What does it mean to “Deliver The Gold Standard Of Technical Support”? Simply put it means that you are delivering Support that is the measuring standard that all others are striving to provide. You are the best at Support and what you do in your technology space. It does not matter if you are providing the Support in-house, or partially outsourced, or fully outsourced. In this blog I will review some of the basic building blocks needed to work toward achieving and maintaining this standard.
First, there are four main pillars of focus that are critical when working toward this standard. The four main pillars are
- Providing Best In Class Employee Satisfaction,
- Providing Best In Class Customer Satisfaction, which assures
- Best In Class Client Satisfaction, and finally
- you must have Best In Class Corporate Growth & Profitability.
Focusing on these 4 key pillars and setting up an internal management structure that assures that you not only measure these key focus areas, but you also have a process management framework that assures you Analyze, Align, Assess, and take Action on these focus areas. This will be your organization’s road map to The Gold Standard Of Technical Support. In addition, to focus and a closed loop process management framework there must be a success trend. What I mean by this is that all of these measurements must have a consistent improvement trend. The goal would be to assure that you have at least one year of consistent performance on these four pillars. You will have setbacks, but as long as you have a solid process management framework in place you can take proper corrective action.
So you might be wondering What is Best in Class Employee Satisfaction. What this means is that you are actively tracking and improving (1) Absenteeism, (2) Attrition of Leadership & TSEs, and (3) have a formal Employee Satisfaction survey process in place. The goals of these will be dependent on your location, skill-set of employees, and other variables. However as long as you are tracking and improving these 3 metrics quarter over quarter you will have happy and satisfied employees.
So you might be wondering What is Best in Class Customer Satisfaction. What this means is that you are surveying customers at a statistically valid sample size and are improving your customer experience quarter over quarter. Most surveys vary in the number of questions, but usually have a 1 through 5 scoring system. The breakout is typically 1 being very unsatisfied, 2 being unsatisfied, 3 being a neutral experience, 4 being satisfied, and 5 being very satisfied. A typical goal would be to assure that 85% of your customers respond choosing 4 or 5.
So you might be wondering What is Best in Class Client Satisfaction. First you need to be surveying your clients at least on a quarterly basis. Second you need a system setup to log all day to day client dissatisfaction items that come up. The dissatisfaction system should be automated where a Team Leader all the way up to an executive can log a case. In addition you again need to be Analyzing, Aligning, Assessing, and taking Action on what you learn from the Client Satisfaction Survey and the Client Dissatisfaction data.
So you might be wondering What is Best in Class Corporate Growth & Profitability. This is a bit more obvious. To be a company providing the Gold Standard Of Technical Support your company must be growing and be comfortably profitable. Your clients will be more than willing to pay a fair premium based on the high level of support they will be getting when you reach this standard. The Gold Standard of Technical Support is definitely within your organizations reach if you follow the brief road map that I have outlined above.
