Technical Support III: Job Title

I was just informed earlier today that I am the only member of the company that is a Technical Support III. Job titles aren't really all that important to me. In my past years at this company I went through the ranks of technical support at about the same time they were actually adding ranks.

I was pretty sure that I was the only tech support team member at level III that worked here in Belleville. But as it turns out, I'm a bit of an odd ball in that I'm the only level III in all of Network Solutions. That seems a bit weird. The reason that this happens is largely that there is a career path that most follow from Tech Support I to Tech Support II and then from there jump off to either a leadership position or to another department like Design, QA or Development.

Even though I started in this department the very first week there was in-house technical support department formed, I don't feel like I should get any sort of special treatment. And I am certainly very happy doing what I'm doing in my current role. It's just weird.

Job titles are weird. End of story.

Why'd You Remove That Feature?

My Opinion Below

Whenever there is an upgrade to a new version of any software program, inevitably there is some amount of confusion with the new system. It is up to the technical support department to help ferry clients to a new understanding of the new system. One of the most commonly asked questions we will hear regards features that were being used in the previous version but that aren't available or readily apparent (or as easy to use) in the new version.

Why would you remove a feature that our business depends on?! I used that every day! I certainly understand the frustration here. This happens commonly to me with other software programs and I experienced it very strongly in the upgrade from Microsoft Office 2000 to Microsoft Office XP. There was a certain undocumented feature that I used quite often that was not in Office XP. It was several weeks or more of adjustment on my part to get used to the change.

Having seen this side of the software development cycle, I have a little more perspective on it, but I still find it annoying. The cause of these sorts of issues is that the development department is creating a new product from scratch. In most cases like this, the feature that is being referenced wasn't specifically left out on purpose. There wasn't a board meeting where some group decided which features to nix. Instead, there were several meetings where they reviewed usage and importance and functionality of each new feature to be added versus the time and resources that were available to release the product. The important point to take away is that there are always business-based decisions behind every step in the plan, and although that might hurt or inconvenience some clients in the short term it is not done personally. If the option is major critical to users it will be implemented in upgrades to the new system down the line.

This does beg the argument that perhaps it is better to fix current versions and not create a completely new version from scratch, but there are many other considerations to consider here that have to be taken into account. For instance, perhaps the current version of the software uses ASP, but the new version will be written with ASP.NET and gain all the benefits there. You can't simply take the code of the old version and update it as it wouldn't work on the new hardware. So instead you start with code line zero.

It sucks. But it's the nature of the beast.

Milestone: 250,000 Tickets

Today was a milestone for the technical support department. We have been using one system for ticket support since about 2004 or so. The front end area that our clients see is located at MyMonsterCommerce. We reached the two-hundred and fifty-thousandth ticket today. This is a neat figure from my perspective as I was there for ticket number one in this system. In fact, I recall the system we used before that though it's name escapes me. Back then, we just called it "molasses" because that's how fast it went.

Our current system has served us well for many years, but what's most important about this milestone is that it is one quarter of a million phone calls and customer service problems solved by the best e-commerce support team in the industry.

Shopping Cart Software by MonsterCommerce - Ecommerce Solutions

Several great things have happened in the last 24 hours or so that I feel like celebrating.

• First, a new version of our pro e-commerce software has been released, sometimes called version 7.0 Pro. As discussed on the forums, current clients on v4.6 will not be updated to the new version until after the holidays and we are sure that we have a stable and fully tested upgrade/migration script.
• Second, a big update of our standard e-commerce software has been applied, bringing this version more in line with our pro version, albeit still with only the standard features. This version was considered v5.0, but the new version will be called v7.0 Standard.
• Thirdly, to keep pace with the new look and feel of these new programs, our home page has been updated graphically and with more information relating to the new software.

Haven't seen our home page in a while? Stop by at MonsterCommerce.com. You can see screen shots as well as a graphical demo.

W3C Markup Validator

One quick notable thing I like about the new version of our software coming out soon (THIS WEEKEND!) is that it is much more W3C compliant. Just now, I did a form upload of my test site's home page HTML output and it only generated 3 errors! Visit the W3C Markup Validator.

There are a lot of other great things too, but this is something that appeals to the perfectionist in me.