HDI

Continuous Improvement

I was fortunate to recently have a white paper selected as the featured HDI member download entitled Pete’s “A List”: A Roadmap for Continuous Improvement.

Download a_roadmap_for_continuous_improvement_petes_a_list.pdf

The focus of the paper was a call to action for a Service and Support Leaders to implement a Continuous Improvement (CI) program. To instill a culture of Service leadership and innovation that drives continuous improvement through a cultural mindset of ownership ¾ calling on all employees along the value chain to own their own results, their teams, and their ongoing role in driving change for the for the right reasons. I created Pete’s “A List” ¾ A roadmap for Continuous Improvement. The following are the ten clear, concise common-sense ideas to help you drive CI deep into your organization:

1. Accept

2. Ask

3. Align

4. Assess

5. Act

6. Achieve

7. Announce

8. Affect

9. Adopt

10. Adapt

I am interested if anyone has brought any of these 10 common-sense CI ideas into their environment and what the result has been? Please share these experiences and lessons with us?

Thank you, Pete

IT Professionalism

My esteemed colleague Ric Mims and I are authoring an HDI Focus Book on IT Professionalism.

I am reaching out to the HDI community for quotes and lessons learned from your experiences around the topic of professionalism. I have attached the article that Ric and I did that will be used as the introduction to the Focus Book. Download the_essence_of_professionalism.pdf

In short, we have seen the eroding of professionalism in the IT service and support arena that we believe is impacting our ability to work more closely with the business. More importantly, it is impacting our ability to reach our potential in terms business credibility and respect. Ric and I would like position the Focus Book as a workbook for managers to help themselves, help their teams and help their IT organizations change the way in which they represent and conduct themselves as they build relationships across the organization.

The areas we are looking to cover are environment/culture, career, values, ongoing education, communication, customer service, image, relationships and work ethic. I value and respect the opinions, experience and thoughts of the HDI community.

Please take a moment to share with us a quote, a story, a lesson-learned, experience or your perspective on Professionalism.

Thank you! Pete

What it takes to be the best…

I had the pleasure of introducing bestselling author, Jason Jennings, at the HDI conference last week. If you were at the conference and attended his general session, you now understand what it takes to be one of the best. It is exciting to have this insight but if you are like me, you know that most people running corporations today have not seen Jason speak. If they had, so much would be different.

Jason talked about his research of the 10 most successful companies, growing revenue and profits by at least 10%, for more than 10 years consecutively. If you think about that – you realize what an accomplishment that is. I was surprised there were 10 to be honest. But the common factors of these organizations are revealing on both a personal and professional level, and I have found myself applying his research to all that I do today. I found his research so compelling I had to share his four discoveries with you. If I didn’t I would not be serving the HDI membership as I have committed myself to do. Here they are:

The world’s best performing companies and leaders turn what they do into a CAUSE. Not to be confused with a mission or vision statement that is concocted in a boardroom by people that would be challenged to understand what the company actually delivers, but more in the vein of; we can change the world, people’s lives, the course of history with our product if we get it into the right hands. Causes are pursued with passion; by everyone within the organization.

The world’s best performing companies and leaders master the art of letting go. It’s not about hanging on to yesterday’s success, or protecting the status quo, or protecting the egos of upper management, it is about changing as needed. When you know how to let go, you are more likely to be open to change.

The world’s best performing companies and leaders get everyone to act like owners. Each employee understands how their position and what they do ties to the revenue of the company, can make key decisions on the companies behalf, are rewarded based on the value they create, and are held accountable.

The world’s best performing companies are headed by leaders who see themselves as stewards. These leaders understand they are servants to the cause, abandon power and dominion over others, work to preserve natural and human resources, are nurturing, authentic, mentoring, and selfless. This is the discovery that is most revealing to me because when you have leaders that understand this concept, the other discoveries fall in place.

These leaders create the only thing that can never be stolen from a company , and creates the greatest competitive edge for a company; culture. When an employee walks out the door to go to work for a competitor; they can share, trade secrets, the relationships they have created with customers, the secret formula, but they can’t take the culture. Culture is the most difficult competitive advantage to create, but it is also the only competitive advantage that can’t be stolen. This is powerful, really powerful.

Think about how often upper management gives lip service to culture, how much is spent on training and motivation, with little success. It has little success because only leaders that understand the power of stewardship can create a cultural advantage. And cultural advantage translates into profitability and more importantly, the opportunity to change lives.

Jason Jennings changed lives at our conference; at least mine. Think about your role as the leader of your support organization and the opportunity being a steward creates for you. Who wouldn’t jump on the chance to change a person’s life for the better? Heck, let’s change the world…

Rich Hand

Check out Jason Jennings web site to find out more about what great leaders and companies have in common…

Nine Things Senior Management Should Understand About Support Centers and Incoming Calls

by Robert Last* for HDI®

   1. Calls bunch up from time-to-time. Telephone calls arrive randomly and have peaks and valleys. Planning for a workload that arrives randomly makes support centers different from other departments in an organization. Customers (callers) decide when they want to call, and despite some general patterns, support analysts have to respond when the customers need them. Staffing and productivity tasks have to be considered in this context.

   2. There is a direct link between resources and results. Certain levels of resources are required to reach a specified level of work. If it takes 36 first level analysts to achieve a service level of 90 percent with an ASA of 20 seconds for a given call load, then that is what is required to staff the support center. Incremental improvements can be achieved with training, good organization, and excellent leadership, but they cannot achieve long-term, long-lasting productivity improvements. In this case, doing more with less is counter-productive.

   3. "Staffing on the cheap" is expensive. If analysts are so busy that they cannot routinely leave their phones, they will burnout and leave for other jobs. In addition, average handling time will increase as analysts find ways to take fewer calls out of exhaustion. Customers will complain about long wait times and customer satisfaction will suffer.

   4. Service level has no industry standard. There is no one service level that is applicable to every support organization. Each organization places different values on customer service, and each will have different staffing costs, network costs, and numbers and types of callers. Determine a service level that makes sense for your organization according to your caller's needs, your objectives, and your cost structure.

   5. When service level improves, productivity declines. Although it may appear counter-intuitive, there is logic to this phenomenon. The higher the service level, the longer the analysts are in their seats taking calls. At a certain point, fatigue sets in and productivity declines; tired people make mistakes and look for ways to lighten their workloads.

   6. You will need to schedule more staff than the base staff required. Unless every single analyst has absolutely no other job responsibilities, never goes to lunch, training, the restroom, or goes on vacation or becomes ill, then the support center will need more people than is indicated in the results of staffing calculations. It is important to recognize that schedules should realistically reflect the tasks that can keep analysts from taking calls.

   7. Purchase the best hardware and software possible. Hardware and software make up less than 15 percent of a support center's budget over the long term. Telecommunications hardware and software, problem tracking software, knowledge base software, headsets and amplifiers, and training equipment are critical tools for a support center and it makes sense to buy tools and systems that provide the "biggest bang for the buck."

   8. Telecomm and IT people should provide service and support to the support center. Support centers do use a great deal of technology, but they are customer-facing operations, not technology operations. These systems should be managed from within to maximize their use in supporting customers with the support of telecomm and IT departments.
      
   9. Summary ACD reports don’t tell the entire story. Interpret ACD reports for what they are worth; they provide one snapshot of the activity in a support center and need to be considered in the context of the overall operation of a support operation. Only a Balanced Scorecard can provide the comprehensive information needed to convey the details of a support operation.

* Adapted from Call Center Management On Fast Forward, Brad Cleveland and Julia Mayben,
Annapolis, Maryland: ICMI Press, 1997, Pages 146-148.

To read more about incoming calls and the support center, see HDI's focus book, The Executive's Guide to Understanding Technical Support by Robert Last. This book is available on the HDI eStore at www.thinkhdiestore.com.