For those at the starting point of their management career the focus should be on Soft Skills. Things like Team Work, Leadership, Dealing with Change, Time Management are all crucial skills that are useful for the young Manager and also show a demonstrable return for the company.
All posts by Hutch Morzaria
TO SOURCE, OR OUTSOURCE … THAT IS THE QUESTION!
Outsourcing
What should you outsource?
- Do the candidate services improve the business’s resources and capabilities?
- How closely are the candidate services connected to the business’s competitive and strategic resources and capabilities?
- Do the candidate services require extensive interactions between the service providers and the business’s competitive and strategic resources and capabilities?
Sourcing vulnerabilities
- Substitution: ‘Why do I need the service provider when its supplier can offer the same services?’ The sourced vendor develops competing capabilities and replaces the sourcing organization
- Disruption: The sourced vendor has a direct impact on quality or reputation of the sourcing organization. This is of significant concern for those organizations that have outsourced their support or engineering and design organizations.
- Distinctiveness: The sourced vendor is the source of distinctiveness for the sourcing organization. The sourcing organization then becomes particularly dependent on the continued development and success of the second organization
Other types of Sourcing
- Insourcing – internal parts of the organization do the work. Clearly defined departments with specific responsibilities.
- Outsourcing – a 3rd party that specializes in a specific role, provides that service to an organization through a well defined plan with specific deliverable’s, KPIs and SLAs.
- Partnership – a formal arrangement between 2 or more parties to work together on a specific role or responsibility. The focus here tends to be on strategic partnerships that leverage critical expertise or market opportunities.
- Co-sourcing or multi-sourcing – a mix of insourcing and outsourcing where a number of external organizations work together to design, develop, transition, maintain, operate and/or support a portion of a service.
- Business process outsourcing (BPO) – a growing trend (especially among the larger multinationals) where an entire business function (customer service, technical support, accounting, HR etc…) is provided by a 3rd party.
SERVICE PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT
The Service Portfolio describes the commitments and investments made by a service provider to its customers across all market spaces. In a nutshell, it states what the company is able to do and how it will do it while also accounting for previously agreed upon commitments. The Service Portfolio also talks about new products and services as well as ongoing service improvement projects and other third-party services which are utilized by the business in providing their service. The Service Portfolio is the defacto guide to what the business can and cannot do.
Ensuring that the Service Portfolio is accurate is one of the important roles of Service Portfolio Management (SPM). This role ensures that new services are added only after funding has been approved an appropriate financial plan is in place for recovering costs and/or showing a profit. This is sometimes called a rally point process or other similar names but in essence its a way of ensuring that the business always has a pipeline of new products and services available to meet current and future demand. The service portfolio should have the right mix of services in the pipeline and catalog to secure the financial viability of the service provider since the service catalog is the only part of the portfolio that lists services that recover costs or earn profits. You can find a lot more detail on Service Catalogs at either of the links provided below.
The service catalog, however, is different … this document is generally published (& publicized) quite widely as it is the single place where all information about products, prices, ordering and request processes are documented. It defines and communicates the policies, guidelines, and accountability required for the service provider to deliver and support services to its customers. The service catalog details each service and shows the service components that make up each one. It also provides an overview of the assets, processes, and systems involved in each service.
While you might consider the service catalog to be just that … a catalog of services, it can also be used to identify gaps in services and linkages between services. This information can be used to realize new services and products for future exploration and exploitation by the business.
Retiring Services
- The replacement service might not meet all requirements, and it is important to be able to fall back to the previous service
- There is a significant portion of the market made up of the planned to retire service which will still need future support and/or maintenance
- When defining a new service, service portfolio management might discover that some functionality is available from a retired service. This might result in the service being reinstated as part of a new service
- There might be regulatory requirements to maintain archived data that can only be accessed using the previous service, in which case information is exported to a read-only database for future use
Service Portfolio Launch
The role of Improvement in determining a Portfolio
- Opportunities to improve the performance or service level achievements of services in the portfolio
- New opportunities within the current strategy, or gaps in the current portfolio of services
- Opportunities for overall improvements in cost, mitigation of risks etc.
Define
The creation of a Service Portfolio follows several clearly defined (no pun intended) steps as shown in the diagram to the right. The Define step talks about desired business outcomes and opportunities as well as what services are needed to realize these opportunities and the investment required.
The role of SPM at this stage is to define the service based on the information provided:
- The purpose of the service (what it must achieve)
- The customers and consumers of the service
- The major inputs and outputs of the service
- High-level performance requirements (for example, when it needs to be available)
- What business activity will it support, and is that activity stable or dynamic?
- Does the service need to comply with (or enable the business to comply with) any regulatory or legal requirements?
- Are there any standards that need to be applied to the service?
- What are the actual business outcomes that the service will be supporting, and who is responsible for these outcomes?
- Are there any other stakeholders that need to be involved in defining and evaluating this service?
- The anticipated level of investments and returns. Although these will not be known, the customer will know what type of return they need, and how much they are prepared to spend to achieve it
- Are there any constraints that need to be considered (e.g. budget, resources)?
- The current business outcomes
- Investment levels
- Service Level Agreements and contractual obligations
- Warranty levels
- Existing required Utility (for example, changing an existing service may benefit one customer, but it might negatively impact another)
- Is there another existing service that can be combined with this service to deliver the required Utility or Warranty?
- Patterns of business activity, and levels of demand on the service
Analysis
8 RULES OF GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE & 8 STEPS TO DEFINE A SERVICE
In a similar fashion to interviewing and hiring people – the hardest and most expensive exercise is getting the right employee – getting people back into the door is exactly the same. You want that repeat custom as that is what will save you money in your marketing and advertising. One of the key components to this in addition to the quality of the product itself is the customer service that you provide to the customer in their purchasing and ordering decisions. You can offer promotions and slash prices to bring in as many new customers as you want, but unless you can get some of those customers to come back, your business won’t be profitable for long. Good customer service is all about bringing customers back. And about sending them away happy – happy enough to pass positive feedback about your business along to others, who may then try the product or service you offer for themselves and in their turn become repeat customers.
“You will be judged by what you do, not what you say.”
- Answer your phone. If you don’t speak to your customers, you won’t know what problems they are having and you won’t be able to help them fix them. Hire the right people that have the right knowledge and make sure you have enough of them as keeping your customer on hold is NOT good customer service.
- Keep your commitments. If you tell someone you will find out the answer or will call them back, make sure you find out the answer and you call them back! Reliability is one of the keys to any good relationship, and good customer service is no exception. Think before you give any promise – because nothing annoys customers more than a broken one.
- Listen. I’ve spoken about this before in previous posts (here) but one of the most frustrating things – especially for customers not happy with you – is forcing them to repeat themselves. Irate customers especially can become infuriated when they find themselves transferred from person to person constantly having to explain the same issue over and over. It is imperative to use active listening skills and show your customer that you are paying attention by making the appropriate responses at the right times.
- Complaints – no one likes complaints. After all, most people are already trying to do their best and don’t like being told that it isn’t meeting the objectives they set out to address. However, customer complaints are an opportunity to hear not only about what you might have done wrong now but rather an opportunity to learn what you might do right in the future! Many of us have developed a reflex shrug, saying, “You can’t please all the people all the time”. Maybe not, but if you give the complaint your attention, you may be able to please this one person this one time – and position your business to reap the benefits of good customer service.
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Help out – sometimes it really is the little things that make a difference. Providing directions or parts at a nominal charge might not earn you revenue now, but it could help make that customer someone that will come back in the future when they know that you have the knowledge and skills for their problem.
- Training – While having the phone answered on the first ring is a laudable objective if the person on the end of the line has no knowledge of your product or service it doesn’t really accomplish your objective. You need to train your team in your products and services as well as the value of good customer service. Most importantly, give every member of your staff enough information and power to make those small customer-pleasing decisions, so he never has to say, “I don’t know, but so-and-so will be back at…”
- Give them the pickle – sorry I know that’s a bit of strange turn of speech, but in some customer service training I once took its something that was taught and it stuck with me. Giving them the pickle means going that extra mile… for example if someone asks where something in the store is – don’t just point them to the aisle … take them there and show them the item they are looking for + other alternatives that might be better!
- Give them more than they are asking for – if you want them to come back, give them a reason to come back. It can be a small coupon, it can be something that will help with whatever they’ve just purchased. It doesn’t have to be expensive or large, but it should be useful.
Defining a Service
Now I started this post talking all about good Customer Service, however, something that isn’t often discussed is how you define a service (product) in the first place. Its all well and good to have good customer service, but if you’re selling something that the market isn’t interested in, you won’t have any customers TO service! If you’re a reader of this blog, you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of ITIL and its methodologies … fortunately, ITIL can help here too and by a happy coincidence, it also has an 8 step plan!
- Define The Market & Identify Customers – who is your target market & demographic (i.e. who would be interested in your product or service and who do you want to sell to)? By identifying the market it will simplify the decision about the products or services of interest and will help you identify the customers that would be interested in your product. Markets can be defined by industry, geography, demographics or a host of other factors.
- Understand the Customer – knowing what your customer wants is essential to providing him with a solution to his demands. For Type I and II organizations providing service to internal clients, this means understanding what the business is trying to accomplish, what the overall business goals of that business are and how these outcomes can be achieved. Type III (external) service providers need to understand why they are purchasing that service and what products or services are key in achieving the objectives. Understanding the customer involves understanding what they want to do, what their constraints are, how will they know that it has been successful etc…
- Quantify The Outcomes – I’ve spoken at length of the importance of measurement. This is absolutely essential if you are providing a service to someone or purchasing a service from someone as the only way you will know whether a service meets desired outcomes is by knowing in advance what your targets are and by measuring, how close you are to reaching those targets and objectives. Defining outcomes is an important part of defining services, but customers often take it for granted that everyone understands their particular outcomes because they work on them as a matter of routine. It is therefore important that the service provider works with the customer to quantify each outcome, and document it as part of the service description that will be entered into the service pipeline. As mentioned earlier in this post, complaints (not achieving outcomes) are not only a way for the customer to blow off steam, but are also a way for the provider of that service to improve in clearly defined ways so that they are better able to provide that service to the complaining customer and also to other customers! Therefore it is important to review the achievement of outcomes regularly, both to ensure that the service provider is not missing an opportunity, and also to ensure that current outcomes are being delivered.
- Classify the Service – this could be somewhat confusing in ITIL terms as they talk about service archetypes and service utility etc… To put it into somewhat simpler English, think of this as defining a subset of resources that will meet a specific customer demand. By combining a specific resource with a specific demand, you’ve built a specific service which you can then market and sell. In this way, not only will you know what the service is but you will know who your customer is and also what internal resources you will need to devote to them. This type of mapping is extremely useful as it will enable you to service not only your current customers but also through some simple analysis, future markets, and customers also!
- Understand the Market – OK you should by this point, have a good idea of your customer as well as what they want and how you are going to give it to them. You’ve basically already completed this step, but by taking it just that little bit further you can define the market space in general vs. just the one specific customer. Each customer has a number of requirements, and each service provider has a number of competencies. These intersections between the service provider’s competencies and the customer’s requirements are called market spaces. More formally, market spaces are the opportunities that a service provider could exploit to meet the business needs of customers.
- Define Services Based On Outcomes – Perhaps somewhat self-fulfilling, but a service should be defined upon what you can provide and what the customer wants. Having the customer want a rocketship and you providing a go-cart will not be successful and to be honest, offering a rocketship when they only want to pay for a go-cart will probably not work either! Services need to be cost-effective solutions to problems and need to address the needs of both sides. See my previous post where I talk about Value and Utility and Warranty as that will really help you understand this concept.
- Build a Service model – another place where ITIL perhaps over complicates things (IMHO) in their description, a service model can be used as a template or blueprint for multiple services’.
- Define Service Packages and Units – Services may be as simple as allowing a user to complete a single transaction, but most services are complex. They consist of a range of deliverables and functionality. If each individual aspect of these complex services were defined independently, the service provider would soon find it impossible to track and record all services. When a single service is delivered to a customer it is viewed by the service provider as a service. When two or more services are bundled and sold or delivered together they are viewed by the service provider as a service package. Service Packages can be defined as core, enabling or enhancing – see my post for further details on this.
MINDMAPPING – DESCRIPTION & TOOLS
What is MindMapping?
Brainstorming & Studies
While the research is still out on its actual impact with regards to study notes, there have been studies that demonstrate a significant impact on memory recall. As with most forms of studying, the act of writing things down improves retention vs. just listening. If you follow all of the mindmapping guidelines and use images to represent ideas with colour also, this is only further enhanced.
History
Format
Tools
Related articles
The coolest tool for thinking clearly- mind mapping Loveseats for Small Spaces: Mind Mapping of Content and Keyword Research – Decorating Small Spaces Website Building Loveseats for Small Spaces: Mind Mapping of Content and Keyword Research – Decorating Small Spaces Website Building 4 Uses For Mind Mapping In Business That You Need to Know About Creative Process
TYPE I, II AND III PROVIDERS
Service Provider Types
Type I- Internal Service Provider :
Type II – Shared Service Unit :
Type III – External service provider :
Choosing the Right Type of Provider
Whether customers keep a business activity in-house (aggregate), separate it out for dedicated management (disaggregate) or source it from outside (outsource) depends on answers to the following questions:
- Are highly specialized assets required?
- Are those assets going to be idle after the required activity is done?
- If yes – it’s recommended to outsource it.
- Are those assets going be obsolete, or lose a significant proportion of the value over time?
- If yes – it’s recommended to outsource it.
- Is the activity required performed sporadically?
- If yes – it’s recommended to outsource it.
- Is the activity simple enough without any major changes within the activity over time?
- If yes – it’s recommended to outsource it.
- Can you define good and satisfactory performance?
- If no – it’s recommended to keep it in-house.
- Can you measure what constitutes good performance?
- If no – it’s recommended to keep it in-house.
- Is the activity tightly connected with other activities and processes, where in case of separation a new layer of complexity would be added?
- If yes – it’s recommended to keep it in-house.
Customers can decide to switch between types of service providers based on the answers to those simple questions. Of course, the answers to the questions themselves may change over time, depending on new economic conditions, regulations, and technological innovation – with the latest being inevitable.
Types of Services
Core Services :
Enabling Services:
Enhancing Services:
THE 4 P’S OF SERVICE STRATEGY
ITIL discusses at length the four “Ps” of strategy– perspective, position, plan, and pattern, each of which represents a different way to approach your service strategy. Brief summaries are provided here:
- Perspective – This is basically the vision statement of an organization. Why is it in business, why is it doing what it is doing? What are the plans and ideas for the future and how does the organization interact with its customers? A perspective cements a service provider’s distinctiveness in the minds of the employees and customers
- Positions – What is the competitive landscape and how will the organization compete with other similar providers? What is the key distinction between them and other businesses in the marketplace and what are the capabilities that set them apart? Positions are not just a description of different processes and resources … it could be as simple as cost.
- Plans – This is the big one … it takes into account the vision and the current position and talks about the future. How will the provider move from one space to a future space? What activities need to be done and how will they be done?
- Patterns – Hum, drum day-to-day … what does the organization or business do, how does it do it and what will it continue to do to be successful? This is the housekeeping stuff that needs to be completed correctly for an organization to meet its strategic objectives.
Measuring Performance
“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”– H. James Harrington
Performance management is all about measurement. This means knowing where you came from, where you are and where you want to be in the future. It is only when you know those key elements will you be able to plan a path appropriately.
Remember always that measuring performance is something that you need to be doing all the time – good times and bad – and it should be proactive and not reactive.
Knowing what is broken when it is broken is not nearly as useful as knowing what will break before it breaks! Knowing what is going to happen while difficult is absolutely necessary for ensuring that you have the time to take the relevant steps to avoid it – while it might not be as glamorous for your career to be the person to avoid problems, from a companies perspective not having to fight fires constantly is a definite plus.
Measuring what is important to your business is actually not that hard, the hard thing is being consistent at it, as simply defining something as important is great but only measuring it for one month and then choosing an action based on the results in that period is less than useful. To really utilize KPIs in the correct way it is imperative that you measure your main issues for several months looking for specific trends and patterns – it is only after you have done this for a while will you be able to make a reasoned and rational plan to address the issue discovered.
When defining the KPI’s that you intend to use you need to keep in mind that KPIs are measurements designed to assess performance. Your choice of KPI needs to be based on your target market/audience and your intention with regards to their purpose. For example, what is the problem that you are trying to measure and what would be the ideal outcome if that problem didn’t exist? Once you have defined that then you can get around to building your plan for measuring it.
In addition to the problem avoidance points about measurement and performance, the other key point is that it is only through measurement that you can know whether or not a specific project or task has been successful.
Measuring a project only at the end, however, is not appropriate – with projects specifically there are “gates” that must be passed and at each gate, it is key that you review whether or not you are on track for delivery or whether you need to make adjustments.
CALL CENTER KPI’S
The Call Center (Help Desk, Tech Support Team, Contact Center etc…) – it does not really matter what you call it, they all serve the same function which is dealing with customers on an individual basis in an effort to solve their problems and concerns – is a great place for KPI’s and in fact there are many KPI’s that have been built specifically for this group in an effort to ensure that customers are always receiving the best level of service possible. Some of the common KPI’s in use in this team are:
- First Call Resolution – Measurement of the %’age of customer issues resolved at the first call.
- % Uptime/Downtime – Measurement of the %’age of time the service is available (or not).
- MTTR – Mean Time to Resolve calculated as a percentage.
Constant and regular feedback to all the relevant teams and parties involved is necessary to ensure that you are able to adjust to any deviations and make the appropriate modifications necessary.
As a final point – measuring performance is necessary to ensure that you know the right things – you need to know what is and is not working and why you are having the problems you are.
If you want and expect your business to grow, you need to look for more efficient ways to do things as while throwing resources at a problem – be they people or equipment – can work some of the time, it is not the final solution and is definitely not the most scalable or cost-effective solution.
By measuring where you are having problems, what the bottlenecks are and planning appropriately for future problems, you can not only avoid the problems you are currently experiencing but build a plan to avoid future problems also!
Interviewing Over the Telephone
Some Key Hints
- Time – it is key that you ensure that you are ready and available at the scheduled time for your call and that you allow yourself enough time to complete the interview. Do not get caught commuting, or walking outside – the person you are speaking to need to be able to ask questions that are understood by you and you need to ensure that your answers are being just as clearly understood. Try to find a quiet, out of the way place for the conversation and as mentioned earlier, ensure that you are not feeling rushed by making other arrangements.
- Know who you are speaking to – I’ve already mentioned it, but this bears repeating … know your interviewer if at all possible. Ensure that you have their name clearly memorized and have some basic questions to ask them in return depending on their role in the company (if nothing else, asking about next steps shows them you’re interested).
- Know the job – again another one that must be repeated – being on the other side of the chair, I’ve often found myself amazed that the person I’m interviewing doesn’t know anything about the company, their locations, their products or services. I’ve even interviewed people who don’t know what they are being interviewed for! – DO NOT be that person! With the tools available to anyone in today’s market, some simple basic research just using Google will give you a good head start.
- Use a Landline if possible – while cellular technology has definitely improved, landlines are still more reliable and you want to ensure that your conversation is as clear as possible. As mentioned previously finding a quiet space along with using a landline will guarantee that while you might not always give the right answer, you will at least be able to understand the question!
- Dress for the interview and pretend it’s face-to-face – it’s easy to think you can do an interview in your pajamas but let’s be honest … if you dress appropriately and act appropriately (speak with a smile) it will come across in the tone of your conversation. Phone interviews are always more difficult than face-to-face ones. It’s very difficult to understand body language when you are not able to see the other person, however, if you have a good telephone manner and speak as if the person is there, you will be more successful.
- Be prepared – sorry for repeating myself once again, but these are the key ones. You need to know your own resume inside and out. Prepare ‘SAR stories’: describe the Situation, the Action taken and the Results achieved. Keep these stories to 1 minute long, and be concise and succinct. Talk about successes AND failures. Interviewers want to know not just how good you are at your job, but also how you’d deal with adversity.
- Repetition – well as you can see from the above, I’m not afraid to repeat some things that are important and that’s exactly what you should be doing in the interview. Practice active listening and demonstrate you are engaged and interested in referencing points made earlier in the conversation. Ask questions related to topics that have been discussed.
- Closing – make sure that you let the interviewer know that you are interested – it’s potentially the last thing they will remember about you and you need to ensure that you thank them and press upon them your excitement for the role and position.
DETERMINING THE VALUE OF A SERVICE
English: A business ideally is continually seeking feedback from customers: are the products helpful? are their needs being met? Constructive criticism helps marketers adjust offerings to meet customer needs. Source of diagram: here (see public domain declaration at top). Questions: write me at my Wikipedia talk page (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
ITIL however does go on to define value a bit further instead of just leaving it up to the customers decision. They have indicated that value consists of two basic elements:
- Utility – what does the product or service do? Does it meet the needs of the customer?
- Warranty – does the product or service meet the agreed upon requirements, specifically in regards to availability, capacity, continuity and security. Warranty reduces fluctuations in the service and can to some extent be considered in the light of SLA conversations.
ITIL DEFINITION OF SERVICES
Internal vs. External
- Core Services – deliver basic outcomes that represent something a customer is willing to pay for (basically the bread and butter of the service).
- Enabling Services – these are the nuts and bolts that let you deliver the core service (support, administration, operations etc…)
- Enhancing Services – not needed to deliver the core service … this is something that can give the core service a “wow” factor but is not necessary. The problem with enhancing services however is that over time they become core and/or enabling services as they become the expected norm.
Service Definition Process
- What is the service, and how do I get it? (Service Description)
- How do I get help? How do I use the service? (Help and Self-Service)
- What Does It Cost? (Service Cost and Pricing)
- How is the service supported? (Service Support)
- How is the service delivered? (Service Delivery)
The role of the Service Owner
SERVICE STRATEGY – AN INTRODUCTION
Perhaps somewhat self-explanatory, but Service Strategy is the strategy used by a business to execute its business objectives and meet the customer’s requirements. Utilizing Service Strategy within a business ensures that the business is able to create value for its customers and shareholders by contributing to the value and not just the costs of the organization. Service Strategy ensures that organizations are able to organize themselves in an appropriate manner to deliver and support services that will enable a customers’ success and will help to achieve a positive ROI in services. Through a variety of different tools (service catalog and Service Portfolio Management for example), Service Strategy is able to ensure a consistent understanding of what is required by a business and ensures that these services are provided in an efficient and effective manner. Get a free ITIL Service Strategy Financial Management Assessment here.
This is a document that we use to assess process maturity, tools usage, and organizational structure in managing IT Financials. This questionnaire will allow for an assessment to be performed using a hybrid of the Capability Maturity Model for Service Management and the ITIL Best Practices for Service Support and Service Delivery. The overall structure of the effort will come from the ITIL best practices of the IT Service Management definition. Rankings within each area will conform to a modified version of the CMM scoring. This modified version will provide a greater degree of granularity in evaluating the various factors involved in each service area, and has its basis in the ITIL standard. The objectives of Service Strategy include providing:
- A clear identification of corporate objectives and the products and services available as well as the requirements of the customers that use them.
- The ability to define how value is created and delivered as well as the ability to prioritize projects and opportunities based on their value to the business.
- A means to identify opportunities to provide services and how to exploit them as well as the ability to develop market spaces and drive the implementation of strategy through the service lifecycle.
- A clear service provision model, that articulates how services will be delivered and funded, and to whom they will be delivered and for what purpose
- The means to understand the organizational capability required to deliver the strategy
- Documentation and coordination of how service assets are used to deliver services, and how to optimize their performance
- Processes that define the strategy of the organization, which services will achieve the strategy, what level of investment will be required, at what levels of demand, and the means to ensure a working relationship exists between the customer and service provider.
Other components of the Service Lifecycle are also involved and at a high level here are there responsibilities:
- Service Design
- Turns a Service Strategy into a plan for delivering the business objectives
- Covers design principles and methods for converting strategic objectives into portfolios of services and service assets
- Service Transition
- Ensures that the value(s) identified in the Service Strategy, and encoded in Service Design, are effectively transitioned so that they can be realized in Service Operation
- Service Operation
- Strategic objectives are ultimately realized through Service Operation, therefore making it a critical capability
- Continual Service Improvement
- Provides guidance on creating and maintaining value for customers through better strategy, design, transition and operation of services
- Describes best practice for ensuring that the service portfolio continues to be aligned to business needs
- Provides guidance for linking improvement efforts and outcomes with Service Strategy, design, transition and operation
Service Strategy is responsible for meeting customer business objectives while ensuring that their own organizational goals and plans are not negatively impacted. They are responsible for ensuring that these objectives are met in an increasingly competitive world and they must understand the trade-offs involved in making those strategic decisions.
The goal of a Service Strategy can be summed up very simply:
superior performance versus competing alternatives.
When people talk about Project Management, their first thought is often Microsoft Project. In a similar manner when considering Service Strategy people often think of Strategic plans. However just like Project is not the whole answer, so to, a strategic plan doesn’t really get you where you need to go. Service Strategy is forward-looking but with the increasing pace of change in the world today (especially in IT services), a Strategic Plan is often obsolete before it’s been published!
A Service Strategy resolves big issues so that staff can get on with the small details – how best to provide services, for example, rather than debating what services to offer. But focusing on a strategic plan impedes the organization’s ability to respond to changing conditions.
THE UPS AND DOWNS OF PERFORMANCE MANAGMENT – USING A BELL CURVE
With any business, not only do you need to ensure that you have the appropriate number of agents to deal with the incoming issues, but you also need to ensure that these agents have the right skills and abilities to handle the volume that they get. You are forced to juggle resources based on the type of issues you might get – based on your historical trends – but you also need to always keep in mind the SLA you are offering to your customers and partners.
Phone calls & online chat need a significantly higher response rate than emails and the volume of issues while it can be planned for, can never account for emergencies and issues outside of your control (this is why they are called emergencies!)
How to Create Performance Bell Curves
Bell curve graphs are called histograms. By reviewing individual performance (let’s take output as an example) and grouping it together across your team you will have a simple scale that graphed out shows a distribution. A normal distribution will have equal numbers on either side with the bulk of your team grouped in the middle.
Now this can be done for quite a few of your KPIs (calls handled, average talk time, speed to answer etc…) and the more data of this nature that you add to your employee scorecard the better as graphical representations are extremely powerful and can tell you at a glance how an employee is “doing” in comparison to his peers.
What gets measured?
Understanding Bell Curves
Remember if your skew is towards the lower end of the scale you have a problem that you need to address immediately! Depending on your customer base and type of business this might be fine for you – those on the low side could be your slower performers with regards to output, but conversely, your higher performers in relation to customer retention just because they spend more time with each customer. However assuming that this is NOT the case and that all you are interested in is output, your goal is to “skew” your employee’s output towards the higher end of the scale. This can be accomplished through training – both technical, and product – as well as feedback from other more senior staff.
How does the Bell Curve impact staffing?
At its simplest, it doesn’t … however what you need to take into account when scheduling that coverage on a holiday or even earlies and lates, is the quality of the team doing the work. The Bell curve analysis helps you put that into a very clear picture and by combining multiple different curves on a single graph it is sometimes very obvious who your lower performers are.
GOAL SETTING AND MANAGEMENT
- Specific
- Measureable
- Actionable/Achievable
- Realistic
- Time Based
QUALITY AND CUSTOMER SERVICE
MOTIVATION AND THEORIES OF MOTIVATION
STRESS AND BURNOUT
- Alarm – is the ‘fight-or-flight response’ that mobilizes the body and mind to defend against physical and psychological threat.
- Resistance
- Exhaustion
Environmental stress factors originate from economic, political or technological uncertainty and induce alarm reaction and cause the employee’s performance to decline. Organisational stress factors increase in number and intensity in firms that are contemplating downsizing or outsourcing to revitalise a flagging business model (deteriorating competitive advantage).
STRESS AND WELLBEING
- Exercise – notwithstanding the obvious weight loss and health implications, moderate, regular exercise is strongly correlated with personal well-being (peace of mind), rising levels of ‘good’ cholesterol and falling levels of bad cholesterol and reduction in other health risk factors. Exercise also helps to reduce stress and can mitigate intermittent explosive disorder (IED) symptoms as discussed in further detail here.
- Relaxation – while exercise gets the heart pumping, relaxation in contrast does the exact opposite, but it too has a positive effect on stress reduction and overall well being. There have been many studies conducted that positively demonstrate this behavior – in Western culture, the relaxation response is triggered through prayer, whereas in Eastern culture it is activated by meditation. One fact to be considered though – one easy way of reducing stress is through the avoidance of and distancing of stressful situations in the first place – while not the easiest thing to do at work, its definitely something to be considered!
- Diet – A simple but basic concept that is popular with computer programmers is called GIGO. This acronym stands for Garbage In, Garbage Out and it really speaks to the role of diet in stress management. We are what we eat. Diet plays a significant, indirect role in stress management. While you might only correlate fatty foods with weight gain, the body too has stress symptoms that are triggered when “bad” foods are introduced. These symptoms are shown by elevating bad cholesterol, lowering good cholesterol and dumping large quantities of glycogen (basic sugar) and sodium into the blood stream. Unfortunately like everything else in life, the best strategy with diet is moderation.
- Guilt & shame. The key thing to establish here is that they are NOT the same thing! Everyone makes mistakes in their life and guilt is a useful emotion when we resolve to make amends, however you are who you are and should never feel ashamed of that fact. People who experience guilt will alleviate it by becoming more empathetic and working harder to resolve conflicts. Individuals who feel shame isolate themselves (I’m a bad person), become depressed (I’m worthless) and alienate others (It’s their fault).
- Build up your stress resistance. Like most things in life, “practice makes perfect” and while continuous and ongoing stress is not good for you – small doses can actually make you a better and more effective employee.The key principle is learning to handle more stress while you resolve to experience less of it.
Wellness and Job Stress Management
- Improve overall job satisfaction and employee performance
- Improve the overall effectiveness of the company
- Theory and information about stress, its physical effects and the psychological and behavioral problems caused.
- Tools and resources to allow an employee to determine their level of stress and have an ongoing way of measuring it.
- Details of some relaxation and coping techniques as discussed earlier and if a specific stressor has been identified – more specific information on how to deal with that also.
- Rewarding performance vs. “facetime”
- Focusing on living and working by values
- Respect for the individual
A Fact of Life
- Domestic competition isn’t – with access to the Internet and global markets, its now extremely easy for even the smallest entrepreneur to offer their products or services in any size market. Larger organizations are also taking advantage of these trends.
- Big companies are getting bigger – mergers and acquisitions are a continuous and ongoing trend and most often, the managers and employees who work for the loser become the next ones to be unemployed: ‘To the winner go the spoils!’ Unfortunately while not an ideal growth choice, it is often the only way for some companies to grow in saturated markets.
- Contractors and Temporary staff – Theory X companies especially practice this strategy and employee many contract and temporary staff due to the lower costs to the business. Loyalty in temporary staff is not a driving factor and unfortunately due to the economic situations, there is never a lack of resources to fill the role! Additional pressure is applied in public companies for this very same reason as the outsourcing of non-core business functions (even through the loss of skilled staff) raises profits by lowering costs.
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO MANAGEMENT
- Instrumental Values – how do you achieve the goals in your life?
- Terminal Values – what are your life goals?
- Internal Locus of Control – personal behavior drives specific behaviors and they are responsible for their own life.
- External Locus of Control – environment controls behaviors and outcomes are driven by forces beyond their control.
- Achievement – people high in this area tend to go into business for themselves if not properly motivated.
- Affiliation – people high in this area tend to like groups and greater involvement.
- Power – generally of two types (1) personalized and (2) socialized. Socialized is the better of the two as it can help energize a team and organization. A “bad” example of personalized is a Machiavellianism personality. This type of person has the urge to control, manipulate or influence others to achieve one’s personal ends. The high-Mach individual thrives and embraces fluid, unstructured organisational circumstances.
Job Satisfaction
Organizational Commitment and Job Involvement
The Difference Between Incident Managment and Problem Management
- ITIL Service Strategy
- ITIL Service Design
- ITIL Service Transition
- ITIL Service Operation
- ITIL Continual Service Improvement
What is an Incident?
What is the objective of the Incident Management team?
How are Incidents Tracked?
What is a problem?
What is Problem Management?
Technical Support and Tiered Support Levels
Training
Tiered Support Model
Erlang ‘C’ & Scheduling for Call Centres
Tier’ing Your Customers
What is PRINCE2
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
While PRINCE2 is one way of managing Projects, it is worthwhile defining what exactly a project is and why it needs management in the first place!
These checkpoints are referred to as “gates” and at each gate, you would have certain deliverable and targets to check your progress against. By managing a project in this fashion, you are able to ensure that you stay on track and that any issues or concerns are identified and dealt with at an early stage of the process versus waiting till the end.
WHERE DID PRINCE2 COME FROM?
- A defined structure for the Project Management Team
- Product based planning with a clear focus on Business and Customer needs
- A staged process allowing the project to be divided into manageable chunks
QUALIFYING AS A PRINCE2 PROJECT MANAGER
- PRINCE2 Foundation – The first level of qualification, the Foundation, provides the basics and terminology used in PRINCE2. Foundation training is appropriate for those looking to make a start in Project Management or working towards a supporting role in Project Management.
-
PRINCE2 Practitioner – Unlike some other technical certifications, PRINCE2 only has the 2 levels instead of a whole tree. The Practitioner level is the highest qualification and is appropriate to those looking to manage Projects in a PRINCE2 environment.
Why Is Training Important?
- Based on a performance appraisal and issues identified
- To improve a companies performance and efficiency
- To improve an employees future job prospects within the company
- To help a company deal with a new technology or tool
- To help a company obtain a specialized certification
Training Types
- Internal Training – Provided by the company directly, this is most common with call centers and technical support teams. Internal training provides information about the specific company and is extremely useful to new employees trying to learn the essentials of what the business does, what products the company provides and what types of customers are serviced by the business. Internal Training is generally provided by internal resources that have the relevant skills and this type of training can be both structured and unstructured. Often internal training is conducted for external 3rd parties also to ensure that prospective customers understand the underlying structure of a business and what its products are able to do (and more importantly perhaps, what they cannot do!).
- External Training – External training is somewhat more structured and is generally provided by a 3rd party business or company. This training is skill specific and is often provided if and when a business does not have the relevant skills in house. A good example of External Training are certifications – either technical or quality related.
Training Benefits
Some Resume Essentials
Do not forget to emphasize your Customer Service and Client Management skills as most roles – regardless of the title – will be looking for these.
What Can You Do?
Managing in a Matrix Structure
Matrix management is somewhat different to the standard way of managing people and processes; however for a Project Manager, this is generally the only way of getting things done. Most projects operate in some kind of a matrix environment where resources to actually get the job done are acquired and released from other teams. In this fashion, the Project Manager is able to call upon the skills and excellence of staff throughout the organization to assist him in accomplishing his project, without having to build a huge and immense team internally.
What is Matrix Management?
Pluses and Minuses of Matrix Management
Pluses –
- No need for line management tasks like pay reviews and disciplinary meetings.
- Clearly defined objectives (project goals) are provided with a defined completion timetable
- Your job description and focus is well defined, as is that of each of the team members
- You are able to “poach” the best and most suitable resources from other parts of the company to accomplish your objectives versus having to make do with the staff in your team
Minuses –
- Who do they listen to? Unless its very well defined, your new resource can be pulled in too many directions between the requirements of your role and the work they were doing for their manager.
- Projects have a well defined timeline and due to these time constraints there are often issues with allowing staff to have time away from the job for personal development.
Myers-Briggs Preferences
Six Sigma and Process Improvement
99% “good quality” means:
The Voice of the Customer
There are many ways of learning what is essential in your business. However probably the most powerful and least practiced is that of Customer Feedback. Having the greatest widget in the world is useless if your customers don’t want to buy it and if it doesn’t resolve a perceived need. Getting that information from your customers can be accomplished in a variety of ways though and it pays to ensure that you are doing as many of them as possible. (One point to note – conducting a survey is important, but if you don’t actually do anything with those results, then you shouldn’t have wasted the time or the money in gathering that information!)
Customer Feedback Is Critical
In order to drive continual customer service improvements, companies need to focus on obtaining the information from their clients, analyzing that information and acting on that information. Remember, as stated earlier … if no action is taken – don’t bother!
Capturing Customer F
Capturing what your customers want can be done via a variety of different means now a days. Web and surveys are common as are physical surveys that are mailed out to customers. Depending on the size of your business and your customer base, there are many large organizations that can assist in gathering, collating and analyzing this information for you, but if you are just starting out a simple spreadsheet with the feedback that you’ve received from your customers is a great starting point!
Listen to them NOT just in your surveys but also in your daily interactions with them via your support and customer service teams.
Another great way to get information from customers is via focus groups. Often used at the beginning of a product stage to determine WHAT customers want, it is just as effective afterwards to determine HOW you are performing and if you are meeting or exceeding expectations.
Another point to note – DO NOT over survey your customers. It is quite common for different parts of the same company to send out different surveys to the SAME customer. While it is obviously important to that division, the information that is returned will not be as useful as the customer will NOT be providing an unbiased response.
It is best if all survey’s are done via a centralized team or department and then the results of that survey shared among the company as a whole. Customer feedback collected through surveys, e-mails, phone calls, online chat and other channels can be combined into a single instance, integrating both structured and unstructured data into a central platform and enabling companies to extract maximum insight from the information collected in a cost-effective and timely manner.
Analyzing the Data
Customer feedback is subjective. It always will be and this needs to be understood by the group running the survey and appropriate steps taken. Another very significant point is that when survey’s are sent out it, it is essential that steps are taken to “tie” the response to a specific issue so that you are able to make the most use of this information. In addition, decisions via survey should never be taken unless the sample size is large enough.
Solving the Issues
Once you’ve determined what your customers want, prioritize those issues based on the 80/20 rule (Pareto principle) and let your clients know what you are doing to resolve the issues. What your plan is, how soon you expect to have the issue resolved and what the benefits to them would be. There is no harm in sharing a commonly perceived error with your existing users … THEY ALREADY KNOW IT’S THERE! … and if they see that you are going to take steps to resolve the problems they will understand that their best interests are in remaining with you. Remember that these are already your customers – you just want to treat them the right way and sharing information with them is a simple and effective way of doing this.
Managing Technical Teams
Why Do Customers Matter?
- The value of our service. Let them know that they are dealing with professionals that are willing to understand and help them. “We are here to help you”.
- How assertive we are. We will provide the correct information exactly when they need it and in the way they need it. “We are here to inform you”.
- The best attitude. Regardless of how you communicate with your customers be that email, voice or chat it is essential that your willingness to help is transmitted through the conversation. “We are glad to help you”.
- Reliability, as there is nothing better for a customer than to know what service to expect and always get it, over and over again, if you don’t believe me then take a look at how McD
’s is doing regardless of the market. - Timing, because customers want it now, the faster the better. However, worse than late is wrong. If you ordered a pepperoni pizza, a potato salad and light coke delivered to your door three minutes after hanging up the phone would probably not improve your loyalty.
- Every time you start working on an issue ask yourself the following questions in this order: How any issues is the customer
bringing to my attention? Is it clear to me what the problem(s) is(are)? What information do I need to solve the problem? What information do I have at this moment? How can I get what I am missing? By doing this, you will improve your accuracy in solving the customer’s issues, you will start to work smarter instead of harder as you will focus your efforts and time on solving the problem. - Let the customers know what you have understood, what information you are giving them and in which order. This will tell the customers that you are taking their concerns seriously and that you will address all their questions. Remember there is nothing worse than being ignored and when you address two out of three questions you are basically telling the customer “your third request is not important to me”.
- Get training on the things you find difficult to solve, the more you know, the easier your work will be, and the easier your work is, the faster you can provide the right answer to the customer. It is like body building, the more you know the stronger you get. The difficult part of putting this advice in practice is to recognize what we don’t know and even harder to be humble and ask for help. In my experience every time I have asked someone to teach me, they have felt proud of passing their knowledge to anybody who approaches them with respect, paradoxically this does not always work with teachers but has worked perfectly with colleagues.
- I don’t have specific advice on improving your attitude, there is no method or technique to follow that guarantees an improvement in this area, however, I suggest you start doing some exercises, drink two more glasses of water every day, reduce caffeine, eat chocolate and most of all worry only about the things you can control, like your reaction to every day events.
Customers are human beings, as demanding and difficult to please as you and me. Think about the restaurants, pubs, stores, online sites, etc that keep you going back and spending your money there, what have those places done to earn your loyalty and then think about what else can we do to keep earning your customers loyalty.