SaaS Insights, Software, Customer Service and Help Desk Best Practices | Giva

Calculate ROI Return on Investment for Knowledge Bases-Customer Service

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 03:54:40 -0700

Now let’s examine how we might calculate a monthly return. You may want to modify these to focus on quarterly or annual impacts. When doing so, it is recommended that you adjust your forecasted improvements based on your expectations of the adoption rate and implementation plans.

Reducing the Average Call Time on first contact.
Forecasted improvement: 1 minute
Savings = (Cases per month * Cost per case) * (Improvement / Talk Time for first contact)
Savings = (5000 * $40) * (1/12)
Savings = $16,667 per month

Increasing the First Call Resolution Rate.
Forecasted improvement: 20%
Savings = (Cases per month * Improvement) * ((Escalated Talk Time – Talk Time for first contact) / Talk Time for first contact) * Cost per call
Savings = (5000 * 20%) * ((18 – 12) / 12) * $40
Savings = $20,000 per month

Reducing the Escalation Rate.
Forecasted improvement: 5%
Savings = (Cases per month * Improvement) * (Cost per escalated case – Cost per case)
Savings = (5000 * 5%) * ($150.00 - $40)
Savings = $27,500 per month

Reducing the time required for a new support professional to become productive.
Forecasted improvement: 3 weeks
Savings = ((Improvement * Number of new hirers per year) * (Average burdened cost of a support professional / weeks per year)) / months per year
Savings = ((3 * 8) *($70,000 / 52)) / 12
Savings = $2,692 per month

Redirecting repeat calls to Self-Service.
Forecasted improvement: 10% of current cases redirected to self-service
Savings = (Improvement * Cases per month) * Cost per case
Savings = (10% * 5000) * $40
Savings = $20,000 per month

Developing an ROI for Knowledge Management in your support center depends on your current state, your implementation plans, your team, and your customers. The need for a formal ROI depends heavily on the senior management responsible for the support center. Some companies have minimized this focus because of an existing strong support from senior managers for Knowledge Management. Industry research groups such as Gartner, Forrester, Yankee, and others have well documented the value of Knowledge Management in the support center.

Here are some great White Papers on this topic http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/index.htm

Source: Joslin & Associates

Return on Investment (ROI) for Knowledge Bases Help Desk Organizations

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:51:08 -0700

Once you understand your current state, you must make reasonable forecasts regarding the impact Knowledge Management will have on your organization. The Knowledge Management vendors may offer to assist you with developing your ROI. Some vendors provide well-tuned and complex models. To simplify things, let’s examine how some of the benefits can actually be converted to dollars. Before we begin, we need to make some assumptions about the support center.

While these numbers may vary in your organization, the assumptions provide an example for this discussion.

Assumptions:

Number of cases per month is 5000
Average cost per case is $40.00.
Average cost per escalated case is $150.00
Average burdened cost for a support professional is $70,000.00
Average talk time for first contact is 12 minutes
Average talk time for escalated calls 18 minutes
Time require for a new hire to be productive is 6 weeks
Number of new hires per year 8
First call resolution rate is 40%

Here are some great White Papers on this topic http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/index.htm

Source: Joslin & Associates

Knowledge Management and ROI for Customer Service

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:45:44 -0700

While most support center managers are able to forecast the costs, they struggle to forecast the savings. This is partially because a number of the benefits of Knowledge Management are defined as soft dollars. Companies struggle to put a value on customer satisfaction, job satisfaction, quality service, or even the intellectual capital that is captured into the knowledge base. Another reason companies struggle is because they lack a benchmark. Before you can forecast an improvement, you have to know where you are.

If you would like a white paper on this topic please download it at:

http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/index.htm

Source: Joslin & Associates

Is this interesting information? Please share your thoughts. Thank you!

Knowledge Bases and Return on Investment (ROI)

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:42:52 -0700

Knowledge Management is an ongoing process of capturing, optimizing, and delivering information. It is not a one-time purchase of a new support center tool. Therefore to calculate the Return On Investment, you need to evaluate the cost of implementation and the cost of management. The cost of implementation relates to the initial purchase of software, hardware, communications, training, and services required for the knowledge base to be placed into production for daily use. The cost of management relates to the ongoing costs of maintaining the knowledge base and the infrastructure that was implemented.

If you would like a white paper on this topic please download it at:

http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/index.htm

Source: Joslin & Associates

Is this interesting information? Please share your thoughts. Thank you!

Service Level Management for Help Desk & Customer Service Teams

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 04:21:29 -0700

The effort to create a Service Level Management System is very significant. Organizations that have a system in place have higher customer and employee satisfaction ratings. After all, when every case is considered severity level one and every day is a fire drill, it is hard to enjoy your job for very long. That is why the turnover in support organizations where Service Management Systems are in place is lower than organizations where they are not. So, with higher customer and employee satisfaction, lower turnover, greater productivity and reduced cost, why would you not want to have a Service Management System guiding your organization?

Here is a great White Paper on Implementing Service Level Agreements. See http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/index.htm

Select Implementing Service Level Agreements: "The Critical Element in Service Delivery"

Incident Customer Satisfaction Survey For Help Desk and Customer Service Organizations

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:08:05 -0700

Incident Surveys

Incident surveys are surveys sent to the customer after each case is closed. The advantage to this is that you can capture perceptions immediately and you can link the feedback to both the Service Group and to the Assignee. This is extremely valuable information because both rewards and training can be tailor-made based on the results. The disadvantage is that customers will get usually one survey a week and they might not respond with as great regularity. However, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Incident surveys are preferable to periodic surveys.

Here is an example of an Incident Survey:

It is short and to the point. Always ask for feedback in a free form field to encourage customers to openly share their thoughts. Customers will tell you things that you will never hear from anybody else. This unfiltered feedback is extremely valuable to help you improve customer service. Also, always ask if you would like a manager to call you. When you get a survey like this, it tells you the perspective of the customer service organization. When the customer reads this they will think, "Wow, these guys actually would have a manager call me, if I ask them to." Many will not request a call. Those that request a call will tell you much more then you will ever get from a written survey. Are you ready for these gold nuggets from customer who care enough to want to have a call? Ask probing questions and "peel the onion". See through any emotion and find the "signal" in all the surrounding "noise" and you are on to becoming a master in learning how to get actionable feedback which can be used to effect change in your organization.

Here is a great White Paper on Implementing Service Level Agreements. See http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/index.htm

Select Implementing Service Level Agreements: "The Critical Element in Service Delivery"

Periodic Customer Satisfaction Surveys for Help Desk & Customer Service Organizations

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 04:29:38 -0700

Periodic Surveys

Quarterly or annually a survey should be sent to all customers asking them their general opinions of the support they receive. You cannot ask for specific information when you do periodic surveys because customers only remember their last one or two incidents. Periodic surveys are not a good measurement of how your organization did for the year. Another limitation of periodic surveys is that survey responses will not be specific to each Support Group or person assigned the case. Customers do not really know, or care, what group handles their request.

Here is a great White Paper on Implementing Service Level Agreements. See http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/index.htm

Select Implementing Service Level Agreements: "The Critical Element in Service Delivery"

Customer Satisfaction Surveys & SLAs for Help Desk and Customer Service Organizations

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:26:47 -0700

Checks and Balances

There is a tendency when first starting service level management to focus in on the response performance. It is easy to make the numbers look good. All you have to do is close a case within the time specified without doing anything. While this makes the numbers look good, in the end you will have customers upset. Customers do not really care about the numbers. They only want their issues taken care of to their satisfaction.

Customer Satisfaction Surveys are one way to provide checks and balances to the empirical numbers of SLA compliance reports. Another way to make sure customers are taken care of is to have a policy for re-opening a case if the customer calls in to say they are dissatisfied. You should then have a report that shows re-opened cases. Management should use this for continued training.

Here is an example of a good Customer Satisfaction Survey Report:

Here is a great White Paper on Implementing Service Level Agreements. See http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/index.htm

Select Implementing Service Level Agreements: "The Critical Element in Service Delivery"

Measuring Success with Your Service Level Agreements-SLA Compliance Trends Reports

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 03:25:29 -0700

This report shows SLA compliance over a period of time. Managing trends toward a higher goal can dramatically increase customer satisfaction. This SLA Compliance Trends Report should be part of your standard reports that you study every week.

Example SLA Compliance Trends Report

Measuring Success with Your Service Level Agreements-SLA Compliance Reports

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 03:13:47 -0700

Measuring Success

Success of service level management can only be measured by reporting on what percentages of cases by Severity Level were resolved within the goals of the SLA. The reason that you want to measure each Severity Level is that it is absolutely critical to resolve high severity level cases consistently within the SLA. However, sometimes lower severity level cases can fall outside the goals. In other words, we would like to say that we resolve 100% of all Severity Level 1 cases and 90% of Severity Level 4 cases within the times stated in the SLA. Customers will appreciate the process more when they know that if they are really in trouble, there will be resources there to help them.

Example Service Level Agreement Compliance Report

See Dashboard Reports at http://www.givainc.com/help-desk-dashboard-charts.htm

Here is a great White Paper on Implementing Service Level Agreements. See http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/index.htm

Select Implementing Service Level Agreements: "The Critical Element in Service Delivery"

Service Level Agreements-Examples for the IT Help Desk

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 03:56:39 -0700

Implementing Service Level Agreements takes time and effort. Bring people along with the process. The IT department should be the place to start first. Let your employees (customers) know how they are going to be affected by the new Service Level Agreements. There will be significant benefits. When they really need help, they will be able to get it because your team is going to differentiate between service requests. Is the firm's business halted due to this service request?

Examples of Service Level Agreement

Some Helpful approaches to implementing Service Level Agreements:

1) Implementing within IT first

a) Apply appropriate Severity Levels.

b) Escalate cases according to SLA rules.

c) Report on performance.

2) Send out the formal announcement to employees

a) Purpose of SLAs

b) How Severity Levels are applied

c) Responsibilities of support organization

d) Responsibilities of customers

e) Performance reporting

Here is a great White Paper on Implementing Service Level Agreements. See http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/index.htm

Select Implementing Service Level Agreements: "The Critical Element in Service Delivery"

Implementing Your Service Level Agreements-Customer Service, Call Center & IT Help Desk

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 03:50:52 -0700

Need help in implementing your Service Level Agreements?

1) Pre-SLA. Before you announce the SLA, practice as if you have an SLA. This includes the following:

a. training the Support Center staff,

b. monitoring response time to ensure SLA compliance,

c. resolving cases in accordance with the SLA,

d. setting customer expectations,

e. managing the work flow within the Support Center and between the second level.

2) Training the rest of the department.

a) Weekly meetings. For the first month it is beneficial to meet regularly to find ways to improve communications and workflow, review Cycle Time Reports and exception reports.

b) Service Group Feedback. Ask other service groups to review their cases for the proper Severity Levels. If they find discrepancies, ask them to provide a list of case types and the appropriate Severity Levels. This will be the basis for Support Center training and documentation.

Here is a great White Paper on Implementing Service Level Agreements. See http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/index.htm

Select Implementing Service Level Agreements: "The Critical Element in Service Delivery"

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) For Customer Service, Call Center and IT Help Desk

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:44:10 -0700

Why is Software as a Service (SaaS) so popular?

It's the economics stupid!

Look at the Total Cost of of ownership for required hardware and software for a typical midsized Customer Service department, Call Center or IT help desk. These costs do not consider the cost of the actual customer service, call center or IT help desk software.

It's Green and Cheap!

Also, do you really need to have more servers in your company data center burning up power for server operation and cooling. It's an inefficient use of energy. Ask a SaaS vendor if they use a multitenant architecture. Many Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications are architected from the start as pure web applications and have multiple customers sharing the same underlying server infrastructure. This saves power and cooling resources by leveraging and sharing computing infrastructure. With the price of energy on the trend line up with no end in sight, you might consider forecasting your company's server room electric bill 2-3 years from now. Smart CIOs and VPs of Customer Service are planning for this today.

Take a look at these numbers. Are you surprised?

GARTNER GROUP ESTIMATES- 3 YEAR INFRASTRUCTURE & ADMINISTRATION COSTS OF OWNING 2 SERVERS

SUMMARY:

3 Year Infrastructure & Administration Costs of Owning Servers $259,100

Server Support & Maintenance $208,500
Server Hardware & Software $50,600

DETAILS:

1. Database Server required
One server at minimum is required to run applications. DB server cost estimate is $10,000 for hardware. Plus annual maintenance contract and power 40% of cost per year. Use $10,000 x 40% x 3 years = $12,000
$22,000

2. Database Licenses Required
Microsoft SQL @ $5,500 processor license x 2 processors is $11,000. Plus annual software maintenance is 20%..$11,000 x 20% x 3 years =$6,600
$17,600

3. Web Server required
A web server is required for best performance. Total Web Server cost estimate is $5,000 for hardware. Plus annual maintenance contract and power cost is 40% of cost per year. Use $5,000 x 40% x 3 years = $6,000
$11,000

4. General Server Administration (O/S, Patches, Virus, BIOS, HD...)
Servers and O/S require continuous maintenance. Gartner Group estimates 65 hrs/year @ $150/hr. per server is $9,750 x 2 servers x 3 years is $58,500.
$58,500

5. Daily Incremental and Full Weekly Back-up
Your IT department either performs or must automate data backup. Back-up media storage process and costs associated with off-site storage. Gartner Group estimates $10,000/yr. per server x 2 servers x 3 years is $60,000.
$60,000

6. Required Application & Database Administration
Database and application requires continuous monitoring for performance and storage. Gartner Group estimates 50 hrs/year per installation @ $200/hr. is $10,000 x 2 servers x 3 years is $60,000.
$60,000

7. Man-hours required for upgrades
How many total IT man-hours are required to implement an upgrade (Backup, install)? Gartner Group estimates average upgrade requires 80 hrs @ $125/hr is $10,000 x 1 time/yr. x 3 years =$30,000. This does not included user training.
$30,000

Other costs to consider if you want to own Customer Service, Call Center and IT Help Desk software:

8. Up-front configuration required
Configuration requires outside consulting, significant time and input from your organization. As your needs change, this is an ongoing cost.

9. Frequency of incremental upgrades (Months)
How often does the vendor distribute upgrades? What is your required process to deploy an upgrade?

10. User Training
How much additional administrator and user training is required to gain proficiency with a complex client server application deployed locally vs. an externally hosted application? Do you need to maintain programmers and Crystal Reports experts on staff?

See some helpful Giva White Papers at http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/index.htm

Benefits of Service Level Agreements for Customer Service and IT Help Desk

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 06:54:46 -0700

Every day each one of us experiences the setting of expectations. The following are all examples of setting expectations: setting an appointment time, asking for a delivery time and asking for the wait time at a restaurant or car repair shop. Why should your customer service/call center or help desk organization be any different?

The benefits of an SLA are many for the Internal IT help desk or service desk:

· Improves customer service. You will find that cycle times (time to resolve cases) dramatically decrease.

· Facilitates communication. The Support Center staff will be able to set customer expectations in two ways. First, they can refer to the SLA document for definitions on how priorities are set and the maximum time the support organization has to resolve the case. Secondly, they can refer to periodic performance reports to inform customers how the support organization is actually performing. Average time to resolve is usually much less than the maximum time goal.

· Negotiated and mutually accepted. Since internal customers and the support center jointly created the SLA all customers will more easily accept the SLA.

· Documents agreements. With the SLA posted to your Intranet or in customer handouts, it becomes an “official” agreement.

· Defines procedures. Procedures should be defined and followed by both the service groups and customers. When there is a question or disagreement, the SLA can be used as a written reference.

· Sets standards for customer service. This is a powerful tool. It says “Mr./Ms. Customer, this is how I am going to provide support to you and this is what you must do in order to receive my support. I am ready to be measured on how I do and I will provide everyone with a report on my performance.”

Here is a great White Paper on Implementing Service Level Agreements. See http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/index.htm

Select Implementing Service Level Agreements: "The Critical Element in Service Delivery"

Needs Assessment Tool Simplifies Buying Customer Service, Call Center & IT Help Desk Software

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 18:33:04 -0700

Giva radically reduces the complexity of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) buying process by offering a vendor-independent Needs Assessment Tool that allows companies to make a more rigorous and objective comparison of vendors based upon a prioritized list of feature requirements when buying customer service, call center and IT help desk software.

Customer Service departments, Call Centers and IT Help Desk professionals looking to purchase IT help desk software or customer service software encounter a myriad of problems and obstacles in the purchase process. Giva is offering its new Needs Assessment Tool on a complimentary basis.

This vendor-independent tool allows evaluation teams and senior executives making important business decisions to approach the purchase of software in a much more rigorous and analytical manner. The Tool provides the information essential to negotiate a services contract, avoiding the difficult struggle to understand the differences between software products and assess vague claims.

Here is a quote from a company that used the Excel Tool:

"At Patient Care Technology Systems, we used Giva's Tool to document our requirements across multiple work groups to generate a single prioritized list. We shared this list with a number of vendors and were able to make a more rigorous and defendable vendor recommendation to our senior team," said Jim Kline, Vice President of Client Services, Patient Care Technology Systems. "The Needs Assessment Tool provided the objective criteria we needed to evaluate several vendors on an apples-to-apples basis."

Patient Care Technology Systems used this tool in 2005 to sort through their requirements and select a vendor. They have been a very happy Giva customer for three years. Here is a customer case study. A great deal of their satisfaction is due to the fact that Giva is a great fit for their requirements. Do your homework now to document your requirements. See http://www.givainc.com/case-study/customer-service-pcts.htm for the medical industry success case.

This Giva Needs Assessment Tool can be a starting place and the single document to drive cross-functional consensus of all the departments involved in the purchase of customer service, call center or IT help desk software. We listened to many companies struggle with this process and they asked us for our help. This vendor-independent Tool really helps management teams make an objective comparison of vendors based upon their prioritized list of requirements.

See the following link for free Access to the Needs Assessment Tool at: http://www.givainc.com/free-needs-assessment/index.htm