Streamlining Customer Support with DagKnows

Troubleshooting technical issues on customer premises can be a frustrating experience for both you and your customers. However, in today's age of ChatGPT and AI, dealing with these problems should no longer feel like a primitive process. This article will walk you through the challenges faced when resolving issues on customer premises and introduce DagKnows, a comprehensive solution that addresses these obstacles.

The problem

When customers encounter issues with a high-tech product, the restricted access to their premises can hinder effective debugging. Traditionally, the troubleshooting process involves requesting log files from the customer, which may not always contain the necessary information. The support team and the customer need to engage in several emails or ticket exchanges to get the relevant information for debugging the issue. This iterative back-and-forth can result in delays and frustration. In some cases, a live debug session is scheduled, requiring screen sharing and manual intervention. Unfortunately, the knowledge gained during these sessions is often lost either because the session is not recorded or because it is impractical to derive any useful knowledge from these recordings. Moreover, the lack of documentation and knowledge sharing across the team can lead to wasted time and dissatisfied customers.

Inadequacies of Current Solutions

Current solutions rely on a patchwork of collaboration and knowledge documentation tools. For example, while tools such as Zoom, Slack, MSTeams, or WebEx facilitate interaction, they do not effectively extract knowledge. Documenting knowledge using tools like Confluence, Notion, Google Docs, or Wiki is valuable but lacks automation. Automation tools like Python scripts, Ansible, Chef, or Puppet may be used, but they fail to capture knowledge effectively. And none of these solutions provide the ability to connect directly and securely to the customer setup for real-time debugging.

Introducing DagKnows: Solving the Problem Holistically

DagKnows is a SaaS platform that serves as a customer support portal, seamlessly integrating with your existing support infrastructure. This platform revolutionizes the troubleshooting process by facilitating self-service and frictionless knowledge transfer. By creating step-by-step runbooks or playbooks, you empower customers to resolve issues independently. Unlike traditional knowledge articles, runbooks can be automated, allowing customers to execute tasks with a single click to troubleshoot and remediate issues. Automated debugging and remediation ensures a speedy resolution for similar issues faced by other customers.

How DagKnows Works

The DagKnows platform incorporates a downloadable widget, known as a "proxy," which enables on-demand, just-in-time (JIT), read-only access to customer premises. This proxy securely connects to the support portal using outbound web-sockets while establishing a connection to the target devices via SSH or WinRM. The customer retains complete control over the credentials used for connectivity, which are stored securely in Hashicorp Vault or can be fetched from a third-party vault.

Workflow:

1. Customer runs into issues and wants to debug. So they turn on the proxy and establish connectivity between the support portal and target devices.
2. Customer logs into the portal, creates a dedicated debug session for the issue where they can search for the appropriate runbook for debugging or remediating the issue and executes it. The runbook gets downloaded into the proxy and executed. The results are posted into the debug session.
3. If the problem is solved with the runbook, great! Time saved. If not, the customer can quickly assign the debug session to the support team and leave notes for them.
4. The CS team can then pick up the issue, analyze the customer activity in that session, debug further if needed, interact with the customer in real-time, and perhaps even fix the issue.
5. Importantly, the support team can then turn the entire session into a reusable, executable, and shareable runbook so that any customer can debug similar issues if they repeat. GPT-powered DagKnows can automatically create runbooks by analyzing the raw activity.
6. The customer can turn off the proxy when the access is no longer needed.

Advantages

DagKnows platform has the following advantages:

1. Customer data does not leave their premises. The runbooks is downloaded and executed just-in-time on the customer premises therefore the data such as log files and configs is processed on the premises. Only the curated outputs such as pass/fail signals are pushed to the debug session on the support portal.
2. Just-in-time (JIT) access to the customer premises provides real-time debug capabilities. The access is cryptographically secured. It needs no changes to the firewalls since it creates outbound connections. It is ephemeral, time-bound and backed by Role Based Access Control (RBAC).
3. All the troubleshooting and remediation activity is saved automatically. The debug session captures every step. It serves as an audit trail and helps in easy hand off of issue from the customer to the support team.
4. The activity log can be automatically transformed into reusable and executable runbooks. The entire debug session can be cleaned and fed to GPT to extract a structured customer-agnostic reusable runbook so the vendor can support other customers facing similar issues.

Conclusion

Resolving customer issues on their premises requires a combination of expert knowledge, secure connectivity, automation, and collaboration. While individual challenges have been addressed in isolation, DagKnows offers a holistic solution by integrating these elements seamlessly. By streamlining the troubleshooting process, DagKnows minimizes delays, enhances customer satisfaction, and improves overall efficiency.