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.
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