Nathan E Norman wrote:
>On 26 Feb 1998 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
...
>: > However ... my boss wants to have "someone we can call for support when
>: > it doesn't work". This person, persons, or company would preferably hav
>e
>: > some sort of documentation as to who they are and why we ought to pay
>: > them when we call them.
>:
>: I'm familiar with the phenomena. I'd happy to take your money, but I
>: suspect that your boss wants to see a glossy brochure that says Debian
>: Support, Inc. on the cover and lists dozens of Fortune 500 customers.
>
>Yup, you've hit the nail on the head.
>
>: It does seem like there is a business opportunity here. A network of
>: consultants around the world could handle the phone calls and emails while
>: somebody with marketing skills fronted for them.
>
>Exactly. So, why isn't someone doing this? (You could make a hell of a
>lot of money).
>
>Thanks John. You've stated very concisely the issue at hand.
So lets know who is interested in being part of this. I'm assuming
Bruce's venture fizzled out, since I've heard nothing more.
I am very interested in getting this going, but it will take a lot of
work to get the details right. Here are my first thoughts:
====================================================================
Objectives:
To provide commercial support for Debian Linux.
To enhance Linux' image among the `suits'.
To provide a modest income for the participants. (A gold mine? - we should
be so lucky!)
To provide better support than people get from HP, Sun, DG and so on.
(We won't bother to compare ourselves with Micro$oft.)
====================================================================
Issues:
Kinds of support: 1 - handholding; 2 - system admininstration help;
3 - help with program use; 4 - bug tracing/fixing; 5 - consultancy
services; 6 - ???
Customer support contracts that don't promise what we can't perform and
don't allow customers to sue us for their own stupidity.
Pricing. (Can people post details of contract costs in the PC world
from other organisations, please. Especially for M$ software!)
A Web Page
Need for telephone support (someone to call when the user can't find the
return key!) - this ought to be organised by timezone and language. If a
number doesn't lead to a permanently-staffed office, it probably needs
call-forwarding to pass it on to a live support person.
Need for business premises in each country; at the least, an office in
someone's home. Somewhere to send money to!
How to distribute calls fairly; emails to a support address need to be
acted on very promptly, so there needs to be a system for members to adopt
a support query and for other members to know that it has been taken on.
If someone introduces their own customers to the support net, presumably
they should get the first calls. There are a lot of issues like this to
think about. Perhaps there should be some automated system for call
distribution? Holiday cover? Call distribution by specialisation?
If someone can't handle a call and passes it on, how do we share the
charge between him and the next guy?
What if the ultimate answer comes from someone outside the membership
(which will probably be the case with a lot of the difficult questions)?
Once people are aware of us, they may want to take a cut...
How do we get paid? (Particularly with international support; it costs a
lot to transfer small amounts of currency.) Who has the fun job of
keeping the books? If it grows to any extent, we should soon have to employ
at least a secretary/bookkeeper - possibly one per country, I'm afraid.
How much would this infrastructure cost us? How long before we need to
employ salesmen to keep our hamster's wheel going round?
What would be the legal status of the organisation? (Among other things,
that affects what taxes we have to pay, and who can get sued.)
====================================================================
I spent a number of years doing technical support for UniVerse (a commercial
database) and many questions were about how to do something that users
could have read in the manuals. The ones about bugs in the software we had
to pass on to VMark, but all too often these got ignored. When I finally
finished doing support for it, there was still at least one problem that
I had reported five years before! It will be very satisfying doing
support for a product that we can get changed when it needs it!
--
Oliver Elphick [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Isle of Wight http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
PGP key from public servers; key ID 32B8FAA1
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