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."

Comments

Re:Gee, let me think... BAD IDEA.

[joss]

"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"

Remote administration

[wiredog]

If you provide onsite support it can certainly save on travel time, especially if the end user is in another city, and it can give many of the benefits of onsite support without the associated costs in plane fare, etc. For the sake of security, however, the host software should only be started by the user.

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.

Gee, let me think... BAD IDEA.

[walnut]

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.