The FT Word – January 2007

The FT Word

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Welcome

Happy New Year and welcome to the January 2007 issue of the FT Word. Please forward it to your colleagues who are interested in support issues. Subscription information is at the end.

Topics for this month:

New Year resolutions for the business of support
Attrition: what’s the right number to aim for?
Recent published articles of interest

New Year Resolutions for the Business of Support

January is a time to start fresh – whether it’s reorganizing closets, showing up at the gym, or trying something new at work. Want a resolution that lasts beyond January? Make one for your team and announce it to everyone so you have a built-in support group (ha!) Here are some suggestions from clients and colleagues of mine, from very easy to a bit more challenging…

1. Am I making clear promises to customers?

Sorry, “You’re on Standard Support” does not qualify as a proper customer promise until and unless the customer knows what to expect, including

whether and how to get help in self-service and with assisted support
the hours of operations for assisted support
how quickly a response will be forthcoming
what the high-level process looks like once engaged with a support staffer
how fixes are created and delivered

If you cannot point to a clear description of your services it’s time to create one. This is not a difficult task: make it a Q1 goal.

2. Am I optimizing revenue?

If you charge for support, you must pay attention to revenue regardless of whether support is sold from inside or outside your organization (and, in my view, especially if it’s sold outside.) Here are some questions to stimulate your thinking.

Do customers and salespeople have a clear description of the benefits of support?
Is support pricing coherent?
Are discounts managed properly?
Are renewals solicited promptly and persistently?

Improving the renewals process (last point above) is rather straightforward, if time-consuming. Revamping support offerings is a more involved process, particularly the rollout to the sales team and to customers. That’s a good reason to start the effort now.

3. Is backlog out of control?

If there’s a dirty not-so-secret in support centers, it’s backlog: issues that just don’t get resolved and may not get worked much either.

Do you review backlog regularly (at least weekly, more often in low-complexity support centers)?
Are many cases in the backlog just sitting there with no activity for weeks?

Most backlog problems arise because no one is paying attention to it. With a concerted effort from the management team, you should be able to see quick progress – the trick is to keep the effort alive for the long run.

4. Is knowledge management an oxymoron?

Here’s another long-term effort: knowledge management.

Do you have a system to regularly create new documents based on the experience in the support center?
Does it take less than a week to publish documents? (Really, it should be that quick.)
Is there a backlog of requests to revise documents?
Do customers and staff report being unable to find documents they know exist?

The last point betrays a tool issue. The other 3 stem from process issues, although a better tool may help. Don’t rush to a tool solution (and you may find that your capital budget is already set for the year in any case): work on process first.

5. Are staffers just biding their time until they find something better?

What’s your turnover rate? If it’s significantly higher than other support centers your size, something’s not right – and it’s costing you plenty. Do you know why people are leaving? A little investigating may be in order. Most turnover problems are due to poor hiring practices, with a close second being management issues. Don’t spend energy enticing staff to stay if it’s the wrong staff or the management team needs a change. Fix the root cause.

7. Are we underpowered?

The loveliest support tools won’t solve process issues, but they sure help get the job done. Since your capital budget for the year is probably set, concentrate on exploring requirements and potential candidates.

8. Am I getting the right metrics?

If you are completely satisfied with your metrics, you are in the minority, judging from what I hear and see from customers.

Are you reasonably certain that the metrics you are collecting are based on solid data? (Tip: any data that relies on manual input is potentially tainted.)
Are you collecting at least a few outcomes metrics? (cases closed, say, as opposed to customers called)
Do you get metrics in a timely manner (ideally, immediately after the period they are measuring has ended)?
What are you doing to use online support as a voice of the customer channel? An easy item to try is to ask customers for input on missing documents.

8 ideas are probably too many: tackle one or two now and save some for later. On the other hand, if you feel that you are doing perfectly well on all 8 points, please write me a note and we can feature your group in an upcoming issue.

Attrition: what’s the right number?

Thank you to Bob Galley for suggesting this topic.

Simple question, difficult answer: what’s the “right” number for attrition and how do we know that we are doing well?

Attrition rates depend greatly on where your support center is located. Some locations have really high turnover (Bangalore, or Bengaluru as it’s being renamed, comes to mind). Generally speaking, if the other support centers in the area are experiencing high turnover it means that you’re operating in a seller’s market and you have a lot of competition for your jobs – so you will have to work harder at retaining staff.
Less-complex support centers have higher attrition rates than complex support centers. The barriers to entry (and therefore to exit) for less complex support are much lower. Attrition rates of 100% are common in low-complexity support but would cripple a high-complexity support organization.
As the saying goes, people don’t leave a company, they leave a manager. Even in difficult circumstances – with high workload, competition from other centers, and limited compensation – people will stick with a competent and humane manager. If you have very different attrition rates in different teams, figure out what the managers with low attrition are doing and replicate it elsewhere.
Departures within the company are different from departures outside the company. Many support centers are, in effect, hiring farms for the rest of the company. Nothing wrong with that, although you will have to organize your hiring and training to accommodate high turnover.
A great way to look at turnover is to contrast tenure with rampup time. So if it takes a support engineer a full year to become proficient (I’m not talking here about the initial training regimen but about the time it takes to gain appropriate experience) you should aim to keep staff for 2 years or more. If it takes a couple of months, then anyone who stays 6 months is a success.

Finally, find out why people are leaving. A short exit interview will let you know whether it’s pay, family relocation, managerial issues, or too many angry customers. Take advantage of the fact that departing staff is usually quite open about issues.

FT Works in the News

It seems I forgot to list a few articles in past newsletters:

SSPA published an article entitled From the Roman Marketplace to the Web—Managing Useful Customer Forum in SSPA News back in September. You can read it online at http://www.thesspa.com/sspanews/_06sept/article3.asp
Sbusiness published an article entitled Knowledge Management for Savvy Support Managers in its Fall 2006 issue. If you’d like a copy and you are not an AFSMI member just drop me a note.
SSPA published an article entitled Creating an Honest ROI Analysis in the December issue of SSPA News. You can read it online at http://www.thesspa.com/sspanews/_06Dec/article4.asp

Curious about something? Send me your suggestions for topics and your name will appear in future newsletters. I’m thinking of doing a compilation of “tips and tricks about support metrics” in the coming months so if you have favorites, horror stories, or questions about metrics, please don’t be shy.

Regards,
Françoise Tourniaire
FT Works
www.ftworks.com
650 559 9826

About FT Works

FT Works helps technology companies create and improve their support operations. Areas of expertise include designing support offerings, creating hiring plans to recruit the right people quickly, training support staff to deliver effective support, defining and implementing support processes, selecting support tools, designing effective metrics, and support center audits. See more details at www.ftworks.com

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