HP's Personal Systems Group for the Americas commercial division has earned SSPA’s Excellence in Service Operations certification. This distinction recognizes HP PSG Americas for their superior technology service and support operations provided to their business notebook and desktop PC customers.
Excellence in Service Operations certification was achieved by undergoing a comprehensive evaluation of their phone, field service and web self-service operations. Auditors from the SSPA in conjunction with J.D. Power and Associates conducted rigorous reviews of the policies and procedures used in managing HP's support organization. The audits of the support operations evaluated a wide-range of industry best practices including executive commitment, management of talent, support tools and technology, and operation metrics compared to industry best practices.
In this interview, SSPA’s Shawn Santos talks with HP’s Antonio Neri about the impacts of certification—from preparation and presentation of operational processes, to HP’s internal response and the external recognition from customers and even the competition.
Shawn: Tell me about your role and how your organization is structured.
Antonio: I'm the Total Customer Experience, Warranty and Services Vice President of the Americas Region for the Personal Systems Group.
I have teams focused on driving the end‑to‑end services support management improvement in both the consumer and commercial areas across the entire product services life cycle. We use different vehicles to deliver service to our customers and the overall execution of the customer experience across the value chain—from implementation services to end of life support.
At the high-level my structure is focused on three key elements: end-to-end customer experience, warranty and support, and value-added services.
Shawn: Your sister organization - HP Consumer - was among the first companies to achieve certification under the SSPA / J.D. Power and Associates Certification program. I believe that it was about this time last year when HP Consumer got certified. What's different about SSPA’s Excellence in Service Operations which you recently achieved, versus the SSPA / J.D. Power and Associates Certification, and what should those differences suggest to your customers?
Antonio: Clearly, they are two different things. From the consumer standpoint, I think people relate to the J.D. Power and Associates certification because J.D. Power has become a household point of reference when comes to quality in the United States. People understand that this certification focuses on outstanding support operations as well as high CSAT scores, and the J.D. Power and Associates program provides the external brand recognition necessary to give prospective customers persuasive evidence of the quality of our service and support.
On the commercial side of the house, while most people recognize J.D. Power and Associates, in their business they also value SSPA assessments and certification in the form of Excellence in Service Operations certification. Excellence in Service Operations because it's focus is on operations more so than customer satisfaction and external marketing—it speaks to the high quality of service and support the commercial market expects in today’s economy, and is also often the first step towards J.D. Power and Associates Certification.
Excellence in Service Operations is a comprehensive program developed by 50 leading technology companies and includes over 290 best practice criteria. It involves in-depth audits of all material support functions and locations for a business.
Without a doubt, both certifications are very important—especially for companies that have consumer and commercial functions—and work best in conjunction together.
Shawn: Are you suggesting that J.D. Power and Associates Certification is mostly geared for the consumer business, and Excellence in Service Operations is geared more for commercial/enterprise businesses?
Antonio: No, I think it is important to achieve both certifications in both segments. However, the impact for J.D. Power and Associates would be less in my mind in the commercial space than it is in the consumer space. In the commercial space, if you got through the SSPA’s Excellence in Service Operations audits, the next step is J.D. Power and Associates. Another example comes to mind--Gartner's Magic Quadrant.
In the commercial enterprise space, people tend to look at and think like Gartner. People ask themselves how Gartner perceives HP in the marketplace, and that’s how they should perceive HP in the marketplace. It's not just from the perspective of service and support, because while it’s a key attribute of the decision making process, they'll look at the rest of the components, for example, product availability, product quality, account relationships and so on.
Whether consumer or commercial, perceptions tend to be more holistic. It’s an extremely important accomplishment to be able to say you are recognized by Gartner, you have the J.D. Power Certification, and you have the SSPA Excellence in Service Operations Certification.
Shawn: Achieving Excellence in Service Operations must feel great for your staff and everyone involved at HP who is passionate about services—from your front‑line and program managers to your service executives. How has this new certification been received internally?
Antonio: It feels absolutely fantastic—it is a very rewarding experience because we are zealous about support and one of the things we want to do is differentiate ourselves. We see support as an important future business driver in technology.
We aren't just proud of the fact that my team and several program managers have been recognized. We feel proud about the value that is being perceived outside our organization.
We also deploy compelling marketing communications to our sales force in the field. They can use this information in front of customers when they're talking about the value of services, and use the certification to demonstrate our commitment to quality.
Every quarter we televise a web cast to all the employees in PSG Americas. Last quarter, Mike Larson – our Senior Vice President for the Americas – and I took about 15 minutes to present the SSPA trophy to the entire Americas organization. This was our formal announcement of the SSPA Excellence in Service Operations certification—how the certification was completed, who was involved, what are the key attributes, and what the value is. The excitement and pride were clearly felt by every employee in the room.
Shawn: How many people were on that web cast?
Antonio: Three thousand; most everyone in the Americas group.
Shawn: Beyond the excitement and general enthusiasm that you're getting in the organization, have you been able to identify or are you planning to look for any process improvements or productivity enhancements that you learned on the way to getting certified?
Antonio: Yes, we’ve already have had a couple of conversations with SSPA to help us in this regard. What we want to do is to establish an engagement with the SSPA and take the lessons we already know and couple them with what we took from the Excellence in Service Operations certification and apply them to our value chain improvement projects. I'm actually hosting the Lean Six Sigma practice for the Americas, so we are looking at a highly-defined plan.
The key qualities, framework deployment, training, ASQ certification, and so on are hosted in my team too. So, for us, taking the knowledge and implementing the changes are not the biggest challenge. Now we need to focus on the most important elements that will help us to differentiate our service operations and build them for our customers.
Shawn: You just mentioned another type of certification—ASQ. Of course, there are a few different types of organizational certifications out there. Can you compare and contrast how SSPA's certification programs compare or contrast against the other programs available?
Antonio: When you talk about ISO certification it means something different to me; it’s very quality-centric. I think the SSPA certifications are a combination of service operation audits, customer feedback and our IT process. I actually think it does all of what the ISO certification is doing, but there are clearly two different things in my mind. When we do a process improvement using Six Sigma, we peg those projects and we take the opportunity to have the black belts who worked our projects get ASQ industry certified as well. Clearly, this is a good thing for the organization, but I consider it a little more tied to personal development. However, in creating a high-quality talent pool, it will ultimately return better productivity for the organization itself because it becomes a part of the DNA of the organization.
For ISO certification, I have my processes ISO-certified. Clearly, it’s great for an organization to be able to say, “I have all my processes controlled and we constantly review and re-certify them.”
I think the SSPA is a little bit different. I think it is more IT-centric, at least at this point in time. I believe you are also trying to create more visibility as you go forward, and that is a good thing. So different measures, different certification – depending on the engagement.
Shawn: I'm trying to determine whether you've gone down the path of certifying in Excellence in Service Operations for the effect it has on process improvement in your organization or a step to gain more recognition and market share advantage, or both. How does your certification with Excellence in Service Operations relate to the key challenges that are facing your support organization and your company?
Antonio: For us, Excellence in Service Operations is really the first step to understanding our strengths and weaknesses, and where we should look to differentiate.
It was an interesting process. We learned so much, and we discovered many of our processes were not fully documented the way you would expect them to be documented. When you go through that type of detailed exploration, you not only open your minds to the current process, but you look further down the road. The next step, process improvement, seems very natural.
In any support organization, I always tell people “You are manufacturing experiences.” You basically deal with the customer on the other side and you try to provide the best experience possible. But sometimes you have to manufacture your experiences as you go, because many problems and most personalities are unique. This presents a certain level of inefficiency when each interaction has to be manufactured separately.
There is a tremendous amount of opportunity to simplify that overall experience. The auditing process and the Excellence in Service Operations certification gave us insight where we could do better in this regard. I think that's the value of this whole thing; not just to get the trophy and be able to market our abilities, but to learn as you go through the certification process. You tend to implement different things so you can make each individual phase better, but the long-term results will be even greater. So it's kind of a natural progression.
Shawn: I'm interested in learning more about some of the unique aspects of the personal systems group and their customers; and whether these customers are more sensitive to the idea of service and support being part of their purchasing decisions. What's your view of your customers’ perceptions of the importance of service and support, and how did that weigh into you pursuing the Excellence in Service Operations certification?
Antonio: On the commercial side, where we do our competitive benchmarking and what we call “level one” studies, we look at the top attributes of the decision making process and what will create loyalty. Support is always in the top three attributes for commercial enterprise customers. It's broken down as overall value, product quality, and support – in that order. We look at the three, constantly.
For HP, we have a clear objective to be the marketplace leader in the support space. For PSG, we are competing in a very tough market. Product prices continue to decline and support continues to be a valuable differentiator. So while you may do a wonderful job of driving differentiation through product quality and design, we also think that service and support is going to be a primary area that will drive more customers to pick HP as their vendor of choice.
If you look at some of the missteps other companies have taken, it shows you the importance of focusing on service and the customer. This is not a secret, the studies that we do consistently show that support is absolutely a key attribute in the decision making process for commercial enterprise and consumer customers. The expectations of these customers continue to rise, which means your process execution has to be better than ever. Excellence in Service Operations helps us there, too.
Shawn: What advice you would offer to companies like yours considering certification with SSPA / J.D. Power and Associates or Excellence in Services Operations?
Antonio: You should be doing this with the customer in mind. Clearly, customers will tell you what they think. But having other entities like SSPA, J.D. Power and Associates, you name it; those are really objective views you have to consider. We take that very seriously, because we think there are more views than our own and even our customers’.
My advice to the companies considering certification is to get those processes tested by other entities. This is important. Get a different, objective opinion.
Shawn: Do you have any other thoughts that you'd like to share about the certification programs that I didn't ask?
Antonio: I think the Excellence in Service Operations program is great. It is raising the bar for our entire industry, and I think that's very important. I want to encourage the SSPA to continue to review those policies to strive for service excellence and not get stagnant on the criteria and standards. You want to keep highlighting the areas that underscore the customer’s expectations. I think that will help the industry overall to get better. We have a huge opportunity here, but we're not there yet.
Shawn: I absolutely agree. I think that we're on the right path by moving away from the break/fix model and infusing value into service offerings. We have a lot of momentum and support from the industry in this regard. In an industry that's rapidly transitioning, I think that being on the forefront is key, and I think we're taking some good steps together. Congratulations again on your certification for Excellence in Service Operations.
About Antonio Neri…………………………………………………………
Antonio Neri is responsible for leading the Total Customer Experience, Quality and Warranty Services team for Hewlett Packard’s personal computing products. In this role, Neri manages customer support experience improvements, warranty support delivery efficiencies, and services revenue growth.
During his tenure, HP Consumer was among the first companies to receive the J.D. Power and Associates Certified Technology Service and Support certification for providing an outstanding customer service experience. In addition, PSG Americas Commercial Support was awarded the Excellence in Service Operations Certification by the Service Support Professional Association (SSPA) in July 2007. The company has also been recognized for providing one of the best standard warranties in the PC industry.
Neri holds a Computer Engineering degree and is a Professor of Arts and Drawing.
About Shawn Santos………………………………………………………
As Director of Member Programs with the SSPA, Shawn focuses on developing and managing SSPA member programs, researching industry trends, and producing insightful content for the technology service and support industry. Prior to SSPA, Shawn managed the inception, development and roll-out of service marketing programs for the test and measurement service and support division of Agilent Technologies. In addition, Shawn pioneered the development of new products and businesses at Enologix and Global Vintage—wine industry leaders in information systems, software, research and consulting. Shawn holds a B.S. in Molecular Biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
