The Ken Test – Should have ticklist for support organizations.

So this is blatant plagiarism of The Joel Test…

This is specifically targeted at Technical Support organizations, or anyone providing support for a technical product or service.

1. Do you have a fault / issue tracking application (extra point for providing customers access to it).
2. Do you have a knowledgebase (extra point for providing customers access to it).
3. Do your technical folks have a working, test/demo version of the product.
4. Do you send out support alerts (do you announce bug fixes / patches).
5. Do you have remote access to customer machines.
6. Do you have a published, well known case escalation process.
7. Do you have a published, well known priority / severity level list with an example of each level.
8. Do you get candidates to troubleshoot during the interview.
9. Do you have handsfree headsets, conference phones.
10. Do you have a published SLA (or similar set of customer expectations)
11. Do you have a published, well known and measured SLA with the team(s) you escalate to.
12. Can a support engineer easily determine if a customer has a maintenance agreement or not (if appropriate)

I had also considered adding ‘Do you require that every case closed is linked to a KB article’ but some people find this a bit extreme. I find it is a great driver for keeping your KB up to date and living, otherwise it ages and becomes obsolete very quickly – there’s no point having it if it contains outdate / useless information and your customers are not using it.