Category Archives: KPI

Customer Experience, Customer Satisfaction, KPI

How do you measure First Call Resolution?

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Before we discuss the best method to measure First Call Resolution (FCR), it is probably important to understand what it actually is and why it matters.

What is First Call Resolution?  

First Call Resolution in its simplest form it is a measurement used by most technical call centers to determine how often a customer’s call is resolved at the first interaction. FCR makes a difference for two different reasons.

  • Customers that call back, add additional volume to the queue on top of the volume already there. This impacts all consumers and depending on how you prioritize calls can significantly impact some callers.
  • Customers that have to call back for the same problem time after time tend to have a very negative customer experience overall and transitioning them to an advocate of the company is quite difficult.

Measuring FCR 

Now while it’s fairly easy to state that measuring FCR is simply a calculation of how often a call is resolved at the first interaction, measuring it gets a bit difficult as you can well imagine.  Depending on the CRM you are using you might be able to set different intervals. If you do not have a CRM at all, check out my guide on the best CRM for 2020 to get started.

Depending on how you are tracking customer issues – if you are able to correlate the customers to their issues you should be able to pull reports that inform you if/when a customer issue is re-opened and that metric would apply as a negative value. 

    In addition, you must account for the time of reports and the potential of customers re-opening closed issues incorrectly. As I’ve mentioned, you need to determine an appropriate time frame as customers will often utilize the same (fixed) issue when reporting a new issue regardless of if the issue has re-occurred or not. 

    If you do not have such a tool available or in house, measurement gets significantly more difficult.  In this case, I’d recommend that you at the very least get a simple and free CRM like HubSpot. The benefits you’ll see from this tool will make the investment of time well worth it.

    As a starting point, you should aim for 5-10 days as your target time frame for FCR.  Any reports after this period in time would count as a new issue. If you are unable to correlate customer reports by a CRM system, you might be able to pull information from your phone system or ACD/IVR system although this does get a little bit more difficult and complicated. 

    Customer Surveys 

    Now in addition to measuring from a customer report perspective, you can also utilize Customer Survey’s to determine what the first call resolution is from a customer perspective.  However, this is a very “subjective” measurement as it is very dependent on the customer’s mindset and viewpoint and might be unrelated to the question being asked. It’s important to realize and understand that tools like Customer Satisfaction Surveys and company NPS scores are backward-looking.

    Basically they consider something that has already happened. Companies and organizations interested in improving customer experience need to look at customer roadmaps and understand the pain-points/touchpoints for customers at each step. Once this understanding is in place throughout an organization, plans can be made to rectify problem issues and areas.

    Can FCR be Improved?

    There are ways to improve FCR and one of them might be a bit surprising. Simply put – remove the consumer from the phone. By using Omnichannel tools like LiveChat, clients have different ways to reach you and your team. It does not solve the problem of providing the wrong answer from the start – that is something only training can really address & that applies to employees as well as customer training.

    Chat however gives your consumers an alternative channel or path to your team. This is a benefit for several reasons:

    • If they are contacting you again for a follow up on an existing issue, by using chat, they can get quick answers to specific information and areas without impacting the overall phone queue.
    • Chatbots can also help in other ways. By using AI learning and knowledge, it is possible to provide consumers with answers to not just the question they are asking now, but also the question they will ask next!

    What is FCR Good for? 

    Is First Call Resolution a useful metric?  By itself, it probably isn’t.  FCR is dependent on historical data and trending.  The goal at all times should be to improve the FCR that you are providing to your customer as that ensures they are getting a speedy and useful resolution to all of their issues at their first call.

    So if your initial measurement of FCR is 80% (i.e. 80% of issues resolved at the first call) your goal should be to aim for 85% in a reasonable time frame, and so on as time progresses.  In addition to the goal of improving the FCR %’ age, you also need to determine and this is where your reports come in useful – why are your customers calling? 

    More than likely you will find that the 80/20 rule applies here – i.e. 80% of your contacts are due to 20 issues.  If you can focus on those 20 issues, you will drive down your overall quantity of issues quite significantly.

    Customer service, KPI, Management

    WHAT IS THE HARDEST THING ABOUT RUNNING A CALL CENTER?

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    Customer Service

    Customer Service – the simple explanation from Wikipedia (here) is that it is “… is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.”
    Now regardless of the type of Call (Contact) Centre you run you are always providing Customer Service. You can call the center a NOC (Network Operations Centre) a Technical Service Desk or a Help Desk but regardless of its name, its purpose is the same. The people that make up that team are there to provide a service to your customer and they are there to do it in the most efficient and useful way possible.

    The 4 Types

    Depending on the stage of the transaction that you customer is, with your organization, they will be dealing with one or more different types of customer service teams.  At a high level, they fall into the distribution below:
    1. Support: Including dealing with account issues (billing information, new account setup, order taking etc…).  This team ties closely together with the technical team and often provides a first level support function if it is in their remit.
    2. Technical Support: More detailed troubleshooting is carried out by this team.  Often referred to as “after Sales” Support they ensure that existing customers have a useful and worthwhile service and deal with any problems or issues that they may have.
    3. Sales & Marketing:  Inbound and Outbound sales teams, web chats and email responses.  In addition to this, offsite events, telemarketing, surveys, and other events are handled by this group.
    4. Quality Control: Review of customer interactions and problem analysis.  In addition to this, this team would also ensure that the company was compliant with standards in dealing with customers and would perform random audits.

    Measure, Do, Act

    Now, depending on the type of call center you are running, your first and probably most important starting challenge is determining the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that you wish to have in place in your organization.
    Once you know what you want to measure and why you can then set about ensuring that you meet, exceed and surpass those requirements in short, medium and long terms.  To determine the most important KPI though, you need to know what services are important to your customers so that you can ensure that your teams are in the right place with the right knowledge to provide those answers to your customers to minimize any service disruptions or service impacts. 

    Once you’ve determined KPIs the next step is determining how you go about achieving and surpassing those requirements.  To do this, you need to ensure that you have the right caliber of candidate with the right skill set available and the right tools in place to expedite a speedy resolution for your customers.

    • What is a Helpdesk?

      In its simplest form, a helpdesk is a group of people assigned to assist customers in solving their problems. There are many different types of helpdesks and they are called by a variety of different names…

    • Should you Outsource your Helpdesk?

      To outsource or not to outsource … while not exactly a question that plagued William Shakespeare (hence the lack of any really good quality plays about it!), is a very valid question for the small and…

    Practice, Practice, Practice

    Just like athletes, your staff needs to have the appropriate skills and knowledge to ensure that they are able to resolve your client’s issues as quickly as possible.  The best way to do this is via training.  This includes initial training – ie. when they first join your company – and ongoing training to ensure that their skills do not get rusty.  It is possible to throw them into the deep end and see if they swim, but this is hardly an efficient use of your resources and should be minimized if at all possible.
    Appropriate teams and methodologies need to be in place to ensure that information flow and tools are available to your frontline staff so that customers get the appropriate answer as quickly as possible – things like FAQs and Knowledgebases are great, but they need to be kept up to date. You must also ensure that you have a robust and effective system to track customer interactions.
    KPI, Measurement

    KPIs AND THE IMPORTANCE OF MEASUREMENT

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    DMAIC

    There is a great quote somewhere that goes something like – “If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it!” … this is so true and especially so in the Customer Service and Operations area. 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.
    DMAIC is an abbreviation of the five improvement steps: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control and while it is a key mantra in six-sigma improvements, it is not only used in this methodology.

    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, who 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.

    The Traditional Mantra is –

    As we’ve already discussed in a previous section, DMAIC stands for
    • Define,
    • Measure,
    • Analyze,
    • Improve and
    • Control
    You could shrink this to just “Measure. Analyze. Act” where KPI’s are the middle stage. While they might be at the middle stage, they are defined by the first and they should drive the third.
    Sounds somewhat complicated but really they aren’t. You need to measure what is important to your business, the things that impact the bottom line, and your measurements should be repeatable and objective (appropriate to the job) and not just “management speak”. Talk to your staff – they are on the front line and can help guide you on what customers are really looking for!

    1st Call Resolution & Downtime

    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, KPIs 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)
    There are literally thousands (if not millions) of KPIs available, so there is bound to be one that actually meets the needs of your organization or business. A great resource to search if you’ve never used KPIs before is KPI Library. They offer free access to their library of KPIs and they have a very friendly and interactive community.
    Helpdesk, Incident Management, ITIL, KPI, Problem Management, Service, SLA, Teams

    WHAT IS A HELPDESK?

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    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 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 determined 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.
    KPI, Pareto principle, Performance indicator, Technical support

    Measuring Performance

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    “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:



    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!

    KPI

    Choosing What to Measure

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    An old business axiom says:

    You can’t control what you don’t measure

    As a result, nearly everything in business is measured, tracked, monitored, analyzed, and benchmarked.  To flip this on its head a little bit though … should you measure what you can control or rather what is outside of your control?  While it is easy to put a number to things that you have complete control over wouldn’t there be a greater impact to your bottom line and the business if you started measuring things that impacted your customers but that you didn’t have complete control over?

    You’ll find that you will see a far greater improvement as well as improved education for your teams and progression towards your goals if you start measuring the things that you can influence and not just the things that you control. 

    Any color as long as its black

    Probably one of the greatest quotes that never was is a perfect example of this point.  While you can definitely control the color of your product by offering only one choice to your customers you are definitely not going to have satisfied or happy customers if you do not give them a choice. 

    Total control does not make for happy customers and in a similar manner,  what you can completely control is trivial.  The important stuff is important because it’s outside our circle of control.  Revenue and profit are obviously essential to any business.  Monitoring your bottom line is only one part of the formula.  It’s essential that you are measuring the factors that actually are critical to your company.  Here are some guidelines on helping you develop a plan to do this.

    1. Goals – what are you trying to accomplish?  What is it that your business does and build your goals around that.  Make the goals a stretch but achievable. Determine your measures for success. Make your goals challenging, but achievable. Your goals can be fairly large in scope – decrease customer churn, launch into a new market etc… however while your overall goal is broad in scope, you will need to break it down into specific and achievable objectives that are measurable and achievable.
    2. Company Performance – how does your company compare against the industry at large?  What percentage of your industry/market does your company control or have an influence on?  What turnover does your company have and how does that compare to the industry at large?
    3. Strengths and Weaknesses – be honest with yourself but ensure that you are accurate.  Where are you strong and where are you weak?  What can be done in each area to enhance your company further and give you an increased advantage on your competition?
    4. Customer Retention – one of your main goals should always be customer retention as getting a new customer is five times more expensive than retaining a current one.  Work on issues that increase and improve customer and brand loyalty.  Ensure that your teams are trained on customer service and that a helpful attitude greases more wheels!
    5. Advertising and Marketing – ensure that you are measuring the outcome of any advertising campaigns and marketing activities that your company does.  Your marketing results may be measured in sales (dollars or units), market share or a variety of other factors.  The goal should obviously be the number of new customers your advertising dollars earn.
    6. Employee Performance and Churn – track your employees and their performance.  Top employees are crucial to your companies success and you need to ensure that you are hiring top quality and retaining top quality.
    KPI

    Measuring Performance

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    Why do you measure performance?  Well probably the simplest and most common phrase (that I have mangled, but) that you might have already heard is “you can’t fix what you don’t know” or “you can’t manage what you don’t measure” or even “what you measure gets done“.  While these are all true in their own way, the real reason that you should be thinking of measuring performance is from a proactive standpoint and not a reactive one which is what these all are.

    You want to measure so that you know what is GOING to happen – which is extremely difficult but also extremely necessary.  By ensuring that your resources are in place and trained BEFORE the customer knows that’s what they want is only going to make your company shine that much brighter!  Put another way – “you measure to ensure you have enough time to adjust”.

    Measuring a project (or for that matter your teams individual (see my post on Annual Performance Reviews) performance) at the end, is often too late.  Constant and continuous measurement and feedback are needed throughout the course of the objective to ensure that you are able to appropriately adjust to any deviations and make the appropriate modifications necessary.  By determining that a project has failed to meet the objectives only at the end of the project you are missing a key step. 

    KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) are a way for you to organize these measurements on a frequent basis and it is key that you share this performance with the staff/teams impacted.  By only reporting UP in the chain of command with regards to KPIs and performance the people actually impacted are unable to adjust their performance appropriately.

    Remember, its a continuous feedback loop just like any other Quality initiative and one of the key pieces of continuous feedback is that failures are fed back into the process as a step in the chain for improvements.
    Customer Experience, KPI

    The 80/20 Rule

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    If you’ve been in Tech Support or Help Desks for any length of time – especially from a management perspective you’ll be extremely familiar with something called the 80/20 rule.  
     
    Put simply it implies that 80% of your calls/contacts are generated from 20% of your issues.  If you are able to focus efforts on clearing up some of that 20% you would have a significant impact on the overall volume that is coming into your center (note, once you’ve fixed the 1st 20% – then you can do a similar analysis on the next batch and so on!).  
     
    Now, while this is true from an “on the floor” perspective there has actually been a study done on this and this “rule” is actually known as the Pareto principle (sometimes also called the “law of the vital few” or the “principle of factor sparsity ).  While these names all sound really fancy – I think the 80/20 Rule is most descriptive of what it is.
     
    The principle was actually suggested by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto.  Vilfredo observed that in 1906, 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.  Surprisingly for Vilfredo Pareto, he observed a similar distribution among other countries and as such developed this guideline.
    • More recently, this was seen in a 1992 UN Report that showed that 20% of the world’s population actually controlled 82.7% of the world’s income!
    • Microsoft also noted that by fixing the top 20% of the most reported bugs, 80% of the errors and crashes would be eliminated.
    • The Pareto principle was a prominent part of the 2007 bestseller The 4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss which I have mentioned in a previous post As Tim Ferriss recommended, by focusing your attention on those (20%) factors that have the greatest impact to your income (80%) you will obtain and receive a greater “bang for your buck!”
    So as you can see, some significant analysis has gone into determining whether or not this “rule of thumb” actually applies and while it’s not always 80% on the dot, it is close enough for you to use in determining what you should be looking at from a management perspective.

     You can really think about the 80/20 rule from two different directions. 
    1. What are the negative impacts that you need to address?  As I’ve mentioned earlier, 20% of your issues are probably causing close to 80% of your interactions with your customers.
    2. 20% of your customers are also probably spending the most (80%) with you!  
    3. 20% of your employees are also probably the most (80%) productive! etc…

    Dealing with the first option is reasonably easy – hopefully, you can categorize your interactions with your clients utilizing any halfway decent CRM system like Freshdesk for example. 
    Once you know why you are being contacted, sort it out to see how many of each type (you should be doing this anyway!) and start with the top 20 types of problems.  
    Measuring & Dealing with the second should be even easier … if you do not know who your top 20 biggest customers are … SHAME ON YOU! … they are your bread and butter and you should ensure that you are on extremely good terms with them.  

     The same applies to your #3 of course – your staff themselves.  Reward your high performers with raises/bonuses and other perks.  These are the people that keep the ball rolling and I’ve mentioned previously the impact of losing highly trained staff have on a business.

     Best of luck using the 80/20 rule in your business … it’s a good one – keep it close to heart!

    Continue reading The 80/20 Rule →

    Helpdesk, KPI, Service, SLA, Teams

    What is a Helpdesk?

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    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.
    KPI, Planning

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

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    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, Planning

    KPI’s and the Importance of Measurements

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    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.

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