The Four Secrets of Highly Successful Agile Support Centers

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1 A White Paper from Productivity Associates, Inc. (PAI) The Four Secrets of Highly Successful Agile Support Centers How Flexibility and Customization Lead to More Profitable Strategic Operations Productivity Associates, Inc.

2 Executive Summary Situation: Choosing Low Cost, Commodity Support Providers Lead to Greater Business Risks Due to a recessionary business environment, many businesses are now viewing their support center as a necessary expense, and as a result attempt to replace their internal help desk with a low cost, outsourced support facility simply to save money. Organizations that are unable to see the direct relationship between customer support and revenue growth and continue to choose support providers based primarily on cost may also see that such a decision leads to a greater number of business risks and an indirect and unwelcome impact on their bottom line. Problem: The Failure to Build a Proper Business Case without an Engaged Business Partnership Low cost support providers that have a limited role in their client s business fail to build strategic partnerships, which makes the fulfillment of larger business objectives more difficult. This myopic perspective fails to build a proper business case that is absent a 360-degree view of all areas of the business associated with the support center. Without a proper business case, these businesses fail to achieve both their strategic and financial support objectives today and into the future as the role of the support center evolves. Due to their low-cost operating model, commoditized support providers also create detached stakeholders who are not fully engaged with customer support needs. This generates frequent turnover (often 100% per year) that can severely limit the strategic potential of the support center in building longterm customer relationships. Solution: Agile Support Partners Provide Greater Engagement and Higher Quality Support Agile support partners apply the principles of a strong business partnership, and as a result are in a better position to handle the complex customer/user communication issues that often plague many commodity help desk/ support providers. As trust grows, agile support partners review all aspects of the support relationship, including discovery of current process pain points, making recommendations for improvement along the way. As an engaged and transparent business associate, agile support partners use a combination of sophisticated information management tools that provide real-time access and transparency to information, along with employees that enjoy high job satisfaction to build stronger client relationships. As a result, agile support partners are better equipped to thoroughly understand their client s business needs while providing cost-effective, customized, and flexible services to meet those needs. Result: Better Quality Support and Customer Relations Leading to Higher Revenue Opportunities Through a stronger sense of ownership at the help desk level, agile support partners are able to drive a higher quality internal employee culture that improves the overall user support experience for the client s internal users and their external customers. By producing stakeholders instead of emotionally detached commodity workers, agile support partners provide a higher degree of support center quality, which results in stronger business relationships, repeat customers, stronger participation in the service model and user productivity, fewer displaced resources, greater efficiencies, and opportunities for constant improvement. 2 White Paper

3 Introduction: The Impact of the Recession on Enterprise Support Center Strategies Market-leading organizations are realizing that the help desk/support function is the front end of the firm and can drive strategic results for the core business. The impact of today s economic recession has caused every organization to closely scrutinize its operating expenses and realize the most efficient services at the lowest possible cost. Such cost containment strategies are now an important consideration when enterprises outsource their help desk function to support both internal employees and external customers. Most businesses view their support center only as a necessary expense, and as a result attempt to replace their internal help desk with an outsourced support facility primarily to save money. However, other, savvier organizations are now realizing that their help desk is a source for revenue growth and are choosing to outsource to a partner provider that can actually save them money while driving strong strategic value at the same time. Organizations that are unable to see the direct relationship between customer support and revenue growth and continue to choose support providers based solely on cost may see that such a decision has an indirect and unwelcome impact on the bottom line. According to a study from the American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ASCI), the offshore support activities of 150 North American companies were analyzed between 1998 and The ASCI found that these organizations not only saw a decline in their overall customer service scores, but they also experienced an associated drop of roughly 1% to 5% in market capitalization during that same period, depending on the industry that the company was in. 1 Market-leading organizations are now realizing that the help desk/support function is the front end of the firm and can more effectively drive strategic results for the core business. The quality of these support services can play a significant role in customer service experiences, productivity, sales growth, and ultimately profitability. Ironically, companies that have embraced the strategic role and potential of the outsourced help desk have found that they are in a stronger position to weather an economic recession as a result of these leveraged resources. Today, businesses that need greater revenue stability are turning to flexible, outsourced support centers that act more like business partners than commoditized services. By leveraging these agile support partners, businesses are able to respond to a wider spectrum of customer and employee support needs. Such enterprises also see lower support costs and stronger customer relationships that can lead to new business opportunities and growth. This white paper will compare low-cost, commoditized support providers with agile, outsourced help desks that can become strategic business partners within an enterprise organization. Using these agile support partnerships, businesses can refocus their internal IT resources toward more profitable business opportunities that provide help during recessionary business periods. 1 MIT Sloan Management Review, July 2008, How Offshore Outsourcing Affects Customer Satisfaction PAI - Productivity Associates, Inc. 3

4 The Four Mistakes That Businesses Make with Commodity Support Providers Is the fundamental role of today s enterprise support center to provide uncompassionate answers by the book to frequently asked questions and/or technical problems at the lowest possible cost? Or is the help desk instead supposed to be a place where users with questions can find helpful, capable advocates who are able to solve problems or address issues for a proper, timely resolution? Unfortunately, organizations that apply the first approach make four critical mistakes that impact other areas of the business. These are identified as: 1. Failure to build and maintain a proper business case. Companies that see their support resources as having a limited role fail to build partnerships, which makes the fulfillment of larger business objectives more difficult. This myopic perspective fails to give a 360-degree view of all areas of the business that are associated with the support center. For example, selecting support vendors who do not deeply probe into underlying business issues (such as repetitive inquiries and requests) leaves companies unable to align their resources to support emerging business initiatives. Tying actual support performance metrics to business case projections also Large commodity becomes more difficult. Without a proper business case, these businesses fail to achieve both their strategic and financial support objectives today and into the future as the solution support providers often evolves. require clients to adapt 2. Lack of customization and flexibility. Many technical professionals love to tout that well-worn expression, No one ever got their internal corporate fired for hiring IBM. This implies that a larger vendor represents a lower risk decision and is more capable of meeting culture to the vendor s strategic business objectives. Unfortunately large, commodity rigid tools and programs. support providers often require clients to adapt their internal corporate culture to the vendor s rigid tools and programs. This one size fits all model lacks customization and flexibility, which creates significant problems such as data conflicts, poor application integration, and employee push-back that can have a severe impact on productivity. The resulting conflict increases business risks that lead to higher indirect costs and lost sales opportunities. 3. Absence of partnership and transparency. Unfortunately, in most enterprise organizations, internal IT systems track a limited number of service-related metrics. At the same time, most outside help desk/ support providers share an equally limited number of meaningful customer-related service metrics. The absence of these transparent support metrics causes an organization to operate blind, without the strategic guidance it needs to solve existing support problems and to meet operational and customer-oriented objectives. The failure of the support provider to produce valuable real-time metrics results in ineffective decision making that maintains the perception of the support center as an operational cost center, not a strategic profit center. 4. Failure to build enthusiastic stakeholders. One of the shortcomings with low-cost, commoditized or offshore support providers is the frequent churn and burn employee turnover that is part of their low-cost operating model. This frequent turnover (often 100% per year) creates detached stakeholders who are not fully engaged with customer support needs. Less engaged vendor stakeholders results in fewer repeat sales, negative word of mouth, and weaker participation in service/support programs for their clients. This alone can severely limit the strategic potential of the support function. Given the strategic impact that support centers can have on revenue, productivity, and growth, it becomes critically important for enterprises to select flexible support providers that are more akin to business partners than to commoditized services. Such agile support partners can quickly respond to new business requirements as they become apparent, which makes them valuable assets, especially during slower economic periods. 4 White Paper

5 The Agile Support Partner: The New Model for Value-Oriented Business Success Most people, even some within the support industry, view help desk services as boring and commoditized. Many see this line of work as a generic function that can be replaced by any other similar provider, with a minimal impact on results. To leverage the help desk/support center into a profit center, there must be a fundamental shift away from the traditional view of support as a generic, cost-oriented commodity to that of a strategic, value-oriented business partnership. By viewing the help desk function in this larger role, enterprises can leverage their support resources in bold, innovative ways that can have a profound, positive impact across the entire organization. Many executives believe that a true business partnership should include: Stability. Remaining engaged in the business over the long term. Flexibility. Accommodating changes within the organization in response to corresponding needs of the external business environment. Customization. Providing unique services that are helpful in meeting specific customer/user needs and requirements. Personality. Bringing a positive attitude to the work environment to foster greater enthusiasm, team spirit, and increased productivity. Agile support centers act like true business partners that help to generate higher ROI and improve bottom-line performance. Disclosure. Providing full disclosure of all fees, costs, and procedures, as if those in the partnership were co-owners equally engaged in the business. Responsiveness. Responding immediately when problems, issues, or trends are spotted, while protecting the organization from harmful external business risks. These attributes are most often associated with agile support partners. These partners apply the principles of a strong business partnership, and as a result are in a better position to handle the complex customer/user communication issues that often plague many commodity help desk/support providers. Agile support partners also liberate internal IT personnel from mundane tasks, allowing them to focus on more strategic projects that support profitable corporate objectives. As a result, agile support partners are able to generate a higher ROI, thereby improving performance and bottom-line profitability. Agile support partners overcome four challenges that are commonly associated with commodity help desk/support providers: 1. Agile support partners build better business cases. Agile support partners treat the issues of fees, costs, and profit projections on an up-front basis, providing full disclosure to their customers without the need for frustrating price negotiations. By using a cost-plus pricing model, both the business and support partners PAI - Productivity Associates, Inc. 5

6 can make more informed financial decisions with their joint service model by seeing an accurate assessment of all expenses related to the support function without the perception of a hidden financial agenda. As trust grows, agile support partners review all aspects of the support relationship, including discovery of current process pain points, making recommendations for improvement along the way. For example, if call volumes indicate that requests from users for password resets are frequent or requests for assistance with application installations are on the rise, agile support partners can initiate new processes that facilitate those procedures. This removes the burden from the internal IT department that would otherwise be required to fulfill these requests. This generates a higher ROI, an essential element in building a better business case. 2. Agile support partners provide greater flexibility and customization. Agile support partners leverage shared resources such as proprietary knowledge-base tools and logical decision-tree processes that can be customized to each client s unique help desk requirements. This provides the best of both worlds: a fully customized help desk solution specifically tailored for the business and one that also reaps the benefits of the associated cost savings. Since agile support partners use the same set of knowledge tools as their clients, they are able to use one platform, one set of data, and one common work flow to produce a consistent and efficient set of results. This concept of a shared resource can also be extended to other critical help desk functions such as joint control of process and knowledge management, integration of support teams using common telephony and CRM systems, SLA management against joint or published metrics, and shared tier one resources for simultaneous service delivery to multiple customers. Agile support partners leverage shared resources that can be customized to each client s unique help desk needs. 3. Agile support partners provide stronger partnerships and greater transparency. Agile support partners provide greater transparency by declaring all costs and profits up front, along with real-time pricing models on a cost-plus basis. This ensures that clients are fully aware of all expenses that are incurred in support of mission-critical business initiatives. Agile support partners also use sophisticated information management tools that provide real-time access and transparency to information. These tools providing clients with full drill down capabilities to analyze individual call activity and validate actual historical call performance metrics, along with real-time (MP3) call recordings, on a 24x7 basis. This allows clients to dynamically assess both the quality and quantity of work being performed by both agile support workers as well as internal client employees. Access rights to this data along with detailed reporting can also be fully controlled on a granular basis to ensure complete data security. 4. Agile support partners are happier and build better business relationships. Agile support partners understand the relationship between a happy workforce and stronger client relationships. Agile support partners typically provide superior compensation, a greater number of incentives, higher quality training, career advancement, and progressive HR employment practices and policies that empowers a higher quality of life for their help desk employees. By producing stakeholders instead of emotionally detached commodity workers, agile support partners provide a higher degree of support center quality, which results in stronger business relationships, repeat customers, stronger participation in the service model and user productivity, fewer displaced resources, greater efficiencies, and opportunities for constant improvement. Through a stronger sense of ownership at the help desk level, agile support partners are able to drive a higher quality internal employee culture that improves the overall user support experience for the client s internal users and their external customers. 6 White Paper

7 Conclusion Businesses that are seeking lower cost and higher effectiveness with their support centers can have it both ways. Rather than using low-cost, single-focus support centers, they can choose agile support partners who succeed by thoroughly understanding business needs and providing cost-effective, flexible services to meet those needs. Agile support partners provide three bottom-line benefits for enterprises that require a highly effective help desk/ support function: 1. Business Simplification. Flexible, agile support partners reduce the complexity normally associated with managing an internal help desk via a more rigid, outside commodity support provider. 2. Fewer Costly Business Risks. Agile support partners provide greater transparency to important trends with the help desk/support function, dramatically reducing business risks and their associated costs. 3. More Productive Relationships. Happier worker stakeholders who are part of an agile support partnership build stronger relationships that lead to more productive internal users and more engaged external business customers.

8 A White Paper from Productivity Associates, Inc. (PAI) Productivity Associates, Inc. About Productivity Associates, Inc. (PAI) Productivity Associates, Inc., (PAI) specializes in providing customized technical support and customer contact services that meet the unique challenges and needs facing individual companies. Our flexible, architected solutions and a la carte approach enable us to do what s best for your business. By doing so, PAI optimizes your company s efficiency and performance, reduces cost, improves your customer service, maximizes your resources, and allows you to focus on your core business. The PAI approach recognizes that no two companies are the same. That s why we begin each process with a comprehensive conversation focused on your company s objectives, issues, and problems, and then discuss how we can adopt a tailored solution to address these matters. Using this exchange, PAI can build a better business case and a superior work product for your help desk/support requirements. Our adaptable, Web-based platforms; extensive call center and help desk experience; ability to listen; and commitment to being your partner in business give PAI the clear advantage in the outsourcing field. For more information on PAI and any of our agile help desk/support solutions, please visit the PAI website at contact us via phone at SUPPORT ( ), or ask us a question via at info@gotopai.com. Productivity Associates, Inc Ruffin Rd., Suite #220 San Diego, CA Phone: SUPPORT (800) Productivity Associates, Inc.