Ask the Programmer
Ask The Programmer Episode 256 - Guest Brian Magrogan Shares about the Impact of Technical Support
08 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
From the world of AV programming and control with James King, I'm Steve Greenblatt, and this is Ask the Programmer. James, how are you? I'm looking forward to a fun conversation with you today, and we have a special guest to join us as well. I'm doing good, Steve. And it's always great when we have a guest and I'm looking forward because this one brings wealth of knowledge as always. Absolutely.
If you weren't with us on our past episode, previous episode, I'll say episode 255, you missed a great conversation and you also didn't get to hear our guest who joins us again today. He's Brian McGrogan. He's a senior systems programmer and network systems engineer at Verix. Welcome back, Brian. Thank you very much for having me again. I really appreciate it. James, you're way too kind.
That's, you know, you guys are the wealth of knowledge too. So we appreciate it. Without our guests though, we don't have the podcast. The numbers prove it. So we appreciate you being here and it's always great to be chatting with you. Yeah. Always great to have a wonderful conversation.
If you didn't listen also to our previous episode, you might not know that Brian was also with us on episodes 138 and 139. So you could check those out and those give you a little bit about his past and how he became a programmer and everything. you get to know him a little bit deeper on that level.
But for today, we're going to be talking about a specific topic, and that topic should be very relatable to everybody. It really is something that keeps us going in whatever you're doing, and that's technical support. We all need to be able to have Somebody to call, phone a friend, get a lifeline to be able to get yourself out of a jam.
A lot of times you're looking to manufacturers because your issue may be related to a specific product or from a programmer's standpoint, we look at the platforms, but it also could be different ways to get information. People have their rolodex of those knowledgeable people that they call when they're getting a jam. So we'll talk a little bit about all of that today.
So Brian, tell us a little bit about your experiences. We'll try to talk about good, but there's always some that aren't as good. But what differentiates for you technical support that's effective? I think one of the big differentiators of technical support is when the person is not, I guess, first off, just reading from the script, right? When they are actually trying to understand the issue.
And it doesn't feel like they're just trying to get you off the phone, right? Like some people are just so concerned with their case numbers, how many they closed, you know, but when somebody actually on the phone or through email And also taking that to use as a learning opportunity. So to or rather as a teaching opportunity for you of, hey, this person didn't know this calling in.
Let's get them to understand it. Right. So they become the teacher. So the overall attitude and and obviously in the end, the result matters. Right. Getting to the bottom of whatever it was, getting that support matters in the end. So that's a key piece of it.
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Chapter 2: What experiences does Brian Magrogan share about technical support?
You know, that's always a tricky thing, too, there, right? Obviously, just troubleshooting 101, right, of isolate the thing and then either choose a side, right? Work your way in, work your way out. And as you have done this for longer, you know, you understand more of where to start, what's going to be the quicker piece. But isolating something and...
having that way to put it aside and put it in its own sandbox, if you will, and say, okay, over here with no external interaction, this is still happening. That means that these pieces are out of the equation, and then we can start to dig in further to that. I'm the same way. I tell my techs when they start troubleshooting, I'm like, pick a path and start eliminating. Okay, it doesn't work here.
It works here.
Chapter 3: What differentiates effective technical support from ineffective?
Find out where it does start working or where it starts breaking. Cool. That's where you know you got to start. Yep. Yep. And you know, like, even if you, you take a step back from the technical support manufacturer side of things and just think about techs, right. Cause we work on the phone with techs, right.
That's part of my job every day, just from a troubleshooting standpoint of, you know, if you go back to our previous conversation, a little bit of trust, but verify, I can't tell you how many times I have people tell me, you know, I'm like, well, I'm making the video route. I know the video route is there. You're not seeing it on the display. Have you checked that cable?
Well, that's a cable out of the box. I have been doing this long enough to know the failure rate of cables out of the box. Have you tried swapping it? Or it's bad input on a display or bad output on something. And it's like, start at the basics, right? Don't assume anything and work your way through it. And I've been guilty of, you know, doing that assumption where I've jumped to step seven.
Yeah. I'm beating my head against it. And, you know, I'm pretty seasoned in my time. I'm beating my head. Can't figure it out. And someone would be like, well, have you done these other steps, which, you know, are step one through six? And I'd be like, yeah, I did this. But like, let's double check. And, you know, at least I'm.
Good enough that I'll admit, hey, good, let's go double check, make sure my work. And realize, oh, yeah, no, I missed step three. And that was the problem. Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes it's just all about slowing down, right? Like I know we're all in a hurry. We're all trying to get things done. And, and same thing, right?
When you're talking to somebody on the other end of the phone, they are, you know, they're a human, just like us. They want to get home at the end of the day. They've got certain things they've got to get through and get done.
But sometimes if we slow down and work our way more methodically through something in the end, it's going to take us less time, but just the human factor in that is so difficult to I am so guilty of it and trying to get something done, trying to get it out the door so that we can move on to the next thing. So. Go ahead, Steve.
I was going to turn the conversation a little, so if you have more to add on that, go ahead. No, not really. Go ahead. One of the things that I'm hearing and I think we've all experienced is that within an organization, there are different people that you might encounter and they have different strengths.
Unfortunately, though, the experience that you have is representative of the company, just as you mentioned. How much does that impact that brand and you potentially using a certain product? Brian and James, both feel free to jump in. Yeah. I mean, I will say immensely, right? Like it,
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Chapter 4: How can effective technical support impact a project?
I have These models, all these different firmwares, because I know it wasn't a firmware thing going on. And what was cool was, yeah, that tech solved my issue. We resolved that. But what was even best was a couple of the firmwares I mentioned, he's like, you have that firmware running? I'm like, yeah, why? He's like, well, that has the 90-day bug on it. I didn't even know about it.
I was like, wait, what is this 90-day bug? And he's like, oh, every 90 days, the unit locks up and you have to reboot it. I was like, I started to see that pattern. But again, 90 days, that takes a while to start registering your head. So I was like- Much better. I was like, wait. I was like, that's addressing another issue I'm starting to see.
I was like, so him, instead of just tunnel vision and going, okay, we're solving the issue you're calling about, he was able to solve a couple issues because he understood their product very well. Yeah, that's a really good one, right? And I found over the years for, you know, supporting my techs in the field, right? I don't delete old firmware. I keep old firmware and I keep notes about it.
You know, like this firmware had this bug. I actually ran into one which doesn't fall into, you know, the world that we do very often, but I have all the smart light switches and there is a version of firmware that does no longer exist on the manufacturer's website. Because I don't know why they took it down, but they took it down.
But there's an issue with certain switches where if they don't have enough load on them, the remote switch will not work. But this firmware corrected it. And if you load that, but other switches that had enough load, this firmware broke it. So that's probably why I got taken down. But it was one of those things where I still had that firmware tucked away and saved.
And the switches that didn't work, I load that firmware, everything starts working. But if I load that to a switch that is appropriate, it doesn't work. So... And it's a good... When your users can trust the tech support, because, you know, I work for IT for a university, so I am tech support for my users.
They, when they, and same thing, like we trust manufacturers when we have good, I remember having a issue, which I cause. I tell everyone this, I cause an issue. I took down the AV network during orientation. Anyone who knows higher education knows orientation is very big. Very important. I had it up and running in like a minute or two once I realized what I did. Cool. Whatever.
Caused an issue, got it up and run. I went up and apologized to the user who was speaking on stage during orientation when the AV network went down. And their response to me was, we trust that you would have it taken care of. If we were at a different school, it would have been a different problem. It just knowing that, you know, same thing.
If I call a manufacturer up, I know I have a good relationship. I'm trusting, Hey, they're going to help me here. If I have a bad relationship, I already know before someone picks up and go, this is pulling teeth. Yep. Yeah, for sure. For sure. That's funny. You don't have the IT pager that you plug into the switch and the IT guy shows up? Nope. I'm an IT person. Yeah.
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