subject: Understanding The Tech Support Services Industry [print this page] Technical Support is an industry by itself, and as such a sub to the Information Technology Enabled Services industry. It takes hardly any time to know how to operate a computer but many years to know the internal workings of the same. It is also true with understanding an industry which is not more than a decade old and is very relevant to our day to day living. Tech support services, is being able to get help on any technical related problem anytime anywhere so far as it a computer or can be connected to a computer. A little more understanding follows.
Technical means inner workings of a system. In this case, technical has everything to do with the internal processing of electronic gadgets like a computer, camera, CPU, keyboard, mouse, speaker, printer, scanner and anything that can be connected to a computer. For instance, I know how to write a letter using Microsoft Word but if I wanted to change the margin spacing of the letter from the set standard, I need technical knowledge of Microsoft Word.
Support, is to a large extent, in context to the industry itself and not to the electronic gadget. The IT and ITES industries have two things in common - computers and technical problems of computers. On a serious note, while manufacturing and creation of computers and its software respectively, are the main verticals of the mentioned industries, the maintenance and troubleshooting is a secondary vertical. They are what Service Centers are to the automobile domain.
Services has two components - a product and a customized approach of delivering it to the customer. Tech Support has been around since the first computer was built. We would remember the days when we had to call the company from where we bought our computer and book an appointment for us to take our computer to a service engineer. The services aspect of it makes it a new age industry clocking roughly ten years. Some of the tech support customizations are:
Official or residential at a range of prizes
24x7 support
Targeted issue identification and fixing
Security and Malware
Installation and Setup
There was a time when industries were basic like iron and steel, railways, agriculture etc. Today an industry is not only decided by a product but also by the way it reaches the customer. Under the technology umbrella, tech support is an ancillary vertical. It is amazing that tech support along with innovation has paved the way for an entire segment of business process outsourcing (BPO). Anyone can access tech help round the clock, because teams from across the world are equipped to cater to these needs. This is possible only when an industry holistically changes from being product oriented to service oriented.
To summarize, Im going to draw a close parallel of such services to having a health insurance. We all have a health insurance even though we know that we may not fall sick or may only have a cold. But we also know that there is an off chance that we may have a severe virus attack which requires serious medical attention. When our computer is new, it is fine and runs smoothly. As time and our usage of it increases, it may require attention from time to time. Having tech support is an instant way to fix it, although you may not need it. And the instantaneous nature is at the heart of this industry!
