All posts by Hutch Morzaria

I am an ITIL Expert and extremely passionate about customer service, customer experience, best practices and process improvement. I have led support, service, help desk and IT teams as well as quality and call center teams in Canada and the UK. I know how to motivate my teams to ensure that they are putting the customer first.

What is a Helpdesk?

OK, to start with it’s not a desk that helps people! A help desk is a team of individuals (generally support staff) that provide solutions and resolutions to customers experiencing problems. Generally working at the 1st tier of the support model they are responsible for Incident reporting and resolution vs. Problem Management (I shall discuss those terms in greater depth below).

What is an Incident?

Simply put, an Incident is anything related to a customer contact (Incidents are also reported by automatic means via monitoring tools and I will discuss those types of incidents in greater depth in later posts). Incidents related to customers can be anything really – Information requests, Account Updates, Issue reporting are all examples of Incidents. Incidents can also be reported through a variety of different methods – this could include the phone (probably the most common), email (a close 2nd) and even chat. As mentioned previously, automated monitoring tools can also generate incidents.
All of these different Incidents coming from/through different sources would get routed to your Incident Management tool. For smaller teams, this could be something as simple as a spreadsheet but in larger organizations, either in-house customer-built applications or enterprise level tools prevail.

Incident Management (in a nutshell)

Your helpdesk is responsible for reviewing the information in each of these incidents and checking if there is an appropriate solution already available to the customer. For those instances for example where the customer wishes to update their Account Information, the helpdesk would look at the Incident, obtain the correct new information (& assuming that all appropriate security questions had been reviewed) log into the customers account and update the information. Once the information had been updated, they would inform the customer and then close the Incident. This is probably one of the simpler examples of an Incident from start to finish.
If the customer is reporting a problem or an issue, the Helpdesk staff are responsible for updating the Incident with all the relevant details as supplied by the customer. If the customer’s issue matches a known fix they are able to inform or supply that fix to the customer, however, if that is not the case they would need to escalate the issue to the Problem Management team. The simplest way to think of the Incident Management (Helpdesk/Tier1) team and the issues they resolve is that if a “band-aid” exists they can apply it. If more drastic attention is required they will need to call the Doctor!

Problem Management

Problem Management is where the interesting work really happens. Incident Management due to its repetitive nature can get tedious and is definitely a drain on the more skilled staff in your organization … if you have people like that, think about moving them into Problem Management if you have such a team or create one if you don’t! Problem Management is more in-depth. It’s where more often than not a single Problem is the cause of multiple Incident’s from multiple customers … as such you want your best people at this level. Generally, you would consider this Tier 2 or Tier 3 from an escalation and staffing perspective and dependent on your product or service you would have some very technically oriented people there. Their goal is not to just provide a band-aid, but rather to find out why the problem happened in the first place and fix it. Ideally, they should be looking at ways to fix it in such a way as to ensure that it doesn’t happen again!!

KPI’s

Now each of these teams would have different metrics in place. Obviously, your Tier1 team (Incident Management/Customer Service/Helpdesk) needs to get back to the customer in a timely manner. Their goal as already mentioned is to fix it, fix it fast and move on. A band-aid will not always reattach the finger though, so it’s up to the Tier2 team to ensure that the surgery goes smoothly which obviously takes a lot more time as you don’t want the surgeon doing a shoddy job!
Response Time – So with that analogy in mind … you want to have an aggressive goal set for your Helpdesk – try to work with the 80/20 rule … 80% of incidents responded to in 20 seconds (If you have the resources, otherwise maybe 20 minutes? Or 20 hours (that’s less than 1 day so might still be good – especially if you’re doing email support)? Or 20 days ß well that’s probably not really worthwhile) but hopefully you get the point? You want to set a specific goal for measuring how quickly your customers are getting a response.
Resolve Time – notice that I have separated these out. As much as you’d like to be able to resolve 100% of issues at that first contact, it’s not always going to be possible. However, you can have another measurement in place that tracks this which is the Resolve Time (sometimes called MTTR (Mean Time to Repair)). The Goal here is also to get that band-aid on as quickly as possible so you need to ensure that your Incident Management system has some sort of a knowledge base which helps your staff find the solution to commonly placed issues/questions. If they have the answer every time, then a 100% resolution at 1st contact is achievable! If not, however … it gets a bit more complicated because all of a sudden your Incident Management team becomes the customer and the team they go to is the Problem Management team. Guess what? They have a different measurement for Response Time and Resolve Time too!
Problem Management Response Time – now as previously mentioned these are generally your more senior staff and as much as you’d like them to be available 24/7 unless you have an extremely large organization this is probably fairly unlikely. So you are going to have built or determine some relevant response times based on their availability. In addition, as these escalated issues are generally issues that cannot easily be resolved, your resolution time is going to be extended also. Pick some appropriate intervals that meet your customers SLAs. Your main goal for this team (in addition to resolving the problem of course) is communication, communication, communication!!! They must inform your customer-facing agents what the issue is, what they are doing to resolve it and when they expect to have it resolved. If they cannot provide an estimated resolution time, they MUST provide your Tier1 team with an estimated update time.

Exceptional Customer Service

One important thing to remember from a Customer Service point of view is that the last person you speak to (or chat with or email) is also the most likely to buy your service or product in the future. This is obviously not a hard and fast rule, but more an estimation of the impact word of mouth plays with any business!

A repeat customer does not happen by accident. It is something that is only developed (& nurtured) through hard graft and constant work. You need to build relationships and this is where Exceptional Customer Service comes into play.
Communication is key. You have to remember that when a customer first signs up to your service – you should THANK THEM. They didn’t need to bring their service to you as I am sure that regardless of your industry you have competitors. A simple Thank You email will most times suffice. When the scope of the contract is sufficient, ramp it up to a personalized letter or perhaps even a bottle of wine at Christmas time! Now speaking to them when they first sign up is important – granted and mentioned … how about when they are having a problem???
SPEAK EVEN MORE!!!
The only communication a customer has is with you and the only insight they have into the status of their issue is what you are telling them. There have been many instances where I have been able to “Save” a customer simply by giving them updates. Please note – I have not solved the problem, that still existed, all I have done is told them what we were doing to get their issue resolved, gave them a timeframe to when I expected (hoped and prayed in some cases!) their issues would be resolved, and when I would next communicate with them. One key thing to remember here is if you give a customer a commitment – make sure that you stick to it… Think about it from your point of view and if you were the one experiencing this issue – wouldn’t you like to know what was going on? You probably have customers of your own that you need to inform also! This is something that always seems to be lacking at the lower levels of a CSR team but should be enforced and driven down. Remember, your staff doesn’t need to give out sensitive information to satisfy your customers. Most customers know that the people they are speaking to are not the ones who have caused the problem and they are just there to help solve it – for those ones that don’t, I will discuss handling IRATE customers in depth in later posts.
Give your customer as many ways as possible to get in touch with you. Obviously, resource constraints come into play also as you don’t want to offer 24/7 telephone support if you have a staff of 1. But perhaps in addition to email, offer chat as an option. When you get to the size where you can offer telephone support – do it, even if its only on an outbound basis.
The one thing that you must always remember and keep uppermost in your mind whenever you are dealing with a Customer from a Service/Support standpoint, is that the issue they are experiencing which has caused them to contact you – is affecting them and THEIR BUSINESS. The only reason they are doing business with you is so that you can provide a specific service to them. Once you fail in that regards you have not fulfilled your side of the bargain and there are many surveys that point to the fact that when someone has a bad Customer Service experience, they are likely to tell at least 10 other people about it. Think about it this way … not only could you potentially lose the business and money this one customer is paying you … you have now lost 10 others also! Word of mouth, unfortunately, is a lot more prevalent when spreading the bad news than it is about the good service you provide.
Now, what do you do if you had an issue (I’m assuming you’ve kept the customer informed throughout the process so that they are not too annoyed with you!) and have only just restored the customer’s service? Well, the first time it happens, you probably don’t need to do anything, aside from a brief apology! Hopefully, you’ve got an SLA in place and you’ve not exceeded the terms set out inside them. However in some cases, you might want to consider upgrading a customer to a better package or service – even if only for a limited time – you’d be surprised how often that works with customers and although the cost to you is not incidental … think about what the cost could potentially be if you had to find another customer!
Exceptional Customer Service matters because retaining existing customers are significantly easier than finding new ones. Customer Churn and Retention are two phrases you might hear bandied about quite a bit depending on the industry you are in and in some – Telecoms for example – there are huge teams and departments created to address just these issues. Their main and only goals are to keep the existing customers that they have with them instead of losing them to other competitors. In a very simple example think about it like this. If you are the industry leader and have 1 million customers and your nearest competitor has only ½ a million, you might think you were doing great. However if you are only growing at the rate of 10% per year (due to the negative press you’ve been receiving) and are churning at 25% per year to that competitor (who in the same timeframe is growing at 50% per year) … how long do you think you have at the top? Trust me it’s a lot shorter than you think!!
You want your customers to experience Exceptional Customer Service and instead of that 50% growth going to your competition you want it to flow towards your company. This mantra must be believed, understood and LIVED by your Customer Service Representatives and Support Teams. They need to understand that the reason they are getting a paycheque is that those customers are paying for it!
It might be trite and tired and a little bit old but the one phrase that is absolutely true is –

The CUSTOMER is ALWAYS RIGHT!!!!
Love it, believe it and spread it on!

Importance of Exceptional Customer Service

When was the last time you had a coffee?  I don’t mean in the office, but in a regular takeout joint, one of those ones with a drive-through window?  Have you gotten to the window after repeating your order to the “big talking head” only to have it wrong when you get there?


When someone says … “Can I take your order…” they should be prepared to do just that.  Other distractions and conversations should not take them away from the service they are meant to be provided to you!  Your team needs to learn the importance of this lesson – the Customer comes first and its always the customer that’s in front of you that you should be looking after.  Problems with previous customers or planning for future interactions should not impact the service you are providing at that moment in time.  Now some of the blame should definitely be placed at the feet of employers here. 

Your training should always include a Customer Service component and even for staff that might not necessarily be working on the front lines, this module is a useful skill … if for no other reason than they are better able to empathize and prioritize their work to better assist your front line team that is dealing with customers.

Remember – the goal at all times is not just solving the problem … even Customer Service teams are involved in Sales and the best and easiest sale is one that your existing customers make for you!  This happens through referrals and the only way you will get those is through Exceptional Customer Service.  If your customers know that you will go the extra mile for them and that you are going to be there for them, they will be happy to recommend your company and its product/services to others.  Conversely, they will also be the loudest voice denouncing your service if it is not up to the standard that they expect and are paying for!!

Erlang ‘C’ & Scheduling for Call Centres – IV

The key things you need to remember if you’re using Excel or any staffing program is to ensure that your minimum coverage matches your expected call volumes and coverage levels based on the Erlang ‘C’ formula and tools mentioned earlier.  It ill behooves you to have too many resources at 2am when you’re only expecting 1 phone call and your SLA is 2hrs!

  1. It might pay dividends for you in this instance to use an outsourced party where your call is answered by the equivalent of an ‘order taker’ so that the customer at least is able to speak to someone and have an incident opened for them and then their issue is actually only addressed when your staff resume regular operations.  Remember the points I’ve already made about SLA, Tiered Customers and Escalation Matrix‘.  This actually brings up another point that’s worth discussing and that is ‘On Call Coverage’ which I will address in further posts.
  2. Scheduling Employees 2000 – a step up from the Excel route is this software package.  Published by Guia International, this application is fairly inexpensive and is extremely easy to use.  It allows you to input details of a single department or team and ensures that you have the appropriate coverage based on time of day.  It has nice printouts and although not fully “web-enabled” it is easy enough to ensure that your staff have an up to date copy of the schedule by publishing your schedule online. With the ability to track time and labor costs by the hour and week as your schedule.  And simple drag/drop scheduling that allows you to schedule in 15min increments accounting for breaks.  You are easily able to see at a glance when your staffing levels do not match up with your required coverage.  Now there are a host of other scheduling applications available online and I will try to review some other packages in the coming weeks/months but this one does come highly recommended by me!
  3. When to Work (W2W) – on the high-end side and with a host of features, W2W is a very robust application.  It is fully web-enabled which means that not only are your staff able to view and access it from anywhere, it simplifies your reporting and control also.  It is very customizable and not only has some very good automated staffing calculators based on Skill Based routing and also allows for staff schedules that are restrictive due to other requirements – ie. someone is not able to work evenings on mon/wed/fri but is available any other day.  You can input these restrictions into the system and then forget about them as the system will then NOT allow you to schedule them for the times they are unavailable.  Notifications are provided to staff whenever a change is made to their shift and you also have the capability of utilizing a company bulletin board – for example, announcing a special schedule due to the staff Christmas Party! – when publishing schedules that impact multiple departments and teams.  One of the best features and most useful of When2Work is the ability to have different schedules by diffferent teams/skills all contained inside the same application.  The ability to drag drop shifts and providing staff the flexibility of trading shifts with similarly skilled employees is also a great feature.  Although significantly more expensive, when you have reached a certain size, having this sort of a tool available to you will prove a definite boon!
I hope that this has been useful information to you – if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me and I will do my best to answer you or at least point you in the right direction.

Job Search & Resume Essentials


Fortunately (and unfortunately) as a Manager you will frequently get involved in the process of hiring new staff.  The unfortunate downside is that as a Manager you will also have to sometimes terminate staff – see my post on PIPs earlier – but this to some extent goes with the territory.  Let’s look at the positive aspect first and let’s look at it in two parts as it might be you on the other side of that chair at some point!


Selling Yourself

Now the first step in selling yourself is a decently formatted CV/Resume and appropriately detailed and specific cover letter.  There are lots of places that will send you to resume writers and so on, but you have to remember something very important – your resume is really only the 1st step – YOU need to be able to speak to someone about everything that is on there and if you cannot do that, it will not matter whether or not you got an interview.  You WILL NOT get the job!

Now, if you can speak about everything that is on your resume congratulations, that is important as that is what you will be questioned on come interview time.  You need to ensure that you are comfortable with it and to be honest, depending on your experience, you should not be frightened if your initial resume is 10 pages long (just do not send that version out!).

Once you have built a starting resume, the next task is to weed it down to the appropriate keywords that the company is looking for – see why I said 10 pages is OK?  You can use those keywords and the accompanying ‘blurbs’ to flesh out each of your jobs so that you present yourself in the best possible light.  Most books and companies would state that you should aim to have your formatted resume (the one that the hiring managers see) be approximately 2 pages in length.  Any longer and unfortunately unless the hiring managers are very bored, will be generally disregarded.  Keep in mind in today’s economies there are almost always more people applying for a role than there are positions available and correspondingly lots more resume’s!

Now, this all might sound a bit dry and factual (although there are lots of different formats and ways of presenting yourself in your resume to make it less so, the end goal to keep in mind is that you are presenting a “Professional” image of yourself.  Where you have an opportunity to be a bit more risqué is in your covering letter.  Although your resume has been tailored towards the job that you are applying for, your experience might not always be an EXACT match and in these instances, you would use your covering letter to explain why you are a suitable candidate for the role being advertised.

A hiring manager uses the data in the cover letter that you have provided and would compare it against the information in your resume to receive a positive or negative impression as well as an initial determination of suitability for the position.  You don’t just want to throw keywords into the cover letter in a random order, you need to ensure that the information you are presenting about yourself matches what the company is looking for and also as mentioned earlier, if your resume is not an exact match, why should they talk to you?  Remember, these simple pieces of paper determine who gets seen first and who gets pitched to the side.

Some key things to always include in a cover letter are:
  • Key Accomplishments and Awards (i.e. How did you benefit your last company?  How much money did you save them?  What process improvements did you initiate and how successful were they?)
  • Customer Testimonials – if you are applying for a Customer Service role and your customers are willing to be your advocate that says some really good things about you and the level of Service you are able to provide.

Finally, with regards to your CV/Resume and cover letter, there is probably one really important thing that I have not yet mentioned … it is extremely important so please pay attention … studies state that 85% of applicants currently applying for new positions, make this simple elementary error.

PROOFREAD YOUR WORK!!!!!


In today’s day and age with the tools we have available, there is no excuse for simple spelling and grammatical errors.  Remember, Hiring Managers are looking for a reason to put you in the NO pile – don’t give them an easy out!!  Once you have read it, read it again and then get your wife to read it and your brother and as many other people as you can think off.  Not only will they hopefully find any errors, but they might even be able to add some additional accomplishments that you’d forgotten!  

In addition unless you are in a highly specialized field, you want to ensure that your resume is readable AND understandable by the “lay” person – remember more often than not, the Hiring Manager in HR does not really understand the role that they are hiring for and is really only looking for those keywords I’ve mentioned before!

I hope that the above has been useful information with regards to CV/Resume creation as well as the cover letter.  In later posts, I will cover the different job boards (for you and your candidates), recruiters as well as the disciplinary and termination process.

Communication and Customer Service

An extremely funny story that demonstrates the importance of listening to your customers.

This is some correspondence which actually occurred between a London hotel’s staff and one of its guests. The London hotel involved submitted this to the Sunday Times. No name was mentioned.

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Dear Maid,
Please do not leave any more of those little bars of soap in my bathroom since I have brought my own bath-sized Dial. Please remove the six unopened little bars from the shelf under the medicine chest and another three in the shower soap dish. They are in my way. Thank you,
S. Berman
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Dear Room 238,
I am not your regular maid. She will be back tomorrow, Thursday, from her day off. I took the 3 hotel soaps out of the shower soap dish as you requested. The 6 bars on your shelf I took out of your way and put on top of your Kleenex dispenser in case you should change your mind. This leaves only the 3 bars I left today which my instructions from the management is to leave 3 soaps daily. I hope this is satisfactory.
Kathy, Relief Maid

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Dear Maid — I hope you are my regular maid.
Apparently Kathy did not tell you about my note to her concerning the little bars of soap. When I got back to my room this evening I found you had added 3 little Camays to the shelf under my medicine cabinet. I am going to be here in the hotel for two weeks and have brought my own bath-size Dial so I won’t need those 6 little Camays which are on the shelf. They are in my way when shaving, brushing teeth, etc. Please remove them.
S. Berman
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Dear Mr. Berman,

My day off was last Wed. so the relief maid left 3 hotel soaps which we are instructed by the management. I took the 6 soaps which were in your way on the shelf and put them in the soap dish where your Dial was. I put the Dial in the medicine cabinet for your convenience. I didn’t remove the 3 complimentary soaps which are always placed inside the medicine cabinet for all new check-ins and which you did not object to when you checked in last Monday. Please let me know if I can of further assistance.

Your regular maid,
Dotty
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Dear Mr. Berman,

The assistant manager, Mr. Kensedder, informed me this A.M. that you called him last evening and said you were unhappy with your maid service. I have assigned a new girl to your room. I hope you will accept my apologies for any past inconvenience. If you have any future complaints please contact me so I can give it my personal attention. Call extension 1108 between 8AM and 5PM. Thank you.

Elaine Carmen
Housekeeper
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Dear Miss Carmen,
It is impossible to contact you by phone since I leave the hotel for business at 745 AM and don’t get back before 530 or 6PM. That’s the reason I called Mr. Kensedder last night. You were already off duty. I only asked Mr. Kensedder if he could do anything about those little bars of soap. The new maid you assigned me must have thought I was a new check-in today, since she left another 3 bars of hotel soap in my medicine cabinet along with her regular delivery of 3 bars on the bath-room shelf. In just 5 days here I have accumulated 24 little bars of soap. Why are you doing this to me?
S. Berman
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Dear Mr. Berman,

Your maid, Kathy, has been instructed to stop delivering soap to your room and remove the extra soaps. If I can be of further assistance, please call extension 1108 between 8AM and 5PM. Thank you,

Elaine Carmen,
Housekeeper
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Dear Mr. Kensedder,
My bath-size Dial is missing. Every bar of soap was taken from my room including my own bath-size Dial. I came in late last night and had to call the bellhop to bring me 4 little Cashmere Bouquets.
S. Berman
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Dear Mr. Berman,

I have informed our housekeeper, Elaine Carmen, of your soap problem. I cannot understand why there was no soap in your room since our maids are instructed to leave 3 bars of soap each time they service a room. The situation will be rectified immediately. Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience.

Martin L. Kensedder
Assistant Manager
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Dear Mrs. Carmen,
Who the hell left 54 little bars of Camay in my room? I came in last night and found 54 little bars of soap. I don’t want 54 little bars of Camay. I want my one damn bar of bath-size Dial. Do you realize I have 54 bars of soap in here. All I want is my bath size Dial. Please give me back my bath-size Dial.
S. Berman
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Dear Mr. Berman,

You complained of too much soap in your room so I had them removed. Then you complained to Mr. Kensedder that all your soap was missing so I personally returned them. The 24 Camays which had been taken and the 3 Camays you are supposed to receive daily (sic). I don’t know anything about the 4 Cashmere Bouquets. Obviously your maid, Kathy, did not know I had returned your soaps so she also brought 24 Camays plus the 3 daily Camays. I don’t know where you got the idea this hotel issues bath-size Dial. I was able to locate some bath-size Ivory which I left in your room.

Elaine Carmen
Housekeeper
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Dear Mrs. Carmen,
Just a short note to bring you up-to-date on my latest soap inventory. As of today I possess:
  • On shelf under medicine cabinet – 18 Camay in 4 stacks of 4 and 1 stack of 2.
  • On Kleenex dispenser – 11 Camay in 2 stacks of 4 and 1 stack of 3.
  • On bedroom dresser – 1 stack of 3 Cashmere Bouquet, 1 stack of 4 hotel-size Ivory, and 8 Camay in 2 stacks of 4.
  • Inside medicine cabinet – 14 Camay in 3 stacks of 4 and 1 stack of 2.
  • In shower soap dish – 6 Camay, very moist.
  • On northeast corner of tub – 1 Cashmere Bouquet, slightly used.
  • On northwest corner of tub – 6 Camays in 2 stacks of 3.
Please ask Kathy when she services my room to make sure the stacks are neatly piled and dusted. Also, please advise her that stacks of more than 4 have a tendency to tip. May I suggest that my bedroom window sill is not in use and will make an excellent spot for future soap deliveries. One more item, I have purchased another bar of bath-sized Dial which I am keeping in the hotel vault in order to avoid further misunderstandings.
S. Berman
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Ok, I know that this seems extremely funny and silly, but think about it from the Customer’s perspective.  He has obviously passed the point of frustration.  Do you think he’ll be coming back to this establishment?  Will he be recommending them to anyone else?  I think the answer to both of those questions is a resounding – NO!  It is important to remember that you need to “Listen” to your customer – don’t just hear them but listen to what they are actually telling you.  More often than not a small problem can be avoided early on by taking this approach.

Internal & External SLA’s


A very important point to remember at all times is that you need to have a more aggressive Internal SLA vs. the one that you are offering to your customers. I know it sounds self-evident doesn’t it, but there is no end of organizations that I’ve dealt with where customers are offered a 4hr SLA on a 24/7 basis and the engineers that can actually fix the problem are either unavailable till the next business day or NOT even on call!!!


Let me state this once again and very clearly so that there is NO CONFUSION …


If you are offering your customers an SLA of ‘X Hours’ and your Engineering (or Development or Project Management or … etc…) team is only offering you an SLA of ‘X + Y Hours’ … YOU WILL LOSE MONEY and YOU WILL LOSE CUSTOMERS!!!

It is imperative that your internal SLA be better than the one you are offering to your customers and you need to ensure that your Sales team and Senior Management are both on board with this. 

Remember, also, that this must go all the way up the chain … your Engineering team has agreed to an internal SLA of ‘X – Y Hours’ (woohoo!! That will solve 80% of your problems) but the Development team is only offering them an SLA of ‘Z’ (assume ‘Z’ is a multiple of ‘X + Y’) … for those 20% of customers and problems that cannot be solved by your Tier 2 (Engineering team in this example) group … you are still going to be in trouble. 


The question, now becomes how much are you & your company willing to invest in protecting yourself from that 20%?


I hope that this gives you the ammunition that you need in your discussions with Senior MGMT. Any help you need or further suggestions, please feel free to contact me using the form on the right side of the page.

Erlang ‘C’ & Scheduling for Call Centres – III

Skill-Based Routing

Simpler to say than actually execute, SBR is a way of ensuring that your contact reaches the agent best suited to deal with and address their issue.  This assists in first call resolution but is also key when it comes to things like languages and specific technologies.  An easy example is ensuring that a French-speaking customer with a data problem reaches your agent in your call center in Montreal (or France for that matter) vs your agent in an English speaking call center.  

Skill-based routing allows for significant granularity and focus, but it is only as good as the information you know or are supplied with by the customer.  This can either be from an existing customer database or from your initial ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) system where the customer is responsible for determining what problem they have.

Scheduling Tools

There is a multitude of free & paid for scheduling tools available and obviously, you get what you pay for with the ones requiring a monthly/yearly fee offering significantly more tools and services than the free ones.  However, depending on the size of your center and your budget, some of these free tools (reviewed) are extremely effective and useful.  I have provided links to some of the better subscription-based tools also, but have not included a review of them as their websites are fairly descriptive in and of itself.

  • Excel (or other) Spreadsheet – hopefully your budget includes at least one copy of Microsoft Excel, but if not, you can still get access to free spreadsheet applications either through Open Office or even Google Docs or Zoho Docs. Depending on your chosen product/solution, the formula’s and look of the product will be slightly different, however, for simple call/support centers any of these will suffice. Your main measurement would be determined by your total required staffing level. You can also build a schedule based on specified Tiers of customers or skillsets. Don’t get too complicated with Excel as it would pay you to get a specialized tool to do this right. A sample Tiered schedule is provided below.

The key things to note here are that, there are less Tier2 staff than Tier1 (think about it as a Pyramid shape … the higher up the Pyramid you get, the more skilled your staff are). And also, the GAP … this is where you can expect to receive more calls/emails/contacts than your Staff is able to handle. Expect complaints, bad service and abandon calls as well as … you should expect to start losing Customers! … unless you can get this to be ‘0’
One other thing to note is that this is a daily schedule … see what I mean about specialized tools?  Don’t worry I’ll be getting to them soon I hope!

Erlang ‘C’ & Scheduling for Call Centres – II

Escalation Matrix –

OK, great, we’ve got an SLA, we have the appropriate staff in place to take the call when they make it … now, what happens if they are not able to fix the problem?  Easy!  You get the problem to the right people that can fix it in a timely manner.  This is where the escalation matrix comes into play.

Assuming that its 2am and you’ve got a Tier 1 customer (remember, your definition of Customers was made before this) that has no telephone service (hard down etc…).  This is impacting them and potentially costing them $$$/hr.  Your engineer has taken the call and started working on the issue.

Now as this company is paying you lots of money for the service (that IS why they are Tier 1 after all), you need to ensure that you’ve got ALL the right people available and working on their problem as quickly as possible.  A sample 2 Stage Internal Escalation Matrix that I’ve used with great success in the past is presented below.    You will need to have a separate matrix that is provided to Customers which I shall provide you with in a later post.

Provided below is a table detailing the different groups & times that they need to be notified at based on the problem & its impact.

Please note – its fairly easy to remove the additional Escalation Group step mentioned below, if your escalation is to only one group! This type of structure only applies to larger companies where the problem and responsible party could be in a variety of different locations. The groups mentioned below also vary based on the type of organization – for example, Ops/NOC is applicable to a telco environment but not necessarily a manufacturing one.

ESCALATION GROUPS


SLA & Tiered Service Levels

SLA – this is a difficult one.  You obviously want to offer all of your customers the premier, best in the world, platinum level of service, but unfortunately, that does not always make financial sense.  Customers need to be tiered dependent on the amount of money they pay you (see my post on the 80/20/30 rule) and incidents/problems need to be tiered dependent on the impact to their business.  


It makes for an interesting measurement or matrix but a basic one that will need to be customized for your business is provided below.


Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
Priority 1 70% + Service Impact or

Total Loss of Service

5min Response

4hr Resolution
70% + Service Impact or

Total Loss of Service

30min Response

8hr Resolution
70% + Service Impact or

Total Loss of Service

1hr Response

24hr Resolution
Priority 2 50% – 70% Service Impact

15min Response

8hr Resolution
50% – 70% Service Impact

1hr Response

24hr Resolution
50% – 70% Service Impact

4hr Response

72hr Resolution
Priority 3 Up to 50% Service Impact

30min Response

12hr Resolution
Up to 50% Service Impact

4hr Response

72hr Resolution
Up to 50% Service Impact

24hr Response

96hr Resolution

Please note the difference here between ‘Response’ time and ‘Resolve’ time!!  Make sure that you use this to your effect as problems cannot generally be resolved immediately on 1st contact … work to analyze the problem takes time.  Don’t kid yourself otherwise!

As you can see from the table/matrix mentioned above (hope it’s not too confusing?) reading from Top Left -> Bottom Right your SLA follows a specified path.  Dependent on the Tier of your customer and the impact to their business a specified service level is offered to them.

A key point to make is that the SLA needs to be something that is achievable – having a customer facing SLA that is more stringent than your own internal OLA (the service level offered by your own internal departments) is doomed to failure and unfortunately some fairly large financial repercussions!

Erlang ‘C’ & Scheduling for Call Centres

Erlang ‘C’ is a Nobel winning formula used in the Call Centre and Operations industries to determine the correct and appropriate level of staffing based on key call metrics.  The scary looking formula for this is below and the even scarier explanation from Wikipedia is here.

From a Call Centre and Staffing Point of view, the primary elements considered are as follows:

  • Average Talk Time
  • Calls/per specified period (15min is a good benchmark)
  • Specified Service Metrics or SLA (ie. 80/20 <- 80% of calls answered in 20s or less etc…) … correspondingly, you want to consider your abandon %’age here also.  Are you willing to accept that some of your customers will hang up?  If so, how many & consider what impact that will have on your business in the long run!

With this information in hand and using the formula, you are able to determine how many resources you need in a given period to meet your customer demand.  Using some free online tools (links provided below), you are also able to determine your required resources based on a specified timetable and rotation.  For example, if the formula states you need 8 resources between 8am-9am and you are running a 24/7 call center the actual number of staff you need to employ is ‘X’.

Some Good Free Erlang ‘C’ Calculators –

Holiday/Vacation/Sickness

With this in mind, you still need to plan for excess capacity relevant to staff absenteeism either planned or unplanned.  So although the formula only called for 8 staff & your overage based on a 24/7 call centre is ‘X’ … you should actually plan to have ‘Y’ resources available to cover these gaps!!

KPI’s and the Importance of Measurements (part 2)

Continuing from my previous post here, we’re going to get more in depth into KPI’s and their measurement now.

How do I measure KPI’s?

Get the data (whatever is important to you … if you use the examples previously mentioned, then track service outages by minutes for example vs. a specified date) into your spreadsheet or other tracking tools, then keep on adding more and more information every time you have another service interruption or outage.    

The key here is consistency and ensuring that you reflect as realistic a picture as possible so the more information you can capture the better.  If you are measuring outages, then make sure you reflect the customers impacted, the total amount of time, the volume of calls or interactions it created and the reason for the outage (even a simple 3rd party vs. internal tag is important as it tells you where you need to focus your attention).   Once the data has been captured – make sure you have and are using the right tool for this … (a spreadsheet as mentioned is great in the early stages but if you can tie this back into a good Incident & Problem Management system like Freshdesk or something similar (I’ll get into ITIL and Six Sigma in later posts) you’re going to do really well!) – then you need to come up with an appropriate means of analysis.  

We are all familiar with the disparaging quotes about statistics (including “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”, attributed to either Mark Twain or Disraeli, depending on whom you ask), and it’s no secret that many people harbor a vague distrust of statistics as commonly used.  

Averages don’t tell you very much. One data point that is extremely far outside the curve will skew everything towards it so care must be taken to ensure that you are measuring information correctly.   Good analysis is an ongoing process, so set targets and assesses whether any changes you make are improving your KPI’s or not.

KPI’s and the Importance of Measurements

There is a great quote that goes something like –

“If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it!”

 … this is so true and especially so in the Technical Support, Customer Service, and Operations areas.

There are great KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) and not so great ones.  The key is choosing the right one for your business and you need to choose it from a CUSTOMER point of view.

There is no use in choosing your KPI from any other area as if you lose your customers, you lose your revenue and obviously you lose your business!!

When defining a set of KPIs to control and measure performance, the most likely debate is probably around measuring KPIs.  Another way to think about KPIs is that they are measurements designed to assess performance.

The Traditional Mantra is –

“Measure. Analyse. Act” 
 
KPI’s are the middle stage, but they’re defined by the first and they should drive the third.

What KPI’s should I use?

Your choice of KPI’s depends on your intention and target audience.  Which problem or issue are you trying to solve, whom is it impacting, what is the impact and what outcome would you like to see afterward are all good questions to ask when building a KPI plan.

Two common KPIs are 1st Call Resolution and Downtime (please note I have not said these are good ones – that is something you will need to determine for yourself depending on your interpretation of what’s important to your customer … this is something I shall discuss in greater detail in later posts).

Similarly, KPI’s should be measured over time and you should not expect your initial snapshot to give you the full picture as you will frequently have to ‘massage’ and/or revise your measurement criteria and focus until you are measuring the correct information.

1st 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).

These are just 2 of the hundreds of different KPIs out there … a great place to find more is here and it is well worth your time to visit!

Another problem you might have though is that you don’t have any way to measure this … that is something I will discuss further in later posts.