Where do passionate staff come from?

In my last post I asked about how to get the balance between process and passion right in a customer service team. That got me thinking about what a passionate staff member looked like, and how to get them in your team.

I came to the conclusion that people who are passionate about delivering service to customers are born to the role, not built or motivated.

Now I am sure that there will be some people who will want to argue that point! Yes you can motivate people with reward and recognition programs, you can train staff on service delivery, you can set goals and reward activity, and you should do all these things, they delivery great outcomes in a team.

My point is that the activities about don't make people passionate about service delivery, it may make them passionate about doing the activities that gets them the rewards, but that's not what a truly passionate customer service employee is about.

Someone who is truly passionate about service delivery is doing it because they have empathy for the customer, and want to help. Not because they will be rewarded for completing some activities.

I think you can help people understand how to be truly passionate about service delivery, and why it matters, but it takes time, as any personal change program does.

Rewarding activity, recognising staff for the right behaviour, etc, etc, are all imporatnt activites that will provided outcomes and better service, but hireing the right people to start with, who demonstrate a passion for what they do will deliver better, longer term cultutral change within a team.

Fix it please help desk!

I was reading a twitter post this morning from someone lamenting the fact that the service desk they had just called did not fix their problem.

Now the service desk wont always be able to resolve the problem they are dealing with, however, it got me thinking about how many service desks are actually aiming to resolve problems at the first point (argue what the first point is amongst yourselves), and how many are just logging and passing to a resolver group. I also was wondering what a reasonable first point of resolution rate may be, and does it differ with different customer groups?

Help desks should always be trying to resolve the problem while the caller is still on the phone, for issues where the callers is unable to complete a task or do their job. This needs to be a focus for many reasons (financial being a strong one), but the main reason is for good customer service.

When the caller is on the phone, they need help, they don't want to be told that someone will call them back. This is the point that can make or break the desk, no matter what happens to that incident, the caller needs to feel like they are getting service, even if you don't fix the problem.

What do your customers experience?

I was just thinking about the IT department in large enterprises, and what an end users actual experience would be of them.

When the network connections are working, no one cares
When all the services are operating, no one cares
When I get Email delivered efficiently, no one cares

But when any service actually has an interruption everyone is on the phone immediately to your service desk.

Its the interaction with the service desk that will make or break the relationship, its the service desk team response to a situation that will be remembered, not that fact that things were working in the past. Its important to well staff, train, and look after the service desk team, they are the ones that the customers actually interact with and talk about after the event is resolved.

The service desk process

Its really important that the service desk provides a consistent level of amazing service to its customers.

I think the important word in that sentence is consistent. To that end we build flow charts for the teams, when a customer asks for X, we do Y. But this is a problem. Customers don't always have the same problem (we try and remove known problems from the production environment), so flow charts are not the answer to providing consistent service.

There are two approaches that need to be taken in providing a consistent service, and I don't think either of them involves a flow chart!

1. Hire good people, professional support consultants. Get people who enjoy solving problems, and are smart about it. People who want to provide a service to customers, and get a real kick out of fixing a problem. The consistent service you will deliver will be an enthusiastic response, and a concerted effort to resolve problems, customers will love it.

2. We still don't want to re-invent the wheel, and all the best intentions wont mean that the customer does not get different answers from different staff, or, sometime some staff wont be able to resolve a problem. For consistent answers you need to implement the Knowledge CentricKCS) Support (model (many other benefits also!).

With good, smart, enthusiastic people, backed with the knowledge to do their job, and consistently answer the customers questions, how can you loose :)

Marketing the service desk

Yes! You do need to market the service desk.

Why?

If you have external customers, then the answer is clear, increasing customer numbers is your business, and you want to stay in business.

If you have internal customers, then you need to get a clear message out there about the value you are adding to the business, so you are not just seen as a "cost centre" (and I truly do think service desks can add great value!).

Who?

External customers are easy to identify, who to market to for internal customers may be a little harder. You need to ensure end users are aware of the service you offer, and the value you provide, as they are the ones who will call, and they will tell their managers if you are doing a good job or not. You need to especially market to senior management, they guys who actually pay the bills. They are the ones who mostly need to understand what they are getting for their money, and the value you are providing, make it clear!

When?

Always. Why stop? Make sure you get your message out, and it is targeted at the right groups, and do it often (but please no spam).

Outbound Email from the service desk

Don't get me wrong, I don't like Email! (see previous post), but it is a necessary evil in some cases. There are two types of Email that need to come out of the service desk to customers

- Pre-canned "status update" type Emails
- Ad-hoc communication from service desk consultants to customers, other staff, etc.

The focus of this post is on the content of these Emails, not on recording and reporting, should you use email, etc, etc, just on the content.

The reason why I want to focus on the content is because generally it is not very good. Quite often it is poorly written, with hard to follow instructions, or ambiguous information, the tone of these emails are also in most cases not very customer focused.

So what to do? Firstly, we need to use Email, customers have Email, they want to use it in communicating with us, so moving off Email all together is not an option. The service desk needs Email in order to communicate efficiently with customers, and reduce phone call volumes, so lets get it right and make it work for us.

Get your marketing department or customer communications people involved in drafting your pre-canned Email. Make sure it makes sense, is easy to follow, is written for the customer, and is not going to generate another call to the service desk asking what your Email means. Oh, and make sure when you are using a pre-canned response, you use it for the right question asked! No point in using one that "kind of" suites the situation.

Where your team are writing ad-hoc responses, have them trained in business communication or work with the client communication people, after all, this is client facing communication and we need to get it right. Where possible send screen shots, or recorded screen sessions to show the customer what is happening, a picture tells a thousand words!

Dont forget, we are using Email to get a message across to our customers, we need to ensure that the message is clear and that they can understand what is happening, otherwise we are wasting our own time and out customers, and increasing our workloads.

Service desk metrics

Quick ROI

- There are a lot of service desk metrics
- Worry about and focus on the important ones
- Talk to your customers about the service they want
- Don't forget to manage how you deliver the service, as well as what you are delivering

Service desk metrics -

Service desk is great, there are so many things that are available to measure, and so many cool acronyms to use ASA, FPR, MTR, etc, etc, etc. We tend to measure everything we can, irrespective of the importance, if we can control it, or if anyone actually cares! So often a lot of effort will go into measuring and reporting numbers because "we always have", stop doing it for a while and see if anyone notices!

So what is important to measure?

Service desks have 3 groups to focus on -
- Customer (who actually pays for the service, and possibly negotiates the SLA's)
- Users (person who actually users the service)
- Callers (person making the call for assistance)

Each group will see the service desk differently, and each group will have different views on the service that they want \ need from the service desk. It is important to engage with each group to understand what is important to them, and to better understand then what needs to be measured.

A focus on what the customer want, be it based on their experience when calling for assistance as a caller, or a cost effective service with agreed trade off as a customer is important, and work needs to be done to find out what outcomes these groups are looking for.

What do customers want? Ask them!

Each group will express their requirements differently, it is the role of the service desk to understand these requirements, and convert them into a meaningful metric that can then be measured. EG. callers will want the phone to be answered ASAP. The service desk needs to work with the callers to better understand what they mean by ASAP, and, what an acceptable wait time may be (given limited resources).

Work with the groups to find out what service levels are acceptable to each, and try to drive concencus where possible!

Don't forget - measure your service delivery

Its not enough to just meet the metrics agreed with your customer groups, if everytime they call you they cringe because of your customer service skills. The most important aspect of the service desk is to deliver service, and this does not just mean fixing things. Measure your customer service delivery also, even if it is not part of your agreeded metrics, because even if you are hitting all your numbers, it means nothing if your reputation is one of an area that is hard to do business with, or, that you are more interested in hitting the metrics then helping customers with their problems.