I have had some positive comments about my previous column on how to develop your in-house Automation Technical Support. The question that arose from this was how do you deal with outside Technical Support personnel? When you call in a problem, the knowledge level of these personnel can vary. How do you deal with these different levels of expertise?

I have learned over the years how to resolve most of the basic problems that result in error messages from various programs. This means when I do call in a problem, I explain that I have tried all of the basic low end troubleshooting.

What I mean by low end troubleshooting is:

1. Reboot the PC and only access that program.
2. If an error message does not occur, try various combinations of whatever else was open on the desktop when the error occurred. This helps determine whether there is a conflict between two programs.
3. If the error message only occurs certain times of day, investigate what else is running on the network, etc. that could create the error messages.
4. Check for corrupt files.
5. Delete and reinstall. If the problem still occurs, Technical Support needs to be included in this.

Before contacting outside Technical Support, verify what your rights are to *.ini files, etc. If you are restricted as a computer user in your organization, you will need to either have a member of the Automation Department with you or they will have to make the call. When dealing with Technical Support personnel, patience is a necessity. You can spend hours troubleshooting the problem.

I think the worse that I can remember was 8 hours of troubleshooting over the course of a week. Then it was discovered that the vendor had given me the wrong installation password. It was a demo password that had expired. After I installed the proper password, there were no additional error messages.

My mental rule is fifteen minutes for dealing with the first person that I get on the phone:

1. Once I explain what error messages occurred and what I have tried, I wait for their response. If they act like they are reading a prepared script and want me to repeat the steps that I did, I ask politely for a higher Technical Support person. I emphasize that it is not a reflection of the person on the phone but I need an advanced troubleshooter for our problem. The basic troubleshooting script will not do this. I keep insisting until they agree to transfer me.
2. If the person is not available, I leave a voice mail indicating when I am available. This is especially important if you are in different time zones to avoid return calls either before or after your designated work hours.
3. When the person and I connect, I re-explain the problem in the event that not all information was given to the person. Then we can do additional troubleshooting of the software.
4. Once we believe we have the problem resolved, I keep the person on the line until I reboot. I always verify that the fix is permanent.