Ground Rules for Choosing the Right Help Desk Support Partner
I just got back from a very successful and interesting Educause Conference in Denver. A lot of folks were complaining that attendance was down because of the current economic conditions. I, however, found that the attendees were a more concentrated group of decision-making and decision influencing IT leaders. It created a very positive experience at our booth. Of course, the real in-depth discussion took place in the hallways, suites and conference rooms of the Denver Convention Center.
In the discussions my team and I had with CIO’s from schools nationwide, many took the opportunity to complain about the level of service they were receiving from their current help desk and customer service provider. While there is always some level of dissatisfaction that people want to discuss, the volume of it this time was disturbing. Why disturbing? You would think that the failure of a competitor would open up new opportunities for Perceptis, after all, we now serve 60 campuses that were formally under contract to our competitors. The discussion was disturbing, because in a couple of instances, the schools were actively considering in-sourcing their help desk support and customer services functions because of their experience with outsourced services that produced bad service. In essence, bad service provided by unengaged vendors poisoned the market for those schools.
There is never a good excuse to deliver bad service. Schools and service providers must establish the basic ground-rules for their engagement. These include specifically defining the following:
1. Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) which specifically define the standards to which the service provider will perform.
2. Operational Level Agreements (OLA’s) which define the operating standards to which the school should perform (good customer service is a two way street).
3. Escalation Procedures and Paths which specifically define what to do in times of trouble (because things happen).
4. Single points of contact including executive sponsors on both sides of the service provisioning function.
5. Key Performance Measurements that become the basis for managing and measuring performance. In customer service management, these need to be specific and quantifiable. Often what masquerades as a closed “incident” can actually be just an escalated incident…just because the job ticket is escalated on to the school’s staff, it doesn’t mean the service provider should close it.
Most importantly, schools must develop an ongoing working relationship with their help desk service providers. By ongoing, I mean that the service providers must become part of the CIO’s staff or of the executive responsible for the function being served (financial aid, human resources, recruiting, student services, alumni, etc.). Your service provider can be a source of data and a pulse on the student population. Make them bring data and drive process improvement. Use the tool that they bring.
Finally, it is a real sin that some service providers take a casual approach to customer service. Schools shouldn’t get trapped into hurrying their buying decision. Demand to see a list of “all” of your prospective service partner’s clients, not just those they want to provide. Pick some of their clients at random and call them. You might be surprised to learn at how good they are or if they are hiding a history of bad service.
PerceptIS just celebrated its 5th year as a business. All we do is provide customer service for our client organizations. Help desk, service desk and desk side services, for the most part, to colleges and universities across the country. It has been pretty rewarding. It has also taught us some valuable lessons about what customer service is all about. Some colleagues asked that I summarize my thoughts in a list…kind of a Ten Commandments of Customer Service. It’s funny, when the idea of Ten Commandments came to mind, I wondered if there might be only seven or perhaps fourteen, or even some other number. Ten seemed so, well, conventional. I am sure there are more, but it wasn’t hard to get to ten!
While I don’t pretend that the following list is all-inclusive, it might be provocative enough to spur some thought. The entries represent the basis upon which PerceptIS offers its help desk and customer support services to the higher education market. Here they are. I welcome input and additions.
1. Customer service is not a product; it is the culture of the providing organization. This is an easy way of saying that customer service is everybody’s job. In fact, it is everybody’s job. It emanates from the top of the organization, but it is everybody’s responsibility. It’s easy to spot organizations with a sick service culture. They are either blaming their customers or going out of business…or both.
2. Customers aren’t always right, but they are always customers. This is a very important point. Customers often make mistakes…few are dishonest or mean. They have paid money for or have been promised service and they are entitled to it. Provide them what they deserve. If you find them to be unreasonable or dishonest, you can fire them as customers. Just be sure to understand what the real cause of the failure was.
3. Customer Service is a function of people, process and tools, but process is the key ingredient. Everywhere we go, we find great people and generally great tools. Almost always, customer services problems are the result of failed business processes and failed communications between organizations.
4. Customer satisfaction is highest when people don’t have to call for help. An easy principle but tough to build into your culture. It really implies that effective systems design and deployment with a focus on end-user issues will make the customer experience more rewarding and less problem-prone. A customer focus in the design, in operations and in change management is worth the investment if time.
5. Customers should be allowed to get service/help in the means most comfortable for them. In previous blogs, I have covered this topic in detail. An effective customer service strategy recognizes that some people want to call, some want to use self-help, some want a chat feature. Make all equally available to them.
6. You cannot be too helpful or too accessible. Your customers are people who have bought or want to buy from you. Treat them like you care about that.
7. You are only as good as your last interaction. There is an old adage that you only get one chance to make a positive impression. While that may be true, in customer service every interaction is that one chance. In essence, you get multiple opportunities to make a positive impression. Customers remember the most recent interaction with you. If it was a bad experience, they will tell others. In previous blogs, I have also written about “critical instances”. It’s just another way of pointing out the opportunities to make good and bad impressions.
8. Data is king and customer service will not improve without it. Every customer interaction can teach the organization something. Aggregated and properly presented, it can be a valuable window into both your customer’s mindset and your organization’s effectiveness. If you aren’t using data from your customer interactions, start.
9. Root cause analysis and continuous improvement will increase customer satisfaction and save money. The follow-up to collecting data is to use it. Analyze the reasons for problems or customer issues and fix the things that are broken. See Commandment 4 above.
10. Any employee who does not have customer satisfaction as a key measurement is probably being overpaid. I really believe this.
Ok, there they are. Maybe a little ham-handed, but, I think useful. If I had to add any additional thought, it would be this: If you want to know how effective your customer service is, you can do two things. The first is to ask your customers. I pick up the phone 5-6 times a month and ask them how it’s going. The answers are sometimes surprising and often gratifying. They are always educational. The second is to “taste your own dog food”. Pick up the phone and call your service desk. Pretend you are a customer. Test your service center personnel on courtesy, speed, accuracy and effectiveness. You might just learn something.
I recently read an article in one of the higher education trade magazines about the advantages of outsourcing help desk services. The article summarized the view of a number of executives from firms that provide outsourcing services. What struck me was how narrow and old school (sic) the definitions of service were. With due respect, these execs appear to be stuck on a 20th Century model where outsourcing basically takes an existing function and duplicates its delivery with a third party. Not a lot of value there other than the old model of “one throat to choke”. I may be wrong, but I think higher education clients are looking for more value than that.
Many of our clients have observed that rather than outsource their functions to us, they view PerceptIS as a resource and a partner: they tell us that they have “in-sourced” support services with PerceptIS to handle certain business functions. I think that says a lot about our collaborative and partnership mentalities. More importantly, I think it really defines a 21st century model for service delivery on the campus.
At PerceptIS, our experience confirms that the new model for outsourcing is really about managing the function with a trusted partner who becomes part of the staff, not just a vendor. This is a much more progressive model—and also a far more productive one. It is built on a clear vision of shared service and collaboration, and it requires the partners to understand each other’s needs.
Equally important is the role that data plays in the relationship. Not just data about how the help desk is working (speed to answer, 1st call resolution, etc.), but real data about how systems operate, what are the root causes of client calls and how do we jointly fix them. We refer to this as “changing the conversation with our client partners”. It’s no longer about we and they, but about “us”. Continuous improvement is king in the 21st century service model.
The 21st Century model is all about moving from outsourcing to shared service to shared goals…working together behind the shovel for shared success. It’s a model built on empathy, and in the end, it’s all about trust.
I just got back from a week in Israel. The folks who went on the trip with me were local Cleveland business and education leaders. Our goal was to understand the environmentally friendly new technologies that were being developed and deployed in Israel, with an intention of potentially bringing some of them home for deployment in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. We billed the trip as the “Clean and Green Tour,” and it proved to be a great success.
This was my second trip to Israel and on both occasions I have come away impressed by the ingenuity and spirit of the people and the volume of things they share…not just in faith, but in culture, outlook and spirit. Visiting Israel is a life changing experience. There is history everywhere and also clashes, contrasts and dichotomies. Before we left, everyone advised us to “be safe.” In reality, I have never felt safer than when I have been in Tel Aviv or Haifa. The conflicts are real there, but somehow they seem isolated. They are also way too complex for me to try to describe here or even for me to fully understand. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of opinions as to how to address them.
Normally, I would use this blog space to talk about customer service or information technology. This time, however, I thought I might just list some highlights, in random order, of the trip.
- We were visiting a windmill farm in the Golan Heights (still disputed territory). When we arrived, we knew we were only meters from the Syrian Border. What was surprising was that we were surrounded by a huge mine field!
- We visited the Dead Sea and it is.
- The Sea of Galilee is beautiful but is only a small lake. I had biblical proportions on my mind and was really surprised.
- The Jordan River was equally surprising. To have its “waters rush over you,” you would need to lie in it and then roll over.
- Capernaum was the site of the selection of the apostles. The place where Jesus walked on the water, distributed the loaves and fishes and did the Sermon on the Mount are also within 200 yards of there. Again, I was the victim of biblical proportion blindness.
- In the Golan, our Israeli host described the 1973 war with Syria and Egypt. During his description, he stopped to gather himself and looking out over the area he said, “A lot of guys died here.” It was the most moving part of the trip for me.
- We visited two Kibbutzim. Very different, and surviving because they have adapted. At one we learned a lot about organic farming. The other, En Geti, near Masada, we found a desert oasis and a great lunch. We also found a Kibbutz which had transformed itself from agriculture to tourism/hospitality. Pretty cool.
- In Tel Aviv, we spent the last day on the beach. In one visual sweep of the beach I saw a young woman in the skimpiest thong bikini I have ever seen. I then saw a family of ultra orthodox Jews out for a Sabbath stroll. No bikinis there. It is a land of contrasts.
- We spent a day at the Technion, Israel’s technical university and the alma mater of 70% of Israel’s engineering degreed folks. Very impressive research and tech transfer. Why not, it was founded by Albert Einstein!
- Haifa turned out to be delightful. I had always pictured it as an industrial town.
- We visited a lot of historical sites. Masada, Caesarea, Capernaum, Jerusalem, Skitopolis (very cool Roman ruins). All mind bending!
- Israeli wine is great. Classic “New World” wines. Don’t miss them.
- I loved restaurants that were classified as “kosher, but good!”
- “The people of Beet Shean have experienced hell.” A quotation by one of our hosts because the summertime temperature can reach 130F.
Not much else to say, other than go if you can.
One of the philosophies we used when we started the business several years ago was that people deserve to get help in the manner that is most convenient for them. It’s a fundamental characteristic of providing SERVICE instead of just support. Be it a call, a chat session, a web form, an e-mail, self-help, self service, crowdsourcing…whatever means was most convenient and with which end-users were most comfortable. That philosophy has permeated everything we have done, since our inception.
In the early days of the company, we used to put our clients through an exercise we called “defining the base-line” or colloquially, defining the entitlement. Basically it suggested that each member of the education community, student, faculty and staff should expect a certain level of information technology and associated support. That “baseline” was determined by the philosophy of the institution, the expectations of the groups and the budget available. It included hardware, connectivity, software, and of course, support services. It was a great exercise for our clients and it turned out to be a great exercise for us. We learned a lot about the value of support services and what end-user clients really wanted. More importantly, we learned that a “one-size fits all” approach to service was an inadequate value proposition.
People really do want to get help in the manner that is most convenient for them. A service model that pushes people to a single or even primary service process is a flawed model. As service providers we need to have numerous “arrows in the quiver”. Just offering self-help, or just crowdsourcing or just a call center is inadequate to meet the demands and preferences of the contemporary student, faculty or staff member. We continue to put as many arrows as we can into the quiver. And importantly, because we capture so much data about the incidents we help folks with; we can draw some interesting conclusions:
- Students rarely call the help desk. They e-mail or chat or text or submit web forms. And they will use self-help up to a point. They also use peers, walk-in centers and often just plain old Google.
- Faculty almost always call. It’s just a fact. Many take advantage of our remote access capability to fix their issues. They almost never use self-help.
- Staff members generally call. They also use e-mail and take advantage of remote access. Like faculty, they almost never use self-help.
Interesting conclusions from the data we have collected. Proponents of self-help focused systems will point out that quality and ease of use (as well as advertising the solutions site) will increase self-help utilization. However, statistics from the Help desk Institute (HDI) indicate that that is not necessarily true. In fact, a 2007 study by HDI concluded that only 3% of incidents were resolved at the self-help level. While our data shows that the resolution rate is somewhat higher for University based self-help, the resolution rate is still well below 10%.
Sooooo…what does this all mean? Pretty simply it argues for a quiver full of arrows when it comes to support services. There is no “one-size fits all” solution. It’s a lesson we learned way back when we began doing the “Baseline” consulting gigs and it’s a lesson that has been reinforced by the statistics we (and the HDI) have developed over the past several years.
Perceptis is a leading provider of advanced help desk support, customer support services and business intelligence to Higher Education. Our Unified Service Centers provide 24×7x365 or after-hours support for IT, Financial Aid, Human Resources, Recruitment, Admissions, Enrollment, Facilities and Information Line/General Switchboard. Our focus is on providing superior customer service. We are recognized for the quality of our relationships with our customers and the precision with which we bring data to the services function—providing root cause analysis, process improvement and cost savings. Our clients range from large public universities to community college districts to small liberal colleges and include Arizona State University, Colorado Community College System, Maricopa County Community College District, Fitchburg State College, Lesley University, Massachusetts State System and the University of Virginia. At the core of our culture is the creation of information technology jobs in the communities we serve. To learn more, visit www.perceptis.com.
Here is a YouTube I did about a year ago. It tells the nice story about how Perceptis was formed. The backdrop is the brick wall in my office in our HQ building. The video is a handheld camera. The presenter is anything but a Shakespearian actor. BUT, people have reacted to it well and it is a good depiction of who we are.
