Rules to Better Support

Established projects typically include several layers of documentation, collectively known as a Knowledge Base (KB):

• FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) - Quick questions and their answers
• Documentation (Docs) - In-depth guidance and references
• Q&A Articles - More detailed question/answer pairs for more specific use cases
• Roadmap - Outlines upcoming goals, features, and milestones to show the project’s direction and priorities

When offering support to customers using your product, think about whether this problem has occurred before or could happen again. If it has, there should be documentation available. This not only helps customers resolve their issues faster but also reduces the repetitive workload for the support team.

You should never have to answer the same question twice. When you get a new question e.g. "Can I have co-authoring in TinaCMS?" these are the steps you should follow:

1. Check for existing documentation.
2. If it doesn't exist, create the documentation.
3. Reply with a link to the documentation.

Every support message should include a link to the relevant documentation or, if applicable, to a Product Backlog Item (PBI).

Just like a car, applications need servicing and tuning every now and then to stay in top condition. They might need alterations to deal with new business problems, or just tuning to increase efficiency.

Figure: What happens after the software has been delivered and the development team moves on. The next phase is maintenance

If you need more than 20 minutes of work to perform a task, then it's not free, and you need to get approval for it.

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Providing remote customer support is essential for IT administrators and support teams, especially when users are scattered across the globe. However, choosing the right tool can make or break the support experience.