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

Reactive to Strategic...The Help Desk and Customer Service Journey

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:40:44 -0700

Help desks and customer service organizations that have successfully journeyed from being reactive to being strategic generally follow a similar path. Often the steps include the following:

> Develop a call reduction strategy. The most common approach to call reduction is root-cause analysis; a process designed to eliminate the source of key problems. Root-cause analysis, which ought to be undertaken monthly, categorizes calls by type and technology and then discovers common causes for those calls. Next it acts to diminish the number of future calls by refining user training or the development of new online help screens. For example, one help desk found that new employees called the help desk an average of four times per month, while those who had worked at the company for a year or more averaged only one call per month. By providing a half-hour IT orientation to all new employees, the help desk reduced call volume from new users by 60 percent. But don't overlook the obvious. Another help desk reduced incoming calls by nearly 5 percent just by informing callers how their problems had been solved. The next time users encountered the same problem, they were able to solve it without the help desk.

> Free agents to work on call abatement projects. Since abatement projects are the heavy-lifting task of call desk centers, they need to be undertaken well out of earshot of ringing phones. The most common excuse for agents being unavailable for planning is they are trapped in 911 mode. To release agents for call abatement, try to assign additional resources to staffing on the phones or else be prepared for a short-term increase in the call volume can be reduced. Contractors can be particularly useful as a stopgap resource for answering telephones while regular agents focus on call reduction efforts.

See the following link for a great White Paper on the topic:

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

Needs Assessment Help Desk and Customer Service Saas

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:35:53 -0700

A lot of software licenses are not used and become "Shelfware" because the needs of the purchaser changed or the software never delivered what the purchaser expected. Often, the purchaser thinks that they know what they need as far as feature requirements, but after implementation they can not get their employees or customers engaged to use the application. Also, in time their needs change and the product the bought has not evolved to meet their changing needs.

In summary, there is a lot of risk in purchasing software. Consider if the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model may help your organization minimize risk and decrease the lifetime TCO of an application.

Request a Free Needs Assessment your Help Desk or Customer Service Software Requirements

Web Help Desk Software & Customer Service Software- Total Cost of Ownership

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:30:58 -0700

Giva provides some valuable tools to help you better understand the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of owning software applications and comparing it to the SaaS approach.

The purchase price of software licenses and annual maintenance fees you pay a vendor are a very small component of the true TCO.

Hardware, databases and related purchases are important to consider, but they are not as large as the actual labor required to manage and maintain the application and the infrastructure. Gartner Group estimates some of these costs and Giva will provide them to you in an Excel spreadsheet if you request a TCO analysis.

Labor is an enormous component that is always over looked and universally underestimated due to human bias. It's often hard for IT people to admit that an outside vendor can do a better job and be more cost effective. The fact is that SaaS vendors have enormous scale and efficiencies of building, managing, maintaining and hosting an application for 100,000s of users vs. your company trying to do the same for your IT department which is of course many many orders of magnitude smaller.

When your CIO says, "we have plenty of IT people to do all this work", respond by saying, "Let's look at your list of IT projects for the last 12 month...are you ahead or behind schedule?" Invariably, you will find that they are significantly behind schedule on many key revenue impact projects because the IT dept is spending a lot of time just to keep the infrastructure up and running instead of focusing on strategic projects that impact/generate revenue to the company. As you well know, a help desk/customer service organization does not generate revenue for a company.

Request a Free TCO Comparing Your Help Desk or Customer Service Software vs. Giva

Build or Buy a Help Desk/Customer Service Application? Part 3

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:47:34 -0700

Here are the Last Few Reasons You Should Purchase a Help Desk/Customer Service Software Package.

Of course, with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) can save you a lot of money and SaaS vendors can get you up and running faster than deploying software on your own infrastructure. Our main point is that building your own help desk or customer service application really makes little economic sense. There are many products that are commercially available. Surely, there are a number of products that can meet your needs. We see many companies live to regret trying to build and maintain a product on their own.

Reason Four: You will have access to patches, updates, user groups, updated documentation, and technical support when the product is released and when you need it.

Reason Three: No matter how good the training, and no matter how great the documentation, sooner or later you will need to call the vendor’s technical support. This need usually arises at the worst possible time and inevitably involves a customer. Developers are busy people and you have to ask yourself if the in-house developers will be available when you need them. Most vendors have help desks that are open 24/7 and are literally waiting for your call.

Reason Two: Updates. A purchased product is continually updated, debugged and readied for your immediate use. With an in-house product your staff will usually be debugging the update after it is installed. This is not fair to your staff, your customers, or your boss.

Reason One: You can purchase, train on and implement a purchased product in a fraction of the time it takes to design, code, document, train on and implement an in-house product. A software development project can easily take on a life of its own and by developing an in-house product you are competing with paying customers. Unless you work for one of those unique companies mentioned earlier and unless your help desk can command the resources it needs, when it needs them, the chances are that in-house development will be prohibitively costly, time consuming, frustrating to train on and difficult to implement.

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

Build or Buy a Help Desk/Customer Service Application? Part 2

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:27:15 -0700

In a poor economy, we get this question a lot. What should I do, build or buy a help desk or customer service application?

Here are the Top Ten Reasons You Should Purchase a Help Desk Software Package:

Reason Seven: Help desk software packages can be easily customized to meet your support operation’s unique needs. You won’t get this capability in an in-house product without a great deal of extra work and time.

Reason Six: The product you purchase will have voluminous documentation that is both technical and end-user oriented. It may even have CBT disks available and will certainly have on-site as well as off-site training programs available to train your staff. An in-house product will rarely have such documentation.

Reason Five: The documentation and training will be at least three times better with a purchased product than it will be with an in-house product. You will not have to compete with the internal documentation and training staff that get paid to serve paying customers.

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

Build or Buy a Help Desk or Customer Service Product?

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:16:55 -0700

In a poor economy, we get this question a lot. What should I do, build or buy a help desk or customer service application?

What Do You Get With A Purchased Product?
The short answer is, a lot. Help desk software vendors spend millions of dollars and months of effort in determining what features go into their products. In addition, their sales, marketing, and technical support staffs have an intimate knowledge of help desk operations, trends, and requirements.

Here are the Top Ten Reasons You Should Purchase a Help Desk Software Package:

Reason Ten: The product already exists and you won’t have to spend time, money and political capital negotiating with a development executive to liberate already scarce resources.

Reason Nine: The vendor you choose has an understanding of how help desks work and what they need in a software package. Developers don’t always have this understanding and explaining it to them can take time, and time is money.

Reason Eight: Almost every help desk software package in the world can be purchased in modules. You can add and delete modules based upon your business needs and budget.

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

Help Desk and Customer Service Metrics

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 07:57:13 -0700

Here are some metrics to measure your help desk and customer service operation by:

What kind of help desk or customer support organization are you running? As you can see the cost per call is significantly different. This will impact the Return on Investment (ROI) of your help desk or customer support organization. Of course, the strategic stage help desk has the highest customer service and the highest first call resolution rate. Customers also call the help desk or customer service organization less often as the strategic organization has taken many proactive steps to reduce call volume by addressing the root cause of calls to the help desk or customer service organization.

Reprinted from CIO Magazine

Here are two great White Papers on the topic:

http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/customer-service-best-practices.htm

http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/help-desk-best-practices.htm

Help Desk and Customer Service Software Return-On-Investment (ROI)

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 07:16:24 -0700

Giva may be able to significantly increase the Return-On-Investment (ROI) of your current Help Desk or Customer Service call tracking and reporting system. In order to help you determine this, Giva hired an independent 3rd party to build a Best Practices ROI Model that will enable you to compare your current help desk or customer service software system to Giva. We need some inputs from you so that we can run them through our ROI calculation model.

After you provide some inputs, Giva will perform an ROI analysis and our professional services organization will summarize the results for you in a custom report. We know that you will find this ROI Analysis Report very helpful to justify whether Giva will generate a higher ROI than your current system.

Please take a few moments to read Steps 1, 2 and 3 and quickly review the entire Excel and let me know if you have any questions before you go off and start the exercise.

Open up a request and ask us for the Return-On-Investment (ROI) Excel tool at http://www.givainc.com/sales.htm

Knowledge Base Best Practice Features

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 08:22:01 -0700

If you are looking for a knowledge base for your help desk or customer service software, consider these features:

Knowledge Base Record Spelling and Grammar Checker

This provides for a spelling check on all proposed knowledge base records to maintain the usability of the knowledge base software system.

Knowledge Base Record Action Notification

As knowledge base records moves through the approval process, designated approvers are automatically notified via email.

Knowledge Base Source Tracking

Defines the source of the knowledge base record such as a service group and agent. This is used to measure who is creating knowledge base records.

Knowledge Base Record History Field

A knowledge record history field keeps a permanent record of all changes to the record as well as who did the change as well as the date and time of the change.

Search Scope can be Widened or Narrowed

If the knowledge base search results are not satisfactory, you can widen or narrow the search scope to generate new knowledge base records without having to start the search from the beginning.

Here are two great White Papers on the topic:

http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/customer-service-best-practices.htm

http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/help-desk-best-practices.htm

Help Desk and Customer Service Knowledge Base Best Practices

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:16:55 -0700

Are you looking for help desk or customer service software?

When looking at the Knowledge Base module here are a few features to look for:

Automatic Customer Profile Creation

When a new customer requests someone contact them, besides creating a service request, the knowledge base software application automatically creates a new customer profile.

Capability to Designate Knowledge Base Records as "HOT" Knowledge Base Records Bypassing Approval

Some knowledge base records need to be available immediately without going through the approval process. A knowledge base proposer can designate any record as "HOT.” The knowledge base record is then immediately available for others to utilize. Later, if the knowledge base record is approved, the "HOT" designation can be removed.

Assign a Scope to a Knowledge Base Record

Record Scope is a field used for grouping knowledge base records for a single service desk, multiple service desks and parent/child companies.

Knowledge Base Record Redundancy Avoidance

When knowledge base records are initially proposed and also during the approval process, the knowledge base software automatically searches all existing approved knowledge base records to identify possible redundancies. This allows the knowledge bas record proposer or approver to consider these possible redundancies.

Here are two great White Papers on the topic:

http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/customer-service-best-practices.htm

http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/help-desk-best-practices.htm

Software-as-a-Service or Traditional Licenses?

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:23:17 -0700

Here is a great white paper with a comprehensive look at the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis any decision maker should complete before making a choice between a SaaS or a traditional software deployment.

The key cost drivers for any software implementation are the cost of the software application, the hardware required to run the application and the people services required to design, deploy, manage, maintain and support the application.

> Traditional software pricing is limited to the cost of the software application, in most cases an upfront fee in exchange for a perpetual user license. It is up to the customer to determine the cost of the hardware and the people services.

> SaaS applications are charged on a subscription basis. The subscription fee includes the cost of the software application, the hardware and the people services.

This difference in pricing models can make an apples-to-apples TCO comparison “tricky”.

Software and hardware costs are well understood but the people resources associated with traditional software applications are often underestimated or omitted in a TCO analysis. As a result, the usage driven subscription cost of SaaS applications can seem to be the more expensive solution over a multi-year period. However, when these people resources are correctly associated, deploying a SaaS application becomes – in many cases – the more cost effective option.

This white paper helps in better understanding all the different cost factors and includes a TCO calculation for you that will help influencers and decision makers to better estimate the true TCO of a SaaS versus a traditional software deployment. The ultimate goal of this paper is to educate the reader that in some cases traditional software applications remain the right choice, but in other cases deploying SaaS applications provide a better business case.

Please see http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/Save-Money-with-Software-as-a-Service-SaaS.htm

How to Buy the Right Help Desk & Customer Service Software (SaaS)

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 04:01:11 -0700

Help desk and customer service software empowers businesses to take a more proactive approach to addressing customer issues. Companies can eliminate the inefficient, manual procedures that cause lags in response times, and solve customer problems as quickly and efficiently as possible. But, selecting the right help desk or customer service software solution can be complex and confusing. How can you make the process easier?

Outline Your Needs

Build a list of your key requirements before you begin calling in vendors.

Start by talking to key stakeholders and end users to determine what their goals and challenges are, and what kinds of tools they need to achieve or overcome them. This will help you identify the help desk or customer service software features you can't live without.

Select a Vendor

Once you know what kind of help desk or customer service software you're looking for, you can begin evaluating providers.

Talk with your colleagues about what products they are using to achieve success. Review the Web for customer case studies to find the best-matched vendors. Sometimes the perspectives of industry analysts can be helpful, but remember that they do not use the products that they discuss with you. Wouldn't it be smarter if you found very happy customers who you have needs in common. Conduct an in-depth assessment of each product, and compare it to your list of requirements. The best way to accomplish this is to have a very clearly detailed Needs Assessment that asks insightful questions about features and functionality that your stakeholders need. Once you've identified those vendors who can meet all or most of your needs, review their histories, support track record, financial statuses, and speak with their customers.

Request Demos and Trials

Product demonstrations are a standard part of the sales process, but make sure you see more than just a canned or pre-recorded one. Request a customized demo that highlights those features on your checklist, and simulates processes within your current help desk or customer service environment.

But remember, a demonstration - no matter how in-depth - will only provide you with an overview of a help desk or customer service software package's capabilities. If you want to really see how the solution will work, you'll need to trial the software for 30 days before you commit to buying it. Will the vendor provide unlimited support during the trial without cost to make sure that you are well taken care of? If not, you need to ask yourself, "what will happen once I become a customer if they do not want to support me now while I am still a prospect"?

Here is a great Excel Tool that will help you document your needs and requirements. See http://www.givainc.com/free-needs-assessment/index.htm

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

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:48:58 -0700

Given the state of the worldwide economy, it is timely to now to review how much money your company can saved with Software-as-a-Service. Why is Software as a Service (SaaS) so popular? Is your company making budget reductions, but want to keep providing exceptional levels of customer service and support? SaaS can help you reduce costs while giving your team a product that is generally easier to learn and use with minimal training and not require any IT resources to support. Every time you go to your IT department to ask for assistance, they probably say they have too many project that will directly impact revenue so they cannot help your with customer service software selection, deployment and ongoing maintenance. With Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), you do not need resources from the IT department to get your project started and keep going.

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. 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?

Here is a great White Paper on the topic.

The title is "Saving Money with Software-as-a-Service". See http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/Save-Money-with-Software-as-a-Service-SaaS.htm

Customer Service Software Key Features

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:18:28 -0700

Customer Service Software can empower businesses to improve and enhance their critical post-sales support operations.

+Boost Productivity and Improve Your Customer Service

The ability to rapidly answer inquiries, address issues, and solve problems is crucial to achieving and maintaining the highest levels of customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. Many businesses are turning to customer service software to dramatically enhance their post-sales support operations.

Customer service automation, can significantly improve the productivity and responsiveness of service and support teams by centralizing and streamlining the tasks associated with issue management. Staff members can effectively track and monitor the status of customer problems and related activities every step of the way, from the moment they are reported until they are resolved, to ensure smooth and efficient handling.

With customer service software, support teams can also leverage a comprehensive, yet intuitive knowledge base that provides them with easy access to the thorough and detailed information they need to quickly satisfy customer requirements. This knowledge base not only increases efficiency, it enhances collaboration across product development, quality assurance, field consulting and support, and other departments by allowing them to share timely and accurate information as it becomes available.

+Let Your Customers Help Themselves

One of the most beneficial features of a customer service software solution is its self-service capabilities. With customer service software, customers have convenient, 24 x 7 access to Web-based help, frequently asked questions (FAQs), troubleshooting tips, and product documentation, so they can solve routine problems on their own. If they have more complex issues that require further assistance, they can then report a problem or open a service request or job ticket online.

+Make Better Decisions

Many customer service software packages also include powerful business intelligence capabilities. Supervisors can use reports and analytics to instantly identify and understand the positive and negative trends that impact both help desk operations, and the business as a whole. For example:

Do certain products have above average defect or breakdown rates?
Are customers having difficulty understanding assembly instructions, operating manuals, or user guides?
What new features or functions have clients been asking for?

+Customized for Your Business

Customer needs, common issues, and support processes and related work flows vary greatly from industry to industry and from company to company. Businesses must have a flexible solution that can be tailored to effectively meet their unique and specific requirements. But, as important as this capability is, not all customer service software solutions on the market today are fully customizable.

+A Few More Common Customer Service Software Features

Other common customer service software features include:

Support for multiple communication channels, including phone, Web, email, live chat, and co-browsing.
Dynamic resource allocation that automatically assigns staff members to specific customer issues, based on their current workload, as well as their skills, education, and experience.
Dynamic real-time alerts that instantly notify managers of any potential breakdowns in critical support processes. For example, a supervisor can receive an immediate alert when an unusual or highly-complex problem is reported, or when a customer issue goes unresolved for an extended period of time.

Here is a great White Paper on the topic:

http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/customer-service-best-practices.htm

Benefits of Help Desk & Customer Service Software

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:53:04 -0700

How Your Business can Benefit from Help Desk and Customer Service Software

Summary: The benefits of help desk and customer software are indisputable - improved productivity and cost-efficiency, faster response times, increased customer satisfaction, and more.

Help Desk & Customer Service Software Deliver a Superior Customer Experience

In today's highly competitive business environment - where customers are more demanding than ever before and are less loyal- companies must strive to deliver world-class support in order to maximize client loyalty, retain market share, and ensure ongoing profitability.

Automation can provide companies with the tools they need to deliver the kind of superior and convenient service that customers require. With help desk and customer service software, they can build stronger, longer lasting relationships and gain a solid competitive edge.

What can your company can do with a help desk or customer service software solution?

+Provide Faster, More Convenient Service

With help desk and customer service software, companies can offer faster and more convenient support to customers - and as a result, give a significant boost to satisfaction, loyalty, and retention rates.

Response times will be dramatically reduced and problems will be resolved as rapidly as possible. Additionally, help desk and customer service software allow customers to choose from a wider range of communication options - such as the Web, email, live chat, and co-browsing - so they can obtain the support they need in the manner they most prefer.

+Increase Staff Productivity

Help desk and customer service software automates the entire end-to-end problem reporting and resolution process, so each and every customer issue is handled efficiently and effectively. Staff productivity is optimized because the manual, redundant, and time-consuming tasks that can cause lags in response times are virtually eliminated, and activities are better coordinated across on-site and remote field support teams.

+Improve Information Flow

With help desk and customer service software applications, all data related to customer problems is stored in a central location for fast, easy access.

This helps support staff stay more informed about common questions and issues, and how to most successfully address them, so they can be more proactive and responsive. Additionally, help desk and customer service software can eliminate the communication bottlenecks that can cause issues to be mismanaged or "dropped". And, it provides much needed insight to other departments who impact customer satisfaction - including product development, manufacturing, fulfillment, and quality assurance.

+Reduce Support Costs

Service and support operations can become quite expensive, especially when they involve dispatching field consultants to remote locations.

With help desk and customer service software solutions, companies can increase their first call resolution rates (a key performance indicator and industry benchmark for support operations), and minimize the number of issues that require on-site support and assistance. Additionally, because help desk and customer service software streamlines, coordinates, and automates related activities, it can reduce the redundancies and errors that waste both time and money.

+Boost Employee Morale

Some help desks and customer service operations support not only customers and external business partners, but employees as well. Many companies maintain internal help desk teams, who are on call to handle issues with IT systems and more, so staff can perform their jobs as effectively as possible.

Studies show that companies who are equipped to quickly resolve both technical and non-technical employee problems are likely to experience higher morale, improved productivity, and lower turnover rates.

Here are two great White Papers on the topic:

http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/customer-service-best-practices.htm

http://www.givainc.com/white-papers/help-desk-best-practices.htm