Soon I realized that no one person knew everything. Everyone had a specialty. Sure there were some who were very strong at a lot of things but never everything. These strong leaders at times had a small queue of agents with questions. I hated to wait and started to think of ways to reduce this.
Another experience I had around the same time was that when a build was released, a slew of users would call with the same issue. Over a couple of days of calls with the same issue everyone was up to speed, but the first few hours after thousands of users hit the system were grueling...
At the time, the web was still in its infancy, but what I had experienced of it was enough to whet my appetite. I proposed an intranet knowledge base where all issues would be mapped out for all help desk agents. As soon as an issue was discovered and resolved, a write up would be done and posted. This would eliminate the queues of agents waiting for answers to the same questions.
Management approved my proposal a year after I had gone to another division within the same company. But I was happy because it was proof that the concept had value.
At the new group, I went on to design and develop the division's intranet. And sure enough, I added a knowledge base in the format of an FAQ page. Pretty soon, however, I realized that FAQs were limited. What these new folks needed was something slightly different.
When users encounter a problem they call a number for support, right? But wait, what if it's a holiday or it's the weekend or off business hours? What to do then? Wait until the next business day and business hours? But you have a business to run...
In hindsight the idea was actually simple. I developed a troubleshooting flowchart diagram that took users through the various possible paths and detailed how-to solutions at the end of each branch. This was a huge success with the field reps and as far as I know it is still in place 10 years after I left that group.
Here is a screenshot of what it looked like.
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