Ask HN: How to hire technical support? 2 in 1 issue

3 points by going_to_800 6 years ago | 2 comments

The support time on my startup is split in half between normal customer support and technical support(widget not working on the website, API call not working, etc).

I'm looking to hire someone to do this, but seems that's not that easy.

A good technical person doesn't like doing support, a great support person is not that technical to debug a tricky API issue.

Is the only answer to hire 2 persons? Maybe some of you guys went though this and can give some pointers.

mikst 6 years ago |

In short, if you pay "technical" money, you _will_ find such a person

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IMO, it's not so much technical people don't like doing support, it's just bad for career. If you can solve that for your potential employee you're good. But that is gonna be tough because you can't influence other 99% of employers who treat support like trash, making it unattractive for people with technical skills who have the choice. On the other hand some people are fine with what they can take right now and do not bother too much with the whole "career" thing. If you can offer attractive paycheck for a sufficiently smart person, you will find your 2 in 1 support.

DrScump 6 years ago |

   a great support person is not that technical to debug a tricky API issue

A great support person is, and can, assuming s/he has access to source and, ideally, a build and test environment.

When in Support, I used to diagnose issues as far down the rabbit hole as I could within reasonable time constraints. If I could diagnose right down to the offending code, I would end up with a much better understanding of the code base (and, often, platform), plus I could win much faster response on rolling out a fix.