Increased Complexity Takes Its Toll
Resolution Time Averages Increase across Channels
Author: John Ragsdale, Vice President of Research, SSPA

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Members Self-Identify as Highly Complex

An excellent illustration of how complexity is impacting the technology industry is the way members classify the products they support. One question on the benchmark survey asks: How would you describe the complexity of the products that you support?

Standard – General business products or applications. Requires product proficiency to effectively support.

Moderate – Increasingly complex products running in a variety of environments. Requires advanced technical and or business skills to provide effective support.

High – Complex application and or operating environment; requires high degree of technical and or business expertise.

The percentage of clients who identify their products as highly complex has grown from 42% in 2003 to 63% today. As seen in Figure 1 below, only 11% of members now identify as ‘Standard.’

Figure 1 Members Increasingly Identify as Highly Complex

As examined in the July, 2006 SSPA Accelerator, “Multi-Channel Adoption Trends,” interaction volumes have exploded in the last 3 years, with the average monthly interaction volume increasing 111% from 2003 to 2006. When this explosive volume meets the tsunami of complexity, technology support organizations find themselves in a “perfect storm” in which:

Each interaction is harder to resolve. With the increased adoption of web self-service, customers are able to easily solve simple questions on their own, and many Chief Service Executives have commented to the SSPA that the easy, “one and done” questions are declining via the phone channel. If web self-service weeds out many of the frequently asked questions, it means the calls to the support center are on average more difficult than in the past.

Existing problem resolution technologies are inadequate. Companies that have made due for a decade with basic knowledgebase and search products are finding that more robust problem diagnostics are needed to resolve a higher percentage of issues, better searching tools are necessary for agents and customers to find desired content, and stronger tools for creating and maintaining content are required to meet the needs of knowledge engineers. Without investing in newer eService capabilities, more issues are escalated to Level 2 and 3.

Service levels decline over time. With the average complexity of each call increasing, problems take longer to solve. Without additional investments in training, staff, and/or technology, first contact closure rates decline and case resolution time increases.

To illustrate the impacts of this perfect storm, SSPA benchmark data shows that since 2003, there has been a decline in first contact closure rates and percentage of issues resolved in 24 hours, for both phone and electronic channels (eChannels). As seen in Table 1 below, first contact closure for phone calls dropped 6% from 2003 to 2006. The increased volume of eChannels is a likely co-conspirator in the 12% drop of first contact closure for eChannels, from 52% to 40%, during the same period. As problems become harder to solve, self-service success rates suffer as well. Table 1 also shows that successful visits to self-service are also declining, down from 48% to 44%.

Table 1 Service Level Metric Trends

Accurately measuring the success of self-service is difficult, and most companies rely on metrics such as customers that answer “Did this information resolve your issue?” prompts, or even make assumptions that customers who navigate away from the website after accessing content found what they needed. When assessing the success of your self-service site, remember that:

Existing metrics are only guidelines. eService vendors say that on average, only 2% of self-service customers answer the ‘useful/not useful’ prompt, and they could be the most frustrated customers, so even those results may not be statistically accurate. And making assumptions about customers that navigate away is definitely risky: customers may leave the site in frustration, not satisfaction.

Vendor supplied metrics must be questioned. Companies using “on demand,” or Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors maybe be provided self-service success metrics as tracked by the vendor. Before accepting those metrics at face value, ask that the vendor explain how the metric is calculated. Most vendor metrics assume customers that navigate away from a content page found what they needed—not a safe assumption to make.

Different customers have different needs. When conducting after interaction surveys to gather self-service feedback from customers, survey different titles and skill levels at enterprise accounts, or different age groups and geographic locations for consumers. Self-service technology is not one size fits all, and your existing tools may not meet everyone’s needs.

eChannel Issues Have Significantly Longer Resolution Times

With increased adoption of non-phone channels, customers already familiar with the level of service received via phone expect that same level of service when using other channels. Yet the SSPA Benchmark data shows that phone calls still receive a faster response and resolution time than incidents reported via phone and the Web. As seen in Figure 2 below, while resolution time for issues resulting from phone calls averages 2 hours and 35 minutes, email incidents average 6 hours and 20 minutes for resolution; web incidents 5 hours and 18 minutes.

Figure 2 Response and resolution times by channel

There are some logical reasons for extended eChannel resolution times. For example, tickets submitted electronically are often missing key pieces of information required for an agent to resolve the issue, and with multiple customer contacts necessary, resolution time lengthens. However, the data shows that the actual time elapsed between initial response and resolution is not that different by channel (2 hours 15 minutes for phone, 2 hours 31 minutes for email, 2 hours 53 minutes for web), indicating that eChannels take a back seat to phone, priority wise, but when electronic tickets are assigned to an agent they can be resolved in roughly the same time as phone incidents.

THE SSPA RECOMMENDS

Total interaction volume will continue to grow across all channels, even phone. To maximize effectiveness and encourage use of self-service channels, companies should:

Speed up the content publishing process. When a customer has a problem or question not addressed in the knowledgebase, adding this content as quickly as possible is critical should other customers encounter the same issue. One enterprise hardware company found their publishing process for new content took as long as 90 days. Reoccurrences of the same problem will force agents to ‘reinvent the wheel’ each time to diagnose and solve the issue until the new content is live. Take a close look at the current process and participants, and streamline steps and allocate resources where possible to cut the time from content submission to go-live.

Leverage analytics to identify content gaps. eService products with strong search technology can proactively identify content gaps based on questions asked by customers performing self-service for which there was no clear matching content. While some eService products will only provide you with a list of questions the customers ask, products with advanced search technology, such as InQuira, identify content gaps at the concept level by understanding the intent of customer questions.

Ask your eService vendor for a tune-up. RightNow Technologies, a CRM vendor with eService roots, offers free tuning sessions for customers to evaluate the effectiveness of their Web self-service implementation and make recommendations on how to improve effectiveness. Check with your vendor to see if similar programs are offered, as successful implementations lead to positive customer references and vendors should be willing to partner with customers to ensure success.

Investigate voice self-service. While more common in high volume consumer industries such as telecommunications (check your remaining cell phone minutes), consumer banking (account balances and activity) and travel (flight times, upgrade status), voice recognition technology is enabling a wider range of customer issues to be automated. While complex diagnostics for technical support may yet be unrealistic for voice self-service, speak with vendors like Tellme Networks or Genesys about which of your common problems may be easily addressed via voice self-service.

Create ongoing marketing campaigns to encourage eChannel adoption. It is pointless to spend a lot of money to build a ground breaking web self service site, and then never tell customers it is there. If you want to migrate customers to channels other than phone, involve your marketing department. Have a launch to entice customers to try new service options. Place reminders about self-service in every customer newsletter, print campaign, and bill. And don’t forget to add a recording to remind customers of the self-service options while they are holding for an agent.