The challenge for many organizations is how to implement centralized customer support. An experience I have had in my career a few times which was probably the best experience I have had in my ITSM Career. So much so, that I felt the need to actually say something about this lost art of making customer support “personal.”
In many ways, the experience of personal customer support should feel more like a conversation with someone known who generally wanted to sort out your request or issue and you me on your way. No transfer, no extended hold times, and a commitment to own the issue the customer was having.
Unfortunately, this experience is often never the case with companies today. The disappointing thing is also that many wrongfully assume that simply having a group of individuals charged with answering phones, chats, or emails to provide assistance somehow qualifies as customer support. I refrain from giving this group a title until I have taken a moment to share my interpretation of the numerous ways that these groups are referenced. It is surprising to me that many still do not understand the differences.
I have ranked these titles in order of what I view is actual value-add with regard to actually helping someone with 1being least value and 4 delivering the most value.
- Call Center
- Help Desk
- Support Desk
- Service Desk
Allow me to break these down a bit further:
Call Center – The goal is to field as many calls as possible, record the call, and get just enough information to re-direct the customer to the appropriate end-point. The hope is that the landing zone for this customer is a destination that can truly assist the caller with whatever they are calling about. Operator or Traffic Cop. Either way, there is really no real understanding or concern for why the customer is calling.
Help Desk – This group has just enough information to be dangerous. Not really trained on the art of customer service, the Help Desk is heavily dependent on either the individual’s experiential knowledge to assist the customer or has a knowledge base of sorts to guide them in helping the customer get what they need. If that knowledge is not at hand, then the experience reverts back to being a Call Center where the call is either warm-transferred or worse, the issue is escalated with the dreadful “Thank you for calling, someone will get back to you shortly.” In my experience, the focus of management is more on call volume and call duration. I have seen supervisors actually scolding analysts for staying on calls for longer than 5 minutes with a customer. If you can’t fix it fast, get it out and take the next call. Shameful.
Support Desk – This is where I cut my teeth years ago in IT Service Management. There was no getting away from the customer. It was sitting on the floor embedded within the business customers where there was no escape. There was no deferring the call or putting people on “Penalty-Hold.” Customer Service was a priority because the customer was often standing at the desk. These groups are generally focused on one area and empowered through process or tools to actually resolve issues on-the-spot. In addition, they are usually knowledgeable in one key area or component, so First Call Resolutions were usually very high. The downside with this is that scalability was definitely an issue. It really isn’t sustainable as the customer base grows.
Service Desk – Finally, the Atlantis of the support world. That rarely experienced group which everyone either hopes to experience or desires to manage. Where analysts are trained on not just the technology, but also customer service soft skills on a regular basis. At their fingertips is a robust knowledge infrastructure that is up-to-date and, more importantly, current. In addition, they have access to senior personnel within reach to leverage when those tough questions come in that require a quick mute to turn around an answer or solution to the customer. And at the end of it all, the same person that welcomed me into their world is the same person that ushers me on my way with exactly what I need. That is what I experienced 4 days ago.
This all centers around the corporate culture and how valuable they feel their clients are to the bottom line. Internal employees or customers are often left to their own devices as a lesser concern to management. Successful companies are committed to their customers and their experience regardless of being an internal customer or an external customer. In the former, fostering loyalty and retention.
Others are either focused on the bottom line and forcing the customer to conform to internal processes by piping them through either a catch-and-release system or simply re-directing traffic across numerous speed bumps and traffic stops.
So if you are reading this, it might be a good idea to look within your own organization and the value your customer service desk provides and determine what it is you want them to be. For me, I will always strive for the Service Desk. Only then can you really build a relationship with your customers that drives the type of loyalty that the top brands of the world enjoy. And that is why business IS personal, or at least it should be.
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