What Support Jobs are Really Like

Bartending: Memoirs of an Apple Genius, a new book from Steven Hackett of 512pixels fame, tells about his time as an Apple Genius. After working in tech support for the past year, I can definitely relate to his experiences. I've never done support for real devices in person, but even doing software support remotely, you'll encounter many of the same things. It's almost refreshing hearing other people's frustrations with it, and the things they enjoyed about it, as it's very much the same way I feel.

The book is tremendously short, almost more like a half-full Instapaper queue than a real book, but that doesn't make it a bad read at all. It has a number of great takeaways and simple lessons, including one of my favorite quotes:

When time is limited, communication becomes very important.

So very true. And if you really consider what's important, time is always limited. Communications are also very important.

The biggest lesson I've learned from tech support is that you need to be able to show sympathy, and be human. Don't be scripted, be yourself. Go out of your way to make customers feel important and appreciated. And love solving puzzles. Even figuring out tiny browser rendering differences can be challenging, but it's fulfilling to find the problem and be able to direct your team to help make a customer's day better.

Also, doing support work will make you a better customer. I'm now much more sympathetic and understanding with support reps from companies when I have a problem. Perhaps reading a book like this will give you that same perspective without having to do support for a job!

Thoughts? @reply me on Twitter.