There are three distinct areas that have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction for technology services customers; Response time, Resolve time, and Status updates.  We define Response Time as ‘the time it takes for a customer to reach a qualified support rep” and Status Updates is defined as “keeping the customer informed about the status of open cases in a timely fashion”.  Although these are simple definitions we can almost always understand what their true meaning is.  Where we run into problems is in defining “Resolve time” and agreeing upon that definition.  One example would be “the time it takes to resolve a customer’s issue to their satisfaction”.  This is not a bad definition but there are so many different interpretations of “resolve”, “issue”, and “satisfaction” that we sometimes get confused about how we can measure resolve time.

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 .

January 2009 represents the twentieth anniversary for the Service and Support Professionals Association (SSPA). Wow, what a “long strange trip it’s been!” In fact, when I think back at some of the major ways that the SSPA has changed our industry there were twenty areas that jumped out as critical to the development of the service & support industry. Over the years the SSPA played a vital role in guiding our members through the transitions of service delivery and helping to improve the overall level of service around the globe. Here is the SSPA story.

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?

Running a technical support business is all about taking action and getting things done. It seems like we have very little time to plan and when we do we are focused on support budgets and technology acquisitions. But, there is one future plan that will pay off big if we do it right; succession planning. Simply put, this is the art and science of grooming managers to become top executives and allowing them to become an internal pool of potential executive talent. Succession planning does not just happen, it is hard work but the benefits will be seen the first time you lose a VP and don’t have to go outside the company to find a replacement. What we are talking about here is developing a formal plan that would allow your brightest managers to gain the skills necessary to become VP’s or more.
Of course, formal training in management is the first step and I highly recommend that all of your management team attend the SSPA/Wharton Executive program. But, there are actually several more things that you can do to add some interesting training situations to the overall plan. As an example, here are some ways that you can determine which of your top candidates are really ready to move up to the executive ranks.
Keys to succession planning
1. Identify the potential candidates – Start by reviewing the SSPA Top Talent Study to determine what drives your best people and the skill sets that they maintain. It is essential that you start the succession planning process by selecting the best possible people in your organization. I would bet that if I asked you to identify your top talent that it would not be hard to identify the few people that quickly come to mind. The SSPA study that I mention above is a very detailed work that helps you understand exactly what motivates and differentiates those top people from the rest of the pack.

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?

Ever get that feeling that something really bad is about to happen? Your not quite sure what it is but you know that it can’t be good. With all of the economic bad news that we see everyday there is one thing we know for sure…..there will be a freeze on tech support spending. It is true and it happens every time that there is the slightest mention of an economic downturn. Get ready to freeze tech support spending because here it comes again. You can be sure that there will be a hiring freeze, a travel freeze, and an overall spending freeze in your not-to-distant future. So what can we do about it? How do we continue to deliver top-level services when we are financially hamstrung?

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?

As the Founder & VP of Services Research for the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), I have been getting a lot of member requests regarding the true value of the FCR metric. It makes sense that if we can resolve customer’s issues on first call-in then they will be happier but how difficult is this to achieve? Should we be focused on fixing things at all cost or should we be more concerned about making sure that we use some form of triage in the front end of tech support? These are good questions and I have developed 15 factors that affect first call resolution (FCR) that must be considered before we start to push hard on our tech support reps to fix everything the first time. I will start my post of these factors and would love to get your feedback. Bill

This afternoon at 4:30pm at the SSPA conference in Santa Clara, CA. I will be holding a session to discuss the challenges and opportunities for North American technology product companies who are servicing customers in China.  Aneel Jaeel from Symantec has tons of experience servicing the China technology marketplace and he will be the resident expert for this session.

This is part of our SSPA Communities of Interest (COI) program where we take an interesting topic and hold open forum discussions where everyone can participate.  I really like the format because most people that attend this session and participate in the follow up conversations all have a common interest, in this case, it is doing a great job of moving into a new marketplace.

After our session today I will update this blog and provide some of the highlights of our discussions.  From what I have seen so far moving into China is far more difficult than Japan and some of the same techniques that we deployed in Japan just won’t work here.  I am very interested in the maintenance revenue and profitability aspect of this move and have heard several members comment about reduced margins for service in China.  So, what is that?  What service methods work best and what should we not be doing in this new space?  Today, our session will start this dialog and open up the floor for a whole lot more questions.  This should be good.

Yes, we are at the SSPA conference in Santa Clara, CA with over 500 of our closest friends. It is amazing that we were able to bring together this many tech services execs under the current economic conditions and it is a testament to our dedicated member and some great conference planning. In fact, the free airfare and hotel night was a brilliant concept by our events team and several members told me that it was the key reason that they were approved to come to the conference. Great idea!

J.B. Wood, CEO, SSPA opened the show with a very strategic view of where the service business was heading. In my experience the management of tech support is a very tactical role so some folks had a difficult time understanding what this talk was all about. But, if we are going to be leading our companies into the future, we need more strategic thinking in our lives. If you missed this session go to www.theSSPA.com and have a look at J.B.’s vision of the future.

Bill Steenburgh who heads up services for Xerox is my idol and his presentation helped everyone understand why his company is pulling away from the pack and leading our industry in customer sat and loyalty. One thing that Bill has figured out that we can all use more of is gaining upper management commitment to services. Xerox, as a company, trust Bill’s decisions and he pays them back by implementing unique and differentiating service programs. These guys are really good at understanding their customer needs and delivering on their promises. If I was ever going to take a “real job” again it would be with Xerox Services.