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Reducing Costs and Increasing Efficiency through Excellence in Support
As trade barriers diminish and organizations increasingly turn to automation, the cost of supporting a more diverse customer base continues to rise.
Tangible costs such as support staff and computer hardware are easy to quantify, but inefficiencies and lost business through the failure to adapt to change are at best an educated guess. Implementing a flexible, scalable support solution enables you to meet change head-on, eliminating any potential for lost business, increasing process efficiency, and ultimately managing your cost.
Just a few years ago, the geographical reach for the majority of companies extended from a local customer base to regional, or possibly national. With the advent of the Internet, more companies are embracing online, global commerce as a primary or secondary business model. While this adds significant value through increased revenue and brand recognition, it also attracts a comparable increase in support costs. Examples of tangible, quantifiable costs are:
- Additional support staff
- Computer hardware and software
- Communications infrastructure
Intangible Costs
Electronic commerce has no boundaries, no international borders. Further, adapting to changes in the business climate adds additional pressure throughout the management structure, pushing the need to trim costs and often employees. The people and processes that once supported your “corner shop” customer base frequently become inundated and overloaded. This gives rise to decremental service and process efficiency, which in turn increases your intangible costs:
- Lost customers, resulting in decreased business volume
- Damage to your reputation and/or brand names (e.g. word of mouth)
- Inefficiency and greater cost through failure to adapt and evolve
- Higher staff turnover due to increased workloads and low morale
Previously, organizations have attempted to remedy the issues faced in service and process management in one of two ways. Either they increase the workload requirements on their existing helpdesk and support systems, or they simply resort to automated telephony response systems. Unfortunately, the former results in a greater volume of frustrating “call center” conversations and subsequent protracted resolution. The latter is an option that, if not implemented from a customer viewpoint, is a sure-fire way to alienate a customer base.
Organizations that recognize and address support, attacking these fundamental issues at an early stage, are frequently the ones that gain the competitive edge. Building a comprehensive solution as a significant element of your business plan and systems infrastructure ensures both pro-active and responsive support. Even at a late or evolving stage, however, this holds true and is infinitely better than maintaining the status quo.
Distributed Support - Harnessing the power of Corporate Knowledge
What truly works is a third approach, a blended solution that matches your corporate model, one that offers flexibility, scalability, and is responsive to change. In today’s Internet-driven, 24x7x365 business days, it can often be a fine line between your outside perception and inside reality. Implementing a solution that is customer-centric and employee-focused ensures the pendulum swings the right way.
I would like to share a fact that continues to astound: organizations that are considering or have implemented helpdesk or call center solutions simply do not quantify or call upon the depth of knowledge available within their organization. Rather, they rely upon helpdesk “agents” to analyze issues, research requests, and complete to resolution.
Whether small, mid-sized or large, your organization already has a knowledge base, literally waiting for you to tap into it. It is the accumulation of knowledge gained by your personnel carrying out their normal business activities. The solution implemented simply has to harness and promulgate that knowledge in a timely, inclusive manner.
It is important to note that this is not limited to the personnel within your Information Technology department. Every employee in every department has knowledge of at least one of your organizational processes, whether that is customer requirements, supplier schedules, or HR procedures for instance.
Tapping into this wealth of knowledge enables you to reap the benefits of distributed support, namely:
- Ultra-fast turn-around of requests
- Higher percentage of accuracy for first-time resolution
- Greater employee contribution to the success of your organization
- Significantly higher levels of customer satisfaction
10 Steps you can take to Reduce Costs and Increase Efficiency
The following is, by no means exhaustive, a list of steps your organization can take to combat change and implement excellence in support.
1. Ensure that you have a formal support process in place.
This is absolutely critical, and is regardless of the size or age of your organization. Even if the published process is as simple as calling a designated person, the efficiencies gained accumulate over time.
2. Implement a helpdesk and service management software solution.
Whatever the size of your organization, you will immediately benefit through deployment of a top quality solution. For example, CobbleSoft makes it very easy to afford and deploy COIGN Enterprise for small businesses all the way through to global corporations.
3. Employ a solution that enables you to build a comprehensive knowledge base.
The fact is that it is never too early to begin capture of corporate knowledge for competitive advantage. Relying upon “Joe” to resolve the same issue every time works just fine – until Joe happens to leave your organization.
4. It is not always necessary to add extra staff to your helpdesk.
Your helpdesk (service desk, call center) should serve as the single point of entry for the creation, logging and tracking of requests and issues. Look upon your helpdesk as your centralized information repository and focal point for communication, and not necessarily as the people that provide actual resolution. Through the deployment of self-service and comprehensive workflow, it is even possible to achieve a successful virtual helpdesk.
5. Distribute and de-centralize support
Assign issues and requests to the most appropriate person or people within your organization. Your helpdesk solution should be able to achieve this either as a manual assignment or via automated workflow. Prompt and direct assignment means a faster turnaround for accurate resolution.
6. Employ a 100% web-based support solution
Wherever you are: on the road, at a customer location, or at home, accessing your helpdesk and knowledge base is that much faster and convenient. Total accessibility becomes a reality, resulting in rapid response and greater levels of satisfaction.
7. Institute comprehensive self-service options
Provide a mechanism for your user-base to create, update and track their issues and requests themselves. This immediately reduces the need for dedicated helpdesk staff while evoking a greater sense of customer care. This choice represents potentially the greatest return to an organization, both in terms of cost savings and of process efficiency.
8. Provide online FAQs, documents and downloads
Negate the majority of calls to your helpdesk through the provision of online FAQs, downloads, and documents. Identifying a solution ones self is analogous to the stereotype of the male driver refusing to ask for directions when lost: the majority of users simply prefer to identify a solution, or have one provided for them, without having to call the helpdesk.
9. Offer search capabilities
As a backup to canned or provided solutions, enable users to search your knowledge base. Text search capabilities against your corporate knowledge base will often yield the desired answers, thus negating the need to call the helpdesk or raise a new ticket.
10. Communication and Feedback
Excellence in support necessarily requires active communication at every stage of the process. Providing online, real-time visibility along with automated notification to all involved parties means that issues and requests are dealt with promptly and accurately. Requesting feedback or opinion via surveys ensures the constant alignment of expectations with actuality.
In Summary
Implementing excellence in support is an ongoing yet positive, affordable step for any organization, and one that offers significant returns. Initiating any combination of the above steps or procedures will enable you to realize time and cost savings, both tangible and intangible, resulting ultimately in a positive impact on the bottom line.
About COIGN Enterprise
COIGN Enterprise is a next-generation service and process management solution, enabling organizations to step outside of the box to gain and maintain the competitive edge. Seamlessly providing the savings and efficiencies outlined in this article, COIGN Enterprise is your fastest, affordable route to excellence in support.
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