks for 15 minues so an engineer knows a better way to do something they will have to do either every day or with great frequency, saves an MIS call, MIS work, and engineer work.
Don't think of MIS as strictly a reactive entity, they need to be equally as proactive as possible.
You say you want a revolution?
For one thing, this really depends on how you use remote administration. That statement from the Bible "Give a man a fish he eats for a day, Teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime," holds true here. If every time your user has a problem, you fix it without explaining what caused it, you're going to potentially decrease the learning rate of your user base. In other words, users will commonly repeat the same mistakes, and you will commonly repeat the same fix.
On top of this, many users do not want a remote administration client stored on their machine - as many think of it as "their machine," and as long as they are paying for a service, chances are they are right. By allowing a 3rd party support technician to access their machine, they are opening themselves up to a wide variety of personal investigation (regardless of the morals, intent or actions of the support personel). Lets add to that, the common tendency for people to say 'mine!' and not want you to touch their toy (remember computers aren't tools for everyone - to some they are just toys) and whatnot.
Then lets ask some other questions about if you do attatch using a remote administrative client... IANAL but, what if they have porn as their background and the helpdesk person is offended by this? I'm pretty sure this fits the definition of sexual harrassment of the employee, and requesting the client to change their background constitutes a violation of their rights - unless you prevented them from having any in your EULA...which I have problems with too... My point being, that sometimes you can indiscriminantly wander a step too far into someone's life by using a remote administration tool, and everybody can be unhappy.
Last, what about the fact that some users want phone support and not you to do something... Hey, it may inconvenience you, but some people prefer it... Phone support is common in all industries (even power tools) so it is a familiar medium of communication for many people. If you toss them on the recieving end of a remote administrative procedure, they may be less than comfortable, and therefore, less likely to continue business with you. Remote administration is great for servers, but you had better *know* your user base, and know what they want.
I guess, the bottom line is: while, it may be helpful to some, not everybody will want it. You risk dumbing your user base, and creating an unnecessary tension between employees and clients. And most importantly, you risk the security of their machine for your convenience.
Perhaps this is a good solution in major cases, but I might suggest this as a last alternative as opposed to your standard care.
You say you want a revolution?
Okay, for the sake of cheaper desktop support you decide to allow PCAnywhere (or VNC, or ReachOut, or RemoteAdministrator, or CarbonCopy, or SSH, or ...) through your firewall. Let's assume you're not totally stupid and so you only allow connections from the range of IP addresses assigned to your support company. Two questions then...
How secure is their network, and how do you know. Because if they have the excellent security practices of some of these companies that I have dealt with - like having Internet connections with no firewall at all - then your network just became as secure as their's. Nice. Or, let's say that they do this over dedicated lines rather than over the Internet. How many other companies do they serve and how do they protect your network from their others customers.
Second question: Who is sitting at that helpdesk PC at your service provider? Does your service provider have the same, or better, hiring practices as you do? How do you know that they aren't hiring Kevin Mitnick? (Don't get me wrong. Kevin has paid his debt to society and deserves the opportunity to find gainful employment, just like anybody else. Only, not at my company thank you.)
Being able to operate a user's machine remotely is nice, and can help a lot, but one really important setup I'd like to have is a camera & microphone setup over their shoulder so that I can see what they're doing (including monitor, keyboard & mouse, and any other hardware setup) when the problem occurs! I've spent hours poking around on somebody's machine trying to figure out why it's doing something, only to find out that they're doing some kind of obscure key & mouse dance to make the problem occur - something I'd never guess by myself in a million years.
This probably isn't going to be practical until videophones & the necessary infrastructure is ubiquitous, however. (The little cameras ON the computer aren't necessarily much help, since those are often the first to go or the culprits when something is screwing up...)
At a law firm I worked for a few years ago, we used PCAnywhere for Remote Admin on our Win95 desktops. Our offices were scattered along the east coast and PCAnywhere made helping anyone on our WAN a piece of cake. Others have mentioned that you should "Teach a man to fish" and I agree. Remote Admin does not stand in the way of that goal. On the contrary, it is a tool to facilitate training. You can watch what the user is doing and then correct them from thousands of miles away. Not to mention that using Remote Admin you can do a lot of work that would otherwise require travel. So, you can save on training and travel, 2 of the most expensive things in the IT budget.
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As to the trust issue, many remote admin tools (Remotely Possible comes to mind) have a VCR-type function that allows you to record your terminal sessions. Initially, we only recorded sessions with "problem users," but the cost savings we realized allowed us to build a file server to store all of our sessions.
Finally, if users don't want the software on their system, well, tough. Remotely Possible (now called Control IT) allows you to push the software onto the client's box without the user's knowledge, and do so every time they log onto the network, in case the user somehow discovers and deletes it. This is useful with the aforementioned "problem users."
Give remote admin a try, but don't use it as an excuse to abandon phone support. The two, used together, make an excellent "teach a man to fish" tool, and will save your company a fortune in man-hours and support costs.
The question of benefits in remote administration depends on what you want to manage. Remote administration is greate for taking care of devices. I haven't done too much of this aside from admin of internetworking devices through SNMP, but even that can be very powerful. Managing devices directly does indeed streamline the troubleshooting process as well as speed up maintenance and upgrading, but I doubt it can replace the phone support line. So many calls a help desk gets from a user are not the 'my computer is broken' calls, but rather the 'how do I do this' variety. Even so, I figure remote admin capablities can shorten the time to resolve problems, making the user and the help desk staff happier. That said, there are limits to what remote admin can fix. Remote administration cannot address faulty user behavior and the problems that arise from such. It can be argued that nothing can help that, but I'm not that pessimistic. Remote administration can deal with machines, but you still need people to admin users.
Well, the Cult of the Dead Cow makes something called Back Orifice that I hear works pretty well... you'd never know it's there!
sulli
RTFJ.
If the tech screws something up he/she's responsible, while normally you can still blame the customer for having done something wrong, or something along the lines of:" Oh, in that case your system was unstable already"...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
I think that this is probably one of the features that keeps us at the level that we are. While we give basic computer classes to our employees, trying to solve a problem using just the phone can be both frustrating and time-consuming. And with us having offices all over the county (and with the county spreading some 300 square miles or more) this is just phoenomenal.
Of course, this is run through our own organization, and not through an ASP. But the same idealogy can be used for that as well. Compare the initial costs of the software and setup to the costs of teaching the employees the skills to do basic troubleshooting and the time wasted by Net Admin having to talk them though the process, etc. If a basic service call with phone support takes 45 minutes, but with Remote Admin it is cut down to 7 minutes, that is a significant reduction in cost. Factor in the salaries of both the employee being helped (say $14.00 per hour) and the help desk personnel (Hmm, how do you convert peanuts to dollars again?) and you can generate a pretty report to show management. All before lunch. Good luck!
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