As the corporate world moves online, the rest of the world struggles to understand the scope of this move. To be honest, many a good executives and managers, “old style”, are also struggling with the rapid and constant evolution of the online world, and those who think online corporate presence means having a website and maybe an online store are dinosaurs condemned to extinction.
Today, corporate presence online encompasses all aspects of the business, from customer engagement to brand development and hiring. The tools, available on the whole wide world, went from menace to key instruments, and Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn are no longer looked at as
employee distractions or worse. Whole structures are being redesigned and rethought to involve the online community. One of these cases is the support structure for a service or product, with forums and wikis replacing help desks and contact centers. Is this the death of the technical or otherwise skilled support agent? What is the place of these professionals in a world where technical knowledge is at the distance of a keyboard or a smartphone, and people with more or less knowledge are willing to share their experience for free on any forum or wiki?
Talking to support engineers I perceive two distinct feelings, and I guess you won’t be surprised by this. There is a love hate relationship between support engineers and online community support tools. They hate the prospect of support moving to an open source, community model, where users support each other, as this poses a threat to their own job security. On the other hand, they love these tools as they are avid users of the same. Browse through any support forum, especially the ones related to technology, and you will see how most, if not all posts, are contributions of technical engineers who manage or provide support in the field.
What is then the future of these highly skilled professionals in the open model of support? How can they retain their value and adapt? Should they be re-qualifying in related areas such as social media management, digital content management, brand developing, community management? Is this too much of a turn towards marketing? Or do you think the traditional support model will be there and will take all those it employs today?
Your comments are welcome and appreciated.
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