Improving Staff Development
by Greg Coleman, Vice President Certification, Service Strategies Corporation

The Support Center Practices (SCP) Certification program, the worlds leading quality standard for technology support operations, measures the effectiveness of support based upon a stringent set of performance standards. A key part of the SCP standard lies in the area of training and staff development. The program includes specific elements that cover a variety of staff development activities and training programs required to ensure support personnel have the necessary skills and capabilities to deliver high quality support.

Staff development and training is a critical part of any support operation. Properly trained support personnel can have a significant impact on how customers perceive the quality of support provided by a company. A poorly trained staff can result in longer resolution times for support issues and contribute to customer dissatisfaction. Just as important as technical skills, are the communication, interpersonal and problem solving skills necessary to manage customer interactions. In addition, effective management of staff development programs is a primary success factor for the support organization. Ensuring that adequate resources are allocated to the development, delivery and coordination of staff development activities is crucial. By placing a strong focus on the requirements of the organization, the management team can ensure that staff development needs are aligned with business requirements.

When looking at companies across the industry, we see some interesting trends in the area of staff development. Most companies are doing quite well in terms of providing technical training to their staff. This is no surprise since product specific technical skills are a base requirement for support staff to assist customers. The more advanced organizations have implemented internal technical certifications for support staff to validate their level of expertise and provide a formalized technical development path. Companies are also doing a reasonable job of providing multi-vendor product training for their staffs. Multi-vendor product training is done via several means such as online training and through third party organizations that deliver programs such as Microsoft, Novell, Cisco or other vendor sponsored training and certification programs. These programs enable more effective support of interoperability issues between the company’s and other vendors’ products.

In contrast to the technical training provided to support center staff, soft skills training and problem solving methodology training continue to provide opportunities for improvement across the industry. Many companies offer informal soft skills or customer handling skills training, but there are quite a few that have no formal program or course available for the support staff. The same is true for problem solving methodology training. While some companies have attempted to implement programs to improve problem solving skills, many have no programs at all. Improving the problem solving and customer handling skills of the support center staff can have a positive impact on customer satisfaction and increase the overall effectiveness of the support center. The more advanced organizations specifically include non-technical skills training as part of staff development plans. In addition, they have implemented industry certification of non-technical skills as a means to further enhance the capabilities of the staff. Such programs provide validation of skills development activities and offer curriculum that is targeted towards the support professional.

Staff development planning is another opportunity for improvement seen across the industry. Many companies continue to rely solely on annual performance reviews as a means to set staff development objectives. This method of planning does not provide managers an ongoing picture of how their support staffs are progressing towards meeting development objectives and in some instances sets staff objectives in a vacuum with no regard for organizational requirements. While still representing an opportunity, improvements have been seen in this area. The more advanced organizations are diligently planning the development activities of their staff members and reviewing progress on a quarterly basis at a minimum. They have created specific staff development plans for each individual in the organization and carefully targeted the development activities of each staff member. In addition, as part of the planning process these organizations are creating skills matrices that map the capabilities of the staff to the requirements of the organization and are then planning development activities to fill the gaps. These skills matrices include technical, non-technical and problem solving skills to ensure all facets of staff capabilities are accounted for.

The most advanced organizations in the industry have improved their staff development management practices and are offering more than just technical training to their staffs. They are seeing good returns in the form of improved customer satisfaction, enhanced moral and reduced turnover due to the perception among staff members that the company is investing in their personal development. The Support Center Practices Certification program provides a foundation for focusing support organizations on the key elements of staff development and provides access to the best practices of industry leading organizations.

About the author
Greg Coleman is vice president of certification for Service Strategies. The company is responsible for managing the industry leading Support Center Practices (SCP) Certification program. Mr. Coleman has participated extensively in the development and delivery of SCP certification, working with industry sponsors and support organizations around the world.

For more information on the Support Center Practices (SCP) Certification program, please visit www.scpcertification.com or for questions please send email to Greg Coleman at gcoleman@servicestrategies.com.