The PhaseWare Files:
Articles, Observations, and Ideas
about Customer Support

The Declaration of Customer Service Independence!

At this time of the year we remember the fallen heroes and rebellious patriots who forged our nation.  We cite the names of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry, giving deference to the revolutionaries without whose leadership and foresight, this nation could not have been born.

Nations aren't the only things that undergo revolutions.  Over the last century, the way businesses have conducted commerce has been undergoing constant change with earth-shattering ideas and new formats of selling a product, which has led to alterations in how customer service is given. 

The most recent development is that of self-service online.  No more wasting time waiting in lines.  No more "Press 1 if..."  PhaseWare wants the consumer to be at liberty to have customer service at any time of the day or night.  PhaseWare stands by the consumers' declaration of independence from time-wasting phone calls just to talk to a computer.

PhaseWare holds these truths to be self-evident, that all customers are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are user-friendly products, multiple options, and the pursuit of adequate customer service.

That to secure these rights, companies are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the consumer,

That whenever any form of a company's customer service becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the consumer to complain or to change companies, and to find a more reliable service, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their happiness and lower their stress level.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that companies long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a service, and to provide a new customer service for their future needs. 

Therefore, let the consumers listen to "Press 1 if..." no more. 

Let them find freedom in the time regained. 

Let the customers discover the wonders of self-service online.

Creating Blockbuster Customer Experiences
Create a Blockbuster Support Agent Experience.

Step 3: Data Use

Your agents are excited; they will get a new system that they helped choose. Your legacy systems are all tuned up. Now what?

You must determine what you want to do with all the wonderful new data you will have access to with your new system and all its bells and whistles. How do you come up with that?

Ask yourself, and anyone else who is qualified to give an answer, the following questions:

• What are the service goals of the help desk?
• What metrics must be measured to let the help desk know whether it is meeting its service goals?

Once these are defined, it is possible to determine data requirements and strategies.

Data is gathered from both external and internal sources (surveys, call records) to give a clearer picture of customer needs and shape the strategy for service improvement. Gather real time metrics and make them visible to your help desk personnel. This will provide both timely feedback as well as incentive to reach service goals. No longer will your help desk be forced to wait until a weekly or monthly report is issued to see whether goals are being met.

(Data gathering, storage, and retrieval strategies are also important for answering regulatory requirements.)

OK, now we have all this lovely data. What a mess! You need to format some reports so you can make sense of it all.

Reports on system performance can include:

• an evaluation of hardware activity
• security events such as attempts at unauthorized access
• diagnostics of system problems

Reports on help desk performance can include:

• average speed-to-answer
• average handle-time
• call volume with peak and valley
• first call resolution rates
• service level requirements
• metrics on types of calls handled and number of calls abandoned

Reports on customer assets can include:

• version and configuration data
• system status
• network configuration
• service level agreements

Any report you can think of that will help answer the question: how are we doing and where do we need to improve?

Now we're cookin' with gas. These reports will let you know where and when the bottle necks are, where staffing needs to be adjusted, how many calls are for simple routine stuff that could have been answered by a self service application. Find out all the things that are holding your help desk back from peak performance. Eliminate them.

Excellent support agent experience nearly guaranteed. Add in training, easy information retrieval; take out the call clutter and install a self service application. Put it all together to make happy support agents.

And happy support agents create excellent customer experiences.

Creating Blockbuster Customer Experiences
Create a Blockbuster Support Agent Experience.

Step 2: Legacy Systems

Now that your people have bought into using the new software, what else is there to worry about?

How about your existing software? The best customer support software in the world cannot operate at peak efficiency if the system it runs on is not in top shape. All supporting software and hardware must be operating at its highest potential in order to capitalize on the software investment made for the support desk.

System performance optimization can pinpoint problems with data management, the need for upgrades to any part of the system, and predict future performance issues. Then the predicted problem can be nipped in the bud rather than have it blow up later. Get the legacy stuff up to speed, add software that is easily integrated into the existing framework and you are on your way.

Again, all this takes planning, preferably before you tried to install your nifty new customer support software that all the agents can't wait to use. If they are champing at the bit, you don't want them to falter. You need to capture that momentum to help you get through any bumps on the way to customer support nirvana.

Replace Phone Support Purgatory With Self Service Heaven

So there I was, sitting on my couch, listening to such magnificent compositions as could only be played in those most coveted of places: elevators and corporate call-waiting.  My ear was getting sweaty from being pressed up against my tiny cell phone for so long.  Forty-five minutes prior, I had attempted to use the form offered to register for, well, one of those things you have to register for, but what should have been a simple process turned into such a major production it could have won an Oscar.  Something went terribly wrong with the registration process and I ended up being scheduled for duplicate services. 

I called their customer service hotline, played the "Press 1 if..." game, and finally got referred to a real person because I couldn't decide which number to push. Then I was bounced from person to person; nobody knew where to send me next.  I even got bounced to a few of them twice.  Add in holding between thirty second conversations and time just slips away.  I should have been working, not sitting on the phone waiting for Mr. or Ms. Right Answer.

People everywhere go through the same experience when dealing with insurance matters, computers, credit cards, etc.  We spend hours of precious time listening to bland elevator music waiting for someone to help with a relatively simple problem.  That time spent on the phone can never be regained.  Productivity and money are lost.  To stop this madness, many companies are offering on-line Self Service to make the process of finding an answer more convenient.

Some might say that Self Service Portals push customers away from the business, but look closely at what a Self Service Portal offers:  forums where customers can get help from others with the same experience, FAQ pages for those benign yet repetitive issues, announcements about important items, ways to submit and track an incident, and much more.  Some customers may have more meaningful contact with the business through Self Service, not to mention receiving answers with more detail than practicable over the phone. Self Service makes getting answers quicker and deflects expensive support calls.

So do your customers a favor. Offer Self Service instead of the third rendition of "Muskrat Love".  You'll save their ears, your money, and everyone's time.

Creating Blockbuster Customer Experiences
Create a Blockbuster Support Agent Experience

Step 1: Software

Blockbuster customer experiences start with your support staff. To optimize their ability to help your customers, you must do everything in your power to remove any obstacle that comes between your agents and your customers.

One step in obstacle removal is giving your support center agents customer support software that they love to use, otherwise the chances for creating your blockbuster customer experience will be slim to none. If the software your agents are using is not specifically configured for their process of providing support then the software will not meet even the most basic of requirements:

Expedite the incident resolution process. 

Customer experience will suffer from delays in incident submission, resolution, even checking incident status with inappropriate software.

Therefore, do not just waltz out and pick the first customer support software you see off the shelf. First you must:

• map the support desk processes
• determine user requirements
• show the users how any proposed new system will meet those requirements, and
• listen to their feedback and act on it!

It is natural for people to resist change. But this resistance can be countered by having end users participate in the selection and implementation process. Once the software is in place, the users should be allowed a chance to give feedback to tweak the system into its most useful configuration.

Ease of use, stability, and features that can be fully customized to the support agents' activities goes a long way toward finding a system that they can't wait to use. 

PhaseWare Tracker, for example, incorporates a screen designer tool to allow customization of the graphics of most core screens such as the customer entry screen. This tool is a graphical interface itself, so you don't need to be a programmer to create a spiffy customized interface for each screen.

With their shiny new software and smiling faces, your support agents will be at the top of their game:

Giving blockbuster customer support.

 

The 2 Top Requirements for Customer Service Excellence

I'll cut to the chase here. After all, your call center is too busy for you to spend your time reading a long blog entry. I hope you do read this whole thing but if you have no time to fool around here is the post in a nutshell:

The way to Customer Service Excellence is to:

1. Keep your employees with you, don't let them walk.
2. Give your customers an experience that keeps them with you, don't let them walk.

That's pretty much it, everything else is in support of those two points. But why is employee retention #1?

Because these are the people who will make or break your relationship with your customers. These are the people who will help fulfill the second point: customer retention. These are the people who will get better the longer they stay with you. If they leave, you have to train new ones and they won't have the depth of experience that your former employees had. This damages not only the budget (recruiting, training) but the customer's experience as well. The customer doesn't want to be the guinea pig for a beginner.....they want their problem resolved quickly and correctly. Another thing customers don't want: to be the victim of an unhappy customer service agent.

Everybody sells widgets and widget services just like yours. So why would they come back to you rather than go to Joe-Bob's Widgets and Bait Shack? Or, more likely, the widget store most convenient to them?

Because they have a relationship with you. After all, relationship is CRM's middle name. Who would you go see for your service: Joe Blow who happens to have what you need but you don't know anything about him or the company where everybody knows your name as well as your needs and desires?

Who fosters that relationship? Certainly not your website, your self service center, or the product itself. It is the way people feel after dealing with your company. Oh, not for routine or simple interactions. But when that make or break call comes in, a good customer service agent can make lemonade of the problem and sell it to the customer; and the customer hangs up smiling because they have a relationship with you that makes them feel good. 

And this can feed back to point #1:

Happy Customer = Happy Employee

This is not a chicken and egg issue, you absolutely must have a happy employee who can build that relationship and create a happy customer. But the employee's knowledge that the customer is happy validates their reason for being in the support center: to help people.

A happy employee is one who either has or can learn practices and habits that allow them to form the relationship needed to keep your customer. A happy employee is also one who is confident in their performance and feels that you trust him to be able to act appropriately without micromanagement. Too many rules spoil the customer experience.

Train your people about the products they will support, make certain they know what they can do to help a customer, give them the best tools to do it and let them go.

• Let them know of career advancement opportunities if they want.
• Provide motivation and recognition that really means something, not a coffee cup with the company logo on it.
• Make sure the tools they are using are as efficient and easy to use as you can find. 

Put this into place and the second requirement is nearly met.

To increase customer satisfaction, not only is a good relationship essential, but providing a way for the customer to help himself and multiple ways to reach out for help will seal the deal. 

• Access to a customer self service center for quick answers to routine questions, possible help from other customers in a forum, and access to a knowledgebase geared to your specific product.
• Access to multiple channels of support so each customer reaches out in the way most comfortable for them.
• Access to a live person on the phone if the above fails to satisfy their needs.

There are others points that can be made about offering excellent service but, as far as I am concerned, they are supports for the two I discussed. This includes obtaining and using customer feedback, adopting tools and technology, and transforming customer service into a profit center rather than a cost center. 

They all hinge on the first two.

 

Customer Experience? You Want It, You Got It!

As you can imagine, I read volumes of information on customer experience, customer support, how to make the contact center into a profit center, on and on and on.

Yesterday, I experienced it. I must say that, even though I didn't rethink my decision for calling and I didn't buy anything, the customer agent I spoke with pulled out all the stops. I think she followed every best practice in the book. And at no time did she sound as though she was reading from a script.

I was calling to discontinue a credit monitoring service. Of course, the company does not wish me to do this. So the agent was very friendly (smile when you answer the phone). She said she surely could do that but...

(There's always a but isn't there?)

Had I considered...

And here came the consequences my actions could bring upon me:

Did I realize that in this day and age it is extremely important to monitor my credit record to prevent identity theft? That I really need them to keep an eye out, not just on my credit card numbers, but my Social Security Number because that was the gateway for ID theft? And she quoted some statistics in a voice touched just a little with tragic concern. 

Well ,since that didn't work, she wanted to know how I was going to protect myself. I said I was going to use another company I already did business with for other things.

I swear she looked up that company and got an answer in 2 seconds because, with barely a delay, she told me that the company I was considering only checked one credit bureau but her company checked all three....and went on to remind me of all the services her company provided that the other company did not.

Well, that didn't work either. So she goes for her last weapon.

"Did you know we are offering a promotion in which the cost of our service is discounted 50% for the next 12 months? Won't that make you reconsider?"

She almost got me there (I am a bit of a tightwad). I mean, what person in their right minds would turn down all these services for half the price?

Guess I'm not in my right mind.

Be that as it may, I had to admire her performance of the techniques I have been reading about. I don't think there was anything she left out. If she did, let me know what it was.

And you know what? I would likely recommend their company to someone else, even though I had discontinued their service. How's that for salespersonship? Lose one customer but perhaps gain more in my place?

Goes to show that these techniques work, even when you know what is being done. So don't scoff at those best practice stories about making the contact center into a profit center, fully as capable of selling as addressing problems. Or articles that are adament about not using scripts (at least not without training the agent how to not sound like it was a script). The proof is in the pudding, as my mom says.

Try this recipe in your own contact center and let me know how it works. Our inquiring minds want to know.

The Definition of Cloud Computing by the National Institute of Standards and Technology

Whoa, sounds heavy, dude!

(Great! Now I have "He ain't heavy, he's my brother" running through my head.)

Cloud computing seems to have just blown up out of nowhere. Yet it has been around in various forms for years. Lately, though, it seems to be a major subject of interest and conversation throughout the software world. Everything is going along so fast that a decent definition of cloud computing hasn't even been specified yet.

As a result the terms "Cloud Computing", "On-Demand", and "SaaS" are starting to get used interchangably. It's easy enough to take cut "SaaS" out of the pack; this is actually a delivery model. It is related to cloud computing in that the "Software Service" is delivered over the "Cloud".

On-demand is a little tougher to categorize, so when the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) started drafting a definition of cloud computing the term "on-demand" became part of the definition itself.

A more detailed draft definition of cloud computing and its accompanying delivery and deployment models can be found at the NIST website under their computer security division. I want to emphasize that: this is a draft definition being put together by a group under Peter Mell and Tim Grace of NIST.

The gist of it is as follows:

Cloud computing is a way of providing access to computing resources that can be released with very little work by the service provider. It has the following characteristics:

• on-demand self-service
• ubiquitous network access
• location independent resource pooling
• rapid elasticity
• measured service

What this means is that

• you, as a consumer, can access computing resources automatically with no help from the provider, using a web browser.
• You can access these resources in numerous ways: mobile phones, laptop, PDAs, etc.
• It doesn't matter where the resource is physically located.
• The capabilities of the service can seem limitless to the consumer because they can scale up and down so rapidly. 
• The service is metered so that the cloud controls the resource to provide the best performance.

NIST is currently providing for three delivery models.

Software as a Service, what most people simply refer to as SaaS, is a software solution that you can use as if it were software installed on the computer itself but is actually being provisioned from the "Cloud" over your web browser. However, you have no control over the software or anything else unless it has been given as a limited user-specific setting.

Platform as a Service, PaaS, gives you the ability to deploy a software application to the cloud's infrastructure. Other than the application and the hosting environment, you have no control over the infrastructure.

Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS, gives you the ability to provision specific resources through which you deploy and use a variety of software, including operating systems as well as applications. You cannot control the rest of the cloud infrastructure but can control operating systems, storage, and other resources and components.

NIST has also given cloud computing four deployment models:

• private cloud (think "your company")
• community cloud (think Homeland Security which has numerous agencies that use the same resources)
• public cloud (think Google's or Amazon's cloud offerings)
• hybrid cloud: more than one cloud of any type, that remains independent, except for infrastructure that allows data and application portability, called, interestingly enough, "cloud bursting".

Well, that's a quick rundown of what cloud computing may be defined as. As I said, this is a draft definition, but maybe it is enough to be going on with.

If you prefer all the $10 words associated with the definition see the full NIST draft (2 page Word document) and a 73 slide PowerPoint presentation, annotated. Otherwise, this should git'er dun.

RIA? Isn't that a tax deferred savings plan?

Uuuuhhhhmmm, no.

RIA stands for Rich Internet Application aka Rich Interactive Application aka Rich User Application (even though the letters don't match).

OK. Well, that's clear as mud. So what exactly are we talking about here? Just tell me, OK?!?!?!?!?!

Rich Internet Applications, RIAs for short, make it possible to have your customer service and support software (actually, any application) that is currently on your desktop offered over an internet browser without loss of features or configurability/customization options.

Without slowing things down.

And making the application accessible regardless of which computer or operating system you are using. No need to have the application on-premise when it can be in the "cloud".

That's not to say that some businesses aren't better off keeping the application on-premise for a variety of reasons, but if cloud computing is what you want to do, RIAs go a long way towards making that happen.

An RIA makes the user experience more dynamic by increasing the interactivity of the application over the internet so it is more closely aligned with desk top capabilities.

Previously, web pages were very static and user controls were limited and cumbersome: radio buttons, check boxes, and form fields. Whenever information was entered, the entire page had to reload before any changes could be seen. A far cry from using a desktop application where you can quickly and easily drag-and-drop, edit inline, and perform other actions of that nature.

Software built with RIAs have significantly increased interactivity; it is faster, has more flexibility, and is more dynamic and engaging than HTML pages. In essence, RIAs allow "partial page updates". Instead of requiring the entire page to reload after input, only the part of the page affected will update. This increases the speed of the update and the smoothness of the user experience.

In addition, more detailed information can be placed on a page than before and feedback, confirmation messages, and error messages are provided immediately on the same page. Data visualization, product showcasing on the website, and process efficiency are all made possible with RIAs.

It's just WAY more fun to use!

"So what does that do for me?" you ask.

If you are the one who wants to use software and have it delivered as a service (SaaS), who wants to be able to ignore operating system and hardward differences, yet who wants the same experience using the software as if it were on the desktop, then software designed with RIAs makes it happen.

Think of what this can mean to your customer service and support center:

• Ease of use means higher productivity for your staff and cost savings for you.
• Greater interactivity means more frequent usage of your self service center, which controls costs by deflecting calls.
• SaaS delivery means no need for the hardware required to have the software on-premise, a significant savings.
• It is an easy way of standardizing the desktop and application, plus updates to the software will take place in the cloud, instead of system by system. Everybody gets updated at once.
• For the same reason, incremental changes are easier.
• RIAs provide opportunities for collaboration and knowledge sharing not available before. This could increase first call resolution rates.

Want some numbers? Forrester Research came up with these in their paper "The Business Case for Rich Internet Applications":

• An ROI model for a PC manufacturing site showed an ROI of 185% to 443% after 1 year.
• An ROI model for a hotel reservations site showed an ROI range of 665% to 1,354% after 1 year.

Granted, these are models, but of the businesses surveyed that had implemented an RIA solution, 69% thought it met or exceeded expectations of success. Only 10% felt it was less successful than expected. The rest hadn't measured the business impact.

If you are currently using a customer service and support solution through SaaS, you are likely limited in what can be customized unless the solution was designed with RIAs. If you switched from on premise to SaaS, you probably were not able to have the same screens, capabilities, or flexibility you had with your on-premise solution.

RIAs change all that. I can't wait, can you?

What Should Your Customer Support Software Do For You?

Customer support software has become more sophisticated over the years. Most are equipped with capabilities that were only available in enterprise software in the past without making the price out of reach of smaller businesses.

But what should it do?

For one thing, it needs a way to record customer information and make it easily retreived later. How much information do you want on your customers? Probably more than just name, address, and phone. You would probably like to record what products the customer orders or owns as well as who the contacts are for that business with all of their information. And if the business has multiple locations, wouldn't it be nice to be able to connect them to the head office yet have a way to record and retreive customer information for that particular branch? 

What other information might you want? Maybe a billing number, sales ID, and accounting ID? How about a customer category, their status, and their standing with your company? To round it out, you might need space to put notes about individual customers in free text. All customer information in one place, easily found with a keystroke or two. Archiving older records is a capability that could save yourself a lot of trouble if you need to prove anything to a regulatory agency and the like.

Voila! One part has been defined. And if you don't  need all that information, the software should allow you to customize the application to fit the way you do business.

Customer Information

• Name, Address Phone, Email
• Contacts with their own information
• Record of products/services/assets with purchase history
• Connect multiple locations
• Billing/SLA information
• Sales ID, accounting ID, category, standing, status, notes
• Archiving

And now, for the rest of the story....

This is the part where the information about the incident is recorded. Maybe you call them tickets, problems, issues, or something else entirely. For this article I will use incidents. What information would be nice to have for the incident itself?

A number, automatically generated, unable to be modified or deleted, would give that incident an individual ID plus an easy way to find it. This prevents duplication of ticket numbers which could cause no end of headaches for you and your customers. The incident is then assigned to the appropriate customer.

For future use in analytics, a way to capture what source the incident information came from is very handy. With so many ways for information to reach you available now, it would be good to know how many from where to help with staffing levels and assignments. Telephone, fax, email, chat, self service, all should be able to be counted.

A most important piece of information needed for your incident is which product is under investigation? How do you identify it? There are product codes, make and model, description, product keys such as serial numbers or software keys.

More needed information: how to bill for the incident, what the problem is, the department the incident is assigned to, the agent the incident is assigned to, when the customer should receive a response, follow up dates, due dates, the severity of the incident, its priority, classification, status, and resolution.

Incident Information

• Incident number assignment, customer assignment, source
• Product identification
• Billing
• Department assignment
• Agent assignment
• Due times for responses, followups, and completion dates
• Severity level, priority, classification, and status
• A full description of the problem
• Resolution

As before, the software should be customized to your business processes, not the other way around.

With all this information, trend reports, SLA reports, customer reports, many different kinds of reports can be generated to help guide business decisions. Maybe you need to know if a particular product is having a problem in the field. Or conversely, if a customer seems to be having more than his fair share of problems.

Resolutions could be put into a knowledge base to help the agent or customer to fix the same problem later without need of another investigation.

Once last nice-to-have, although by no means the only one, is a way to track time: phone time, recording time, other bits of time that can help with staffing and training.

At a minimum, these are the things I would like to be able to record in a customer support system. You may have different needs. The software should be able to adapt to those needs, both in flexibility and scalability. And then there is affordability.

PhaseWare Tracker can do all this and more. So can other software solutions, but we like to think we do it better and for less cost.

Check us out.