Hi all,
I’m late… Again… And I forgot my tag at home. Luckily no one minds. I can clock in with an SMS. The doors also unlock with a simple text message nowadays. Thanks, technology!
At Epec we have pretty strict working hours, but then again no, we don’t. In the Support Team it feels like we’re working in shifts. Actually, we just have our individual schedules, some being early birds and the others night owls. This doesn’t really matter much. What matters is that the customers can reach us and be happy.
I have booked a TeamViewer session with a customer across the sea to help with some IoT issues; their morning is our evening. Sometimes a session is scheduled with a customer situated in the East; our morning is their evening.
We haven’t yet come across with a customer that we couldn’t help within our business hours. At best, my mornings begin in Australia, after which I make a quick stop in Europe, and wrap up my day by wishing the American’s a good morning.
Now my week starts with a no-meetings-morning, which allows me to go through last week’s cases and see what the coming week holds. At this point, it’s also important to hear what the co-workers have been up to last weekend.
My phone rings and it’s a customer from Central Europe, asking for advice about the way to start a project. We schedule a TeamViewer session for the following day to go through Epec’s development environment and to discuss how to expand the system in the future.
This week we have a workshop day with coders from a customer’s developer team and our own experts from Epec’s Support Team. We will work together to find the best solutions for the customer’s project and figure out a smart implementation, keeping future maintenance in mind.
Today we updated some tickets with a partner, regarding questions of how to further develop an application in the future and what the situation looks like at the moment.
The TeamViewer session held some technical difficulties, as because of the customer’s rigid data security and the connection couldn’t be made. Luckily old school techniques work great and the session was held over the phone. Besides the current topic, other problems were also discussed over the phone. Also, the possibility of arranging a tailored training was touched on.
As a matter of fact, here at the Support team, we arrange different types of training sessions for customers. The options range from traditional Get To Know The System Training, i.e. the Product Knowledge Training, which includes the introduction to Epec’s software, MultiTool, CANmoon and programming environments. During this training we teach how to program a simple crane, control a machine’s diesel engine and get familiar with various CAN bus solutions. Typically, this kind of training takes approximately two work days, plus one extra day if we also handle displays, plus another extra day for IoT solutions. We also arrange tailored training sessions for different needs, for example, ISOBUS standard mostly used in agriculture implementations, or a safety critical functions, for example. Usually, the training is arranged in Seinäjoki, here in Finland, but if necessary, we’ll hop on a plane and go across the globe, too. Conducting training sessions can be kind of therapeutic; it’s a time when I can focus entirely on the subject at hand, leaving the everyday hustle and bustle is left behind for a moment.
Our main job is to answer the emails that our customers send to techsupport@epec.fi. The topics can be anything. I mean, really, anything. The easiest cases are those questions, for which a simple answer can be found from our programming manual. The more challenging cases can take hundreds of emails worth of questions and discussions, taking up days, or even weeks and months. This is the time when I’m lucky to have my dear team members come to rescue and handle the other cases. It’s really rare that we ever have to say “No can do” to a customer.
We live off passion for our work and do not want to leave our customers alone with tech problems. The best way to end a day is to hear a thank you from a customer. A sure way to bring a smile to our faces is a phone call from a certain agent, whose trademark way of saying thanks is a sung “I love you”.
Best regards,
Jarno Viirumäki
Member of The Technical Support Team
