The Verghis View
Global Service Delivery Newsletter
April 2008

The Verghis Group is a trusted advisor to senior executives
and customer support executives on service and support strategies.

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IN THIS ISSUE:

* No more (support) tiers!
* Next workshop
* Blog posts
* Upcoming Events

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NO MORE (SUPPORT) TIERS!
by Phil Verghis
President, The Verghis Group, Inc.

Ah, is there any part of the service experience that is more reviled by savvy customers* or by upwardly mobile support staff than the dreaded ‘tiered’ model of support? It made sense back when our customers didn’t know much about technology, and we knew best. When we first built these models, we put friendly but clueless support people on the front line to protect expensive resources (who often were the reason the problems existed in the first place) from ’simple’ questions.

From a customer’s point of it, the tiered model is horrible. They’re always forced to start at the bottom answering basic questions. There is no acknowledgement of their expertise or the context of their query. For example, all calls are treated pretty much the same, whether they are calling because they can’t print a document to read on the plane, or if they’re having trouble printing a proposal for a multi-million dollar project that is minutes away from the submission deadline. Every caller has to jump through the same hoops until someone determines the context and urgency of your issue.

From the staff’s point of view, the tiered model is treated as a necessary rite of passage. Traditionally, rookies had to spend a certain amount of time dealing with repetitive, low-level questions, then either defect to another group at the first opportunity, or if you survive, move up to Tier 2, which offers more interesting, less routine work.

One of the emerging best practices in support involves getting rid of tiered support for live calls completely. In this emerging model, callers who need assistance are connected with a highly skilled generalist, someone who understands both your business and the context of your call. He or she is paid just as well as the experts they may escalate to, because their skills are as just highly valued by customers. These professionals need to know a lot about the customer’s context and bring the right level of resources to resolve that particular issue.

I call this type of support ‘Savvy Support.’

To accommodate this change to a ‘just in time’ model, support tools must deliver more than just traditional CRM touches. To connect with people who have talents and interests not encompassed by their job description or title, these tools must also layer in context and social networking aspects as well as nuanced linguistics capability. This ’savvy support’ approach will force us to break away from the ‘if this person has a title they must be good’ mentality and embrace the ‘everyone has talent, most of it is not apparent in titles and traditional organizational charts’ mode of finding out who has the right skills that can be applied at the right time to the right issue.

This Savvy Support model works both for the customer and the support team. The customer gets a knowledgeable advocate who can help them resolve issues on the first call (if they even need to speak to a person). Support staffers win because they love to solve problems, rather than be enforcers of procedures and rules. This model is exceptionally customer friendly because the important metrics are things like customer impacted minutes, not internal efficiency metrics like time to answer.
However, a couple of prerequisites are required for this approach to work.

* The first prerequisite is leadership, because conventional support wisdom must be turned on its head. Leaders will need to work with HR and other departments to implement changes in compensation, reward and metrics.
* The second prerequisite is a support team that relishes solving new problems, rather than becoming complacent. It will no longer be enough to be good at handling routine (or known) problems. In the Savvy Support model, recurring issues are ruthlessly eliminated and fixed so they don’t reoccur.
* The third prerequisite is a solid organizational culture of sharing knowledge, such as Knowledge Centered Support.
http://serviceinnovation.org/ourwork/kcs.php)

Are you ready to learn how to get out of your comfort zone and smash your tiered support model? Call me at 617.395.6613 or toll-free at 800.494.9142. Another way is to attend my upcoming workshop (see next item).

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* No, we aren’t yet talking about maintenance fees; I’ll save that for another article.

** It will not only be web-based, but also, in a Back to the Future moment, voice-based. Tens of millions of people are not able to read English-only support on the web.

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NEXT WORKSHOP

Savvy support is just one of the topics covered in my completely revamped Be the Voice of the Customer workshop, which will be held June 5 in an elegant boardroom just outside Boston.

You’ll learn how to earn respect (which you probably already do well) then demand respect on behalf of your customer. If there is one workshop you attend this year, this should be it.

As always, the workshop will be kept intentionally small for close, personal attention. It is a fantastic value at less than $500. Cost includes a buffet breakfast and lunch, as well as a signed copy of my book, The Ultimate Customer Support Executive, on which the workshop is based.

To receive $50 off the first registration from each organization, use courtesy code TVG281. For more details click: http://www.verghisgroup.com/consulting/be-the-voice-of-the-customer-workshop/

Flying in and need help with hotel arrangements? The conference center has made arrangements with local hotels to provide a complimentary shuttle to and from the workshop. Just call me and I’ll be glad to put you in touch with them.

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BLOG POSTS

Since the last issue of this newsletter, I’ve written and posted blog articles on a number of topics of interest to support professionals. I won’t reproduce them here, but if you are interested, be sure to subscribe to the blog via a RSS feed.
http://www.verghisgroup.com/feed/

* Prediction Markets for Service & Support
http://www.verghisgroup.com/2008/04/11/prediction-markets-for-service-and-support/
* Enterprise Mashups
http://www.verghisgroup.com/2008/04/01/mashups-anyone-doing-anything-interesting/

Stretching out:
In my blog, I posted notes about two groups that reprinted an article from my last newsletter, Perception is reality, but what about the other way around?

One is Steve Simpson, a prominent, highly respected Australia-based consultant.
(http://www.keystone-management.com/index.php?section=1),
http://www.verghisgroup.com/2008/03/25/article-reproduced-in-australian-newsletter/

The other is the MIT CIO Corner.
http://www.verghisgroup.com/2008/04/14/article-in-mit-cio-corner/

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UPCOMING EVENTS

In the next few weeks and months, I’ll be speaking at:

* MIT Enterprise Forum’s Software Advanced Computing group
* Consortium for Service Innovation Executive Summit in Arizona
* SSPA event Santa Clara, CA
* IBM Pulse, Orlando
* 2008 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium MIT campus, Cambridge, MA
* Global Support Summit, Berlin

I hope to see you at one or more of these events. As always, the most up-to-date information about all of my upcoming appearances is on my website at http://www.verghisgroup.com/consulting/in-person/

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CONNECTING

If you are on LinkedIn, feel free to connect up.