Can you image what the results of all of these IT disasters would have been if the airlines mentioned above did not have technical support contracts with their suppliers? How long would it take them to get back up and running if they simply had Time & Materials service agreements with service provided on a “best effort” basis. There are several reasons that customers need to continue to have contracted services in place for all of their major systems and just one of them is the ability to get immediate service for mission critical service requests. Remember that this is not a story about the airlines industry; this is a story about all businesses that are questioning the value of the services provided by their IT suppliers. They are asking the question “What am I getting for my maintenance dollars?”.

Your Service Revenues are at Risk!
If you are in the enterprise software/hardware business you know all about the maintenance contract for services and just how profitable it is to your company. In fact, profit margins from maintenance typically range from 75% to 95% and have been extremely stable over the past 20 years. During this time, customers just paid the annual renewal fees and life was good. Today, things are changing! Your customers are pressing hard to understand exactly what they are paying for in a maintenance agreement and want the price to be lowered.
A typical maintenance agreement has 3 components; upgrades, bug fixes, and tech support. These are all rolled together so that the customer never really knows the exact portion of money allocated to any one component. Hey, most times even we don’t know! Over the years we just created maintenance invoices and customers blindly sent us money that fell straight to the bottom line. Not a bad gig if you can get it. In the past few years we have seen more customers applying all types of pressure to reduce their overall IT costs. They have reduced headcount and curtailed new systems spending but the large amount of money that the CIO is paying for maintenance fees is really sticking out. It is one of the few places left where your customers are questioning the value they receive for the price paid. If you are not being asked to discount your annual maintenance fees, then you soon will be.
When this pressure from customers comes you have 2 choices. First you can roll over and give them a discount (that will probably last forever) or you can stand strong and defend the prices that you are charging. You are either a “fee defender” or a “fee discounter”. So, which one are you? What position has your company taken on the value of the services you offer customers and the fees associated with them? You need to make a decision pretty quickly because it will have a major impact on your overall company financials and your overall customer satisfaction (CSAT). Surprisingly, Fee Defenders have higher CSAT than those companies that simply give a discount when asked.
By now you probably get the message that you are going to have to take a pro-active approach to defending your maintenance pricing strategy. You are going to have to show “true value” to your customers so they see what they are getting and feel that it is worth every penny they pay. Actually, I don’t think that you should take a defensive posture at all. Be aggressive and establish the value proposition for all of your services for each customer BEFORE they come to you. This offensive approach has plenty of benefits that include allowing you to prepare responses to common questions before a customer pressures you. For example, how would you respond if a customer says “I am not using tech support so why do I have to pay for it?” What if they question the need to upgrade so frequently and would rather stay back 3 or 4 versions? How would you handle a customer telling you that your competitors are discounting their maintenance fees and you should too? All of these questions need to be answered with well-developed responses that support the value of the services you provide.

To really understand all of the complexities of this entire maintenance pressure issue I am taking my show on the road for a series of 1-day workshops. Together with the Kotler Marketing Group, we have developed a series of tools to help you defend your maintenance pricing. Over the next couple of months we will be in Chicago, Toronto, and Boston working with dozens of companies that are all trying to figure out the best approach to defend their maintenance dollars. These sessions are highly interactive, reasonably priced, and full of practical concepts that really work. If you are responsible for maintenance revenues then you really need to attend one of these workshops. If you don’t have responsibility for maintenance revenues, service marketing, or service sales please pass this link on to the person in your company who does. If you want to discuss anything about the maintenance pressure issue, just email me at BillRose@BillRoseINC.com
Want more info about the workshops?
http://www.kotlermarketing.com/service_dptraining_inc.shtml
If you have any questions, please contact the Kotler Marketing office at +1 202-331-0555 or via e-mail at seminars@kotler-announce.com

Download the Brochure here!

A typical maintenance agreement has 3 components; upgrades, bug fixes, and tech support. These are all rolled together so that the customer never really knows the exact portion of money allocated to any one component. Hey, most times even we don’t know! Over the years we just created maintenance invoices and customers blindly sent us money that fell straight to the bottom line. Not a bad gig if you can get it. In the past few years we have seen more customers applying all types of pressure to reduce their overall IT costs. They have reduced headcount and curtailed new systems spending but the large amount of money that the CIO is paying for maintenance fees is really sticking out. It is one of the few places left where your customers are questioning the value they receive for the price paid. If you are not being asked to discount your annual maintenance fees, then you soon will be.

When this pressure from customers comes you have 2 choices. First you can roll over and give them a discount (which will probably last forever) or you can stand strong and defend the prices that you are charging. You are either a “fee defender” or a “fee discounter”. So, which one are you? What position has your company taken on the value of the services you offer customers and the fees associated with them? You need to make a decision pretty quickly because it will have a major impact on your overall company financials and your overall customer satisfaction (CSAT). Surprisingly, Fee Defenders have higher CSAT than those companies that simply give a discount when asked.

To really understand all of the complexities of this entire maintenance pressure issue I am taking my show on the road for 1-day workshops. Together with the Kotler Marketing Group, we have developed a series of tools to help you defend your maintenance pricing. Over the next couple of months we will be in Dallas, Chicago, Toronto, and Boston working with dozens of companies that are all trying to figure out the best approach to defend their maintenance dollars. These sessions are highly interactive, reasonably priced, and full of practical concepts that really work. If you are responsible for maintenance revenues then you really need to attend one of these workshops.

If you don’t have responsibility for maintenance revenues, service marketing, or service sales please pass this link on to the person in your company who does. If you want to discuss anything about the maintenance pressure issue, just email me at BillRose@BillRoseINC.com

Want more info about the workshops?

Well, things have changed! I am no longer in the trade association business and instead, I am creating a network of industry consultants to assist the very same members that we talked about above. These companies are always looking for top executive service management and I have a great relationship with most of the best and brightest service execs in our industry. So, it just makes sense for me to expand out into the Exclusive Executive Search area.

When I say “Exclusive”, I mean extremely confidential, targeted, and high level. I have built my reputation on being able to keep information to myself and never, ever, ever share it with anyone else. Key data, such as, awards applications, certification results, and benchmarking results all were held in the closest confidence. And, I did it for over 20 years!

Today, I am expanding my business to include executive recruiting. But, I am only going to work within the technology services industry. This means that I will work with companies that are searching for exceptional service execs to fill exciting positions, and, couple them with the best service executives in the industry today.

If you are a company looking to fill a key service position with a job title of Director or above, please contact me to set up a call to discuss the requirements for the perfect person. I probably already know the exec you are looking for.

If you are a service exec and want to make a career change, contact me so we can discuss the opportunities available to you. I will provide you with a candid career assessment and guidance about our industry and where you should be heading for your next executive services move.

Remember, I am not a professional recruiter. I’m an industry guy who happens to know a lot of people. lol

Contact me confidentially at BillRose@BillRoseINC.com

First, prepare ahead of time.  Review the detailed agenda and pick the sessions that you really want to see.  The TSIA conference has so many sessions that it is impossible for one person to take advantage of all of the rich content.  The solution is to bring a team of people and divide the session attendance so that key data is collected from as many speakers as possible.  With your team in place, compare notes during the breaks and ensure that the sessions ahead are still the most valuable to your group.  It is not uncommon to find that one topic spurs a strong interest to attend additional sessions focused on this area.  A good example is the number of sessions that are trying to unravel the mysteries of social media as a service delivery tool.  This topic may not have been at the top of your list when you walked in the door but it is by the end of the first day.

Make connections, contacts, and collect cards.  For a conference with over 800 attendees you should be collecting 15 to 20 business cards from other attendees and speakers.  Hang on to these cards because the entire industry is based on relationships.  Believe me, my Rolodex is massive and I worked hard to develop it.  Conferences are the perfect place to source out specific contacts from key companies you work with or would like to work for in the future.  It always floors me when I see 5 people from the same company standing together at one of the receptions.  Divide and conquer.  Mix and mingle and make contacts that you didn’t know before.

If you are a service exec who sends a team of people to industry conferences here are a few things that you can do to make this expense more beneficial to your team.  First, pick people that are really interested in attending.  Also, ask each individual to complete a trip report that summarizes the sessions that they attended and their overall feelings about the event.  These reports should be used as training tools for your management team that didn’t get a chance to attend.  During “brown bag” lunch sessions the trip reports can be presented and everyone gets a little bit of knowledge that might be helpful in the future.  If there is one topic where you need more information, get the speaker on the phone for a clarifying conference call.  Most speakers are more than happy to dig deeper into a topic they presented.  Finally, get someone from your organization on the agenda and share your experiences.  Speaking at industry conferences shows that you have a message to deliver that your peers have a strong interest in.  Speaking is great PR for you as a service exec and for your company as a service leader.

Tell me what you think about attending industry conferences.  Just email me at BillRose@BillRoseINC.com

Setting Tech Support Priorities

For example, there is definite difference in your resolution management strategy based on the customers that you serve.  Enterprise hardware customers have opportunities to deploy box-to-box monitoring and troubleshooting tools that consumer hardware companies only dream about.  On the software side, consumer software companies typically deal with less sophisticated customers that can extend resolution times while more and more calls are rolling in.  But, enterprise software customers put immense pressure on their service providers to get complex issues resolved faster.  In each of these situations your resolution management strategy will be dependent on the type of customers you are supporting.

Hang on it gets worse; each “customer type” also brings a certain level of technical expertise to the resolution process.  For example, we would expect that enterprise customers would have very high levels of technical expertise, but this is not always the case. And, if you were servicing consumers then it would be anticipated that they would be somewhat technically challenged.  There seems to be a direct correlation between the technical expertise of your customers and the time it takes to resolve their issues.  The more technical they are, the more likely we are to resolve issues faster.

At this point it is probably a good idea to clarify a few things.  First of all, I am not using the term “customer problem”; instead I classify everything as a “customer issue”.  Although this may seem like a minor word choice there is actually a very big difference between problems and issues.  Our TSIA research tells us that most companies receive over 80% of their support requests for non-defect related issues.  These requests include assistance with installation and configuration, “how to” requests, and non-technical requests.  As you can see, it is difficult to classify these requests as “problems”.  For most of our members there is a very small number of product defects, limitations, and bugs.  Today, most customers call for service to find better ways to use your products and not because the product does not work.  It just makes sense that our resolution management strategy is in alignment with the issues reported.  What changes can you make to your service delivery process that will assist customers in being more successful using your products?  How can services ensure that customers get the absolute most from what they have already purchased and continue to purchase more?

As you continue to think about your overall resolution management strategy there is one area that needs to be considered from the start; how will you measure true resolve time?               The decision is a simple one; do you measure the time it takes to resolve issues using elapsed time or do you use work time?  Elapsed time is typically considered calendar time and measures the amount of days that a case has been first opened until it is closed.  On the other hand, work time only counts the actual effort put forth on this case regardless of the amount of time the case has been open.  As you can see, your resolution time will have drastic differences by using one measurement over the other.  For example, elapsed time could indicate that a case has been opened for 30 days but work time indicates that only 2 days of effort have been recorded.  Which measurement do you use?  Elapsed time is the simplest method but it does not tell us how much actual work we have completed on this particular case.  Work time shows the total resources dedicated to resolving an issue but it does not mean much to our customers.  As part of our resolution management strategy we must include both elapsed time and work time as key indicators of our ability to resolve customer issues.

Another important phenomena that we are seeing at TSIA research is the steady increase in the overall “resolve time” within our industry and a sharp decrease in our ability to resolve issues the first time we talk to customers (First Contact Resolution (FCR)).  So, why is this happening?  Why is resolve time increasing and FCR decreasing?  Why is it taking us longer to resolve all customer issues?  What is stopping us from resolving issues on first contact?  There are several unproven theories out there but one thing we know for sure is that the data does not lie.  It really is taking us longer to resolve issues!  Is this a result of the enormous complexity built into our own products and the environments where they reside?  Does this have anything to do with the people we hire, how we train, and the tools we provide?  The answer to all of these questions is probably “yes”.  In fact, it takes us longer to resolve customer issues, in part, due to all of these reasons stated above.  Our challenge is to understand how much each element of the resolution process affects the final outcome and what we can do to improve.  We need a plan, we need a roadmap, and we need a resolution management strategy to guide our efforts.

Building your resolution management strategy is not rocket science, it is simply a “plan of attack” to get you focused on one specific part of your business.  Get started by pulling your management team together and find a white board where you can document everything that affects your ability to resolve customer issues.  Start with a simple question; “What do we need to do to resolve issues faster?”  The object here is to expose those areas that are holding you back and limiting your overall effectiveness.  Some of these areas could be customer training, support rep skill levels, lack of tools, or lack of proper reporting.  Get to the root cause of each area and identify improvements that can be made in your processes and deliverables.  You will be surprised to find that some very simple changes will deliver substantial rewards.

ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS FOR DEVELOPING A RESOLUTION MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

1. Focus all of your attention on just one thing; resolve time
2. Understand your customers and assess their overall technical expertise.
3. Evaluate your current data collection methods to ensure that you are measuring everything possible in and around resolve time.
4. Develop new reports and measurements that provide a clear picture of all efforts to resolve customer issues.
5. Learn what other companies are doing in their efforts to resolve customer issues faster.

The TSIA has been instrumental in raising awareness about industry-wide topics that our members are challenged with everyday.  The topic of “Resolution Management” is one of those areas where there has been no clear focus, no common terminology, and no industry standards established.  The TSIA has created a community of interest (COI) and started the dialog for this important area.  Please join the discussions at www.techservicesforum.com .  Just look for the discussion titled “Resolve time & FCR”.-

One thing that we know for sure is that measuring our effectiveness at resolving customer issues gets a lot easier if we can fix problems the first time the customer requests assistance.  This “First Call Resolution (FCR)” could be the single most important thing that we do every day.  Think about this for a moment, if the customer calls, or emails, or submits a case via the web, and we jump on the issue and fix it the first time, everyone’s life gets easier.  There are no callbacks, no passing of cases back and forth, and no need to constantly provide the customer with open case status updates.  The problem here is that this is easier said than done. In fact, first call resolution is extremely difficult to achieve.  So why is this?  What are the reasons that it is so difficult to fix a customer’s issue the first time?  Well, it is a complex question with plenty of complex issues so let’s take a look at the fifteen factors that affect FCR.

1. Logging each and every case

If we don’t log and track each and every customer request then we will see false FCR results.  For example, if a customer calls in with several unique issues, do we really open up separate cases for each request?  Probably not!  When we do not log the simple, easy to answer requests we do not get credit for multiple first contact resolutions.

1. Complexity of the environment

The more complex the environment, the more difficult it is to isolate the issues on first contact.  If we end up having to re-create the issue then it becomes almost impossible to resolve anything on first contact.  If your products reside in a complex environment then you should anticipate lower FCR results.

1. Complexity of the product

If your products are extremely complex, there is a good chance that your focus is not on FCR.  Complex products typically require complex responses and this takes time and resources that may extend out of your direct control.  Complex products that run in complex environments create even bigger challenges but that does not mean that we abandon the FCR metric.  We still need to measure and monitor our effectiveness in this key area.

1. Definition of a “fix”

Based on your internal definition of a “fix”, you could have a built-in impossible situation for success in FCR.  Is a fix an answer to a question?  Is a fix only defined as some type of coding solution?  Your definition will determine when you consider the issues resolved and affect FCR measurements.

1. Metrics – When do you start and stop counting?

The issue of the day has everything to do with how FCR is measured.  If we are trying to count the times we effectively resolve a customer issue on first contact, then what do we consider a contact?  What if we receive the service request via email? How about web-generated requests? What if a customer talks to a non-technical person?  Should we count that as a first contact?  How we measure FCR determines our overall effectiveness.  Today there seems to be about a dozen ways that our members are using for FCR calculations.  We need to reach some agreement on how FCR is measured.

1. Skill set of customers

Based on the knowledge and experience levels of your customers, FCR can swing drastically up or down.  The more skilled your customers are, the more likely they have done their homework before calling for service.  If customers have already started the problem isolation process the entire resolve time flow is shortened and FCR is improved.

1. Skill set of your people

Having the correct technical skills in place shortens the FCR process.  It just makes sense that the people with the best possible knowledge of the issue should be the ones that work with the customer through resolution.  But, this is not an easy task. Even with Skills Based Routing in place it is virtually impossible to get the exact match of technical skills applied to every issue that comes through the door.  The more effective we are at skills matching the more we will see the FCR rate increase.

1. Effectiveness of self-service

There is a strong argument within our association that one reason for the drop in FCR over the past five years is due to customers using self-service via the web.  Essentially, customers go to the web and get the “easy” issues resolved through self-service.  This means that the “hard” issues are handled via the phone and the FCR is reduced because of the degree of difficulty of these more challenging problems.

1. Customer usage of “outside” forums and sources

This FCR Factor is similar to the one above with one exception; customers are using online forums that are not supported by your company.  These forums could be peer-to-peer, informal networks where technical information is exchanged about your products.  The greatest risk here is that your customers could be getting some really bad advice and when they mess things up they call you for help.  Unsanctioned forums can be very useful but they also have a downside when your company does not control reliable data.

1. Tools available to your people

Technology in tech services has made us more efficient and effective and the better our tools are the more likely we are to resolve customer issues on first contact.  By using knowledge management tools and “closed case” databases, we are certain to quickly find known issues and pass the fix on to customers when they first reach us.  There is a direct correlation between the reliability of our service tools and the effectiveness of FCR.

1. Training on tools usage

Having great service tools does not mean much if your people don’t know how to use them properly.  CRM tools in particular are becoming more and more complex and loaded with features and functions that your people don’t even know how to use.  With the proper training on the service tools in place today, first contact resolution rates will increase rapidly.

1. Problem solving & trouble shooting skills

The best technicians use proven methodologies for isolating and resolving technical issues.  Why is it that some of your tech reps are better “fixers” than others?  Well, experience has a lot to do with it, but developing problem solving and troubleshooting skills will ensure that problems are resolved in the most efficient manner possible. The good news is that these skills can be trained into your people and there are plenty of methodologies and approaches to problem isolation that can be adopted to increase FCR.

1. Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) for response & resolve times

Most Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) in customer contracts have wording that is focused on your guarantees about response time and not resolve time.  You usually guarantee how long it will take you to address the customer issue but almost never commit to how long it will take you to fix it.  So why is this?  Why don’t you make a firm commitment to fixing things in specific time limits?  The answer is simple; we just don’t know how long it will take us to fix every possible issue that might come our way.  But, if you are using resolve time SLA’S, they will directly affect FCR as management monitors the effectiveness of your contractual commitments.

1. Expectations of management

Management can pressurize the service environment by placing emphasis on certain parts of the delivery supply chain.  We see this clearly when we push our people to handle more calls and to get off the phone quickly.  The result is that customers feel rushed as your techs are looking at their watches and trying to move on to the next call.  The same thing can happen to FCR.  If we push our people to fix every call the first time, they will spend hours on the phone trying to do exactly what we have asked them to do.  Management expectations need to be balanced between realistic resolve times and expectations of FCR.

1. Matching customer experience levels to tech experience levels

This FCR Factor may seem to be the same as one I discussed earlier but there is a major difference.  We are not talking about a customer’s technical expertise, but rather, the amount of experience that they have in their current position.  When we get a “new” customer and pair them up with one of our most experienced technical support reps we are just asking for trouble.  In a perfect world only experienced customers would talk with experienced support reps and new customers would talk to junior reps. This match up rarely happens so FCR suffers because the customer and the support rep are not speaking the same language based on their experience levels.

At this point you should be about as confused as me about First Call Resolution and the numerous factors that contribute to the complexity of fixing customer’s issues the first time.  This is a very complex issue and requires more in-depth research to really understand what is going on in your company and in our industry.  To that end, I am putting together a focus group to start the process of studying resolve time in general and FCR in particular.  If you are interested in joining me just drop me a note at BRose@TheSSPA.com .

In the late 1980’s there was a real need for consolidated support operations that included establishing centralized support centers to deliver software support. With technical people spread out at customer locations we needed to pull them all together in one “support center” where they could share customer information and work together. The problem was that our customers didn’t want “their” techs to leave. At this time the best call and problem tracking tools (there was no CRM) were paper based tracking systems where large tables were used to display the “pink message slips” that contained customer service request information. This system worked but needed to be automated and spawned the use of mainframe based tracking systems. Yes, you heard that right, mainframe computers were used to track customer requests and add some order to the incoming call activity. At one point, the advent of the fax back system was a real time saver for tech support because our reps could fax customer information directly from their desktops. Wow!

In the early 1990’s we saw our first true software outsourcers emerge for onshore assistance in call handling. These third party organizations had a very difficult time establishing credibility and getting our members to “give up their customers” to another service provider. Also during this time, we realized that we had some major people management problems as turnover rates in tech support centers hit highs of 35-40% and created major difficulties for us to retain talent. With all of these internal issues facing us everyday, the industry decided it was time to embark on the fee-based services transition. Almost all services for “shrink wrapped” software were delivered free of charge via 800 number phone calls. The consumer side of our membership woke up one day and realized that they could no longer provide lifetime free service for their products. This transition from free to fee created waves of discontent throughout the user community and the press had a field day publishing articles about the wicked software developers and their immense greed.

The mid 1990’s brought us a different set of challenges as we started to expand our services to global support offerings. Porting what we did in North America around the globe was not an easy task and rocked the tech support boat for a solid five years. We needed to understand the differences in delivering services in various countries with drastically different customs and service expectations. This was a painful experience for some of our members. During this same time period, we started to identify multi-vendor support issues where one common customer had a problem but could not determine which vendor was responsible. Getting our members to work with each other and assist in resolving their customer’s issues was not an easy task. In fact, the battle of who actually owns the customer continues today but smart companies understand that owning the customer is everything. It was also time to look at consolidated support operations to better service a global customer set so we started seeing support mega-centers being developed and distributed at strategic locations to provide follow-the-sun services. Also, the Internet quickly became a target for development of support web sites as our members saw the advantages of delivering web-based services. A land grab of service sites popped up everywhere and cultivated the concept of customer service self-service delivery. The concept was simple, build a tech support site and our customers will come. But, they didn’t come!

Our focus shifted during this time to developing service as a business and included a focus on executive compensation that was tied tightly to customer satisfaction levels. We realized that service executives did not have enough impact in their company and needed to fully understand the business impact of services and start speaking the language of the executive team with financial discussions. With our focus squarely on the business side of the tech support operations it was logical that we would find inefficiencies such as methods to defend maintenance fee reduction pressures from our largest customers. The SSPA took a deep dive research effort to really understand this catastrophic issue that could cripple anyone who used maintenance contracts to generate service revenues…just about everyone! As we were fighting theses battles we discovered a true difference between our standard-talent tech support rep and the top talent employee that we needed to recruit and hire. This discovery came from another research effort where the attributes of top-talent were identified and used to hire additional best-of-the-best employees. What we did not see coming was the mad rush to offshore outsourcing that was going to consume our time and efforts and change the way we deliver services forever. We quickly caught up to the herd of offshore crazed members that shifted their support operations offshore as a cost containment advantage. The SSPA developed multiple certification programs to meet the needs of our members who were looking for more structure and consistency in their support operations. And, the SSPA benchmark became the definitive source of current peer-to-peer benchmarking data. In addition, the value-added-service model was developed to help guide our members into the future of support services. The SSPA STAR Awards provided the recognition of our members to the industry and their customers as we identified those members that “figured it out” and delivered award-winning services. Today, hundreds of companies have been recognized for their service delivery methods that others need to use as best practice models for the future.

In each of the areas above, the SSPA was instrumental in identifying the problem, providing the solution, or developing the platform for continued discussion. Today, your industry association is stronger than ever, tackling the new issues of the day, and well positioned for the future. Thanks for your support over the past twenty years and Happy Anniversary SSPA!

So what have I missed? How has the SSPA added value to the service & support industry and for you personally?

2. Establish an executive “mentor” for the selected people that have potential to become execs. The mentors should meet on a regular basis and discuss what execs do and how they act. Although this may seem like a very time consuming thing to ask executives to do most of them will readily accept the challenge of mentoring a bright shinning star in the company. The mentoring approach can be as formal as you want to make it, such as, formal project work under the mentor’s watchful eye, to going out for a beer after work a couple of times a month. The object here is to match potential executives with existing executives so that they can share the art of top-level management and evaluate the potential of the prospective candidate. I think back to my own career when I had an executive mentor and we developed a lifelong relation ship that is still in place today. Every time something good happened to me in my career, Ed was one of the first people I called and he was always proud of me.

3. Build a “Leadership agreement” between the individuals and the execs that identifies what the company will do to further the development of selected individuals and what the individual will do to enhance their own skill set. For example, going to night school to take business classes would be a sign of an individual’s drive for advancement. This agreement should not be one sided where the company promises to do formal career building for the candidate, but rather, a mutual agreement that both parties will spend the extra efforts to make this happen. The company supplies the opportunities but the individuals have to commit to spending the extra effort and time required to succeed.

4. Get industry exposure – Send selected people out to industry conferences with the specific task of finding new ideas that could benefit the company and then give them the responsibility to create a task force and implement one of them. There are plenty of industry conferences out there and both SSPA and AFSMI work hard at developing the best possible content for their conferences. Getting outside the walls of your company can be a great awakening as you learn how others get things done, focus on future plans, and have established a network of peers with different perspectives. As part of our succession planning process it is essential that our candidates don’t just show up at a conference to attend the social events. We must put them to work while they are out of the office and that means that they will need to create a trip report about everything that learned at the event. Reviewing their observations and recommendations provides us insight into how they think and helps to determine if they can really think like an executive.

5. Benchmark against others – Set up site visits with other SSPA member companies and have potential execs tour the facilities looking for similarities and differences in the two organizations. If you really want to sharpen your skills in the technical services field then get out there and benchmark against your peers. This technique is a great place to test the aptitude of our potential executives because they have to know what questions to ask and then must be able to articulate their comparisons back to their team. Benchmarking visits require pre-planning so that the time spent is maximized and as much information is collected as possible in a short period of time. If you are not sure who your peers are then simply drop me an email and I will start the process of hooking you up.

6. Exposure to other parts of the company – Selected individuals need to get exposed to all parts of an organization by either working on projects in that area or by spending time as a functional manager there. This “management rotation” provides an expanded knowledge of how the entire company functions. This rotation can be done through project management roles that interface outside of your department, such as, working with R/D, sales, or QA on projects that directly affect the effectiveness of technology services. What this does for the individual is enhances their multi-tasking skills, their communications skills, and their ability to get things done on time. Once more we are trying to expose executive type thinking into our prospects and what better way to do that than to hold them accountable for project completion with other departments.

The key to succession planning is that there must be commitment from both the executive management team and the selected individuals that have been identified. A typical succession plan could take a few years to fully implement but the extra effort will be worth it as we develop managers into executives and prepare for the future.

What are your thoughts about succession planning and preparing future service leaders for the job ahead?

First of all, we should be used to this by now. Tech support spending has been the target of every CFO on the planet earth who is looking to make a big number a smaller one. We have seen techniques to reduce headcount, eliminate technology purchases, and limit our ability to get out to see customers, but, we still have to push forward and deliver great service. My simple message is “get over it and get on with it”. This “accordion effect” of squeezing dollars out of technology services and then releasing the pressure until the next financial threat shows up is something that we have seen over and over again. Managing tech support is a difficult job but doing it with pennies is even harder and a lot less fun.

Today, based on the current financial news, we should be preparing for the worst and putting a plan together to either down-size or reduce our future hiring. We will need to figure out how to do more with less but we are experts at it after all of these years. For example, one way to manage a hiring freeze is to shift resources within the company into tech support. Yes, I can hear you saying “sure that will work…NOT!” But, it is an option and if you are going to maintain your service levels you will need people and they can be found in product development, training, sales support, and other technical departments. You can survive a hiring freeze by looking for help within your company.

Expense freezes are a different matter. In fact, if there is one department within your company that knows how to do more with less it is tech support. We have been pinching pennies forever so not being able to purchase that next piece of technology is a pain but not the end. If we can’t spend then we are going to have to get creative and use the resources that we have in our support centers. If we can’t buy it then we are only left with the option to build it. Using the technical expertise of your support staff and some help from product development and IT there is virtually nothing that we can’t build. Set up a special task force to design and develop your technology solution that can’t be purchased due to a spending freeze. Building any service solution is a real pain but remember, we have no choice here. The alternative is to just do without but if you really need that web to CRM interface or a knowledge management database or a service dashboard then build it. Don’t get me wrong here, I don’t think that you should ever build technology solutions if you can afford to buy them but remember that we have no money to spend.

When tech support gets frozen it is a different kind of business…a lot less fun! But, we have all been here before and we know how vital our work is to the overall success of the company. We can and will survive an expense freeze or a hiring freeze or travel freezes. We just need to be creative and get busy planning out our efforts when the knock on the door comes. And trust me, it will come.

What do you think and what can we do collectively to make life easier for ourselves and our people during these pressing economic times?