As testers we discuss at length the relationship between us and developers, and how to improve it, but I have not heard much about the relationship between testers and technical Support (L3). Does anyone have any suggestions as to how best manage the expectations of technical support? Our Support team are often landed with time sensitive issues from fraught customers, the problems are often ill defined, and it is very difficult to separate a software issue (bug) from an environmental/configuration issue. In those situations the expectation is that Test should unravel the problem. To what extent should Testers be involved in these situations? Should testers be on hand just to gather and report bugs, and/or provided information that might go toward diagnosis, and/or should they be responsible for providing a solution? How hard, if at all, should testers push back? All concerned have struggled with this problem for quite a while now - any suggestions welcome!
Cheers
Dave