By Julie Mohr, Director of Professional Services, IHS Support Solutions

Mapping support processes is an important step in creating efficiencies in your support environment. Through modeling of the current environment, we can compare what exists today, eliminate any unnecessary steps and define roles and responsibilities. Once the process is mapped and efficiencies achieved, key measurement points within the process help management to measure process adherence.

An error in a process is defined as the number of defective transactions or defective steps in a transaction. Let me give you an example of a recent customer service experience. On a visit to my local copy center, I ordered a repeat order of very expensive, full-color prints. I had an arrangement that if I sent the order to the local processing center, I would receive a price break of over 50%.

The process was simple:

1. bring in originals
2. print a proof
3. order quantity of over 1000
4. verify bid on file
5. approximate delivery time
6. send to processing center
7. call customer when ready
8. pick up order and pay

Throughout each step in this process, errors can occur. In fact, during this recent customer service experience, an error occurred during every step of the process. Possible errors include the following:

1. damaged originals
2. not printing proofs and verifying desired final output
3. Incorrect order quantity
4. Bid not on file or lost
5. Missed delivery projection
6. Failure to notify customer
7. Product not QA’d or printed to order specifications

My order had to be processed five different times resulting in over $2000 in repeated batch processing. Despite receiving awesome customer service during this process, the output was so prone to error that I have lost confidence in the vendor as a supplier of an important component to my manufacturing process.

In the Incident Management Process, there are seven key activities that include:

1. call handling – call avoidance & initiation
2. call logging – provision customer and log incident
3. resolution – troubleshoot and resolve
4. dispatch – higher technical knowledge required for resolution
5. escalate – service level breech and escalation to management
6. update – customer notified of status
7. closure – incident resolution and customer satisfied

Each one of these activities should be mapped out in a process flow to ensure that the process is efficient and that roles and responsibilities are defined. Performance metrics related to measuring the processes’ efficiency are only one element of ensuring high customer satisfaction. Error rate must also be measured and thresholds of tolerance established.

Each of the incident management process activities has potential associated errors. In the call handling processes, errors can result from customers entering into the support organization through the wrong channel. For example, they have used a sales number instead of a support number. Although human error can not be prevented, it is important to understand how many times this occurs and whether action must be taken to more fully communicate the channels to the customer via the web, all support documentation and possibly on product packaging. Another error could be if a customer selects the wrong choice in an upfront IVR system and must be immediately transferred to the correct support group. The frequency of this error could be the result of a failure to design a customer intuitive system.

During call logging, potential errors include provisioning service to non-authorized customers, failure to enter appropriate customer details into the incident ticket, or incorrectly classifying the problem the customer is experiencing. During technical resolution, potential errors include not confirming resolution with the customer, inadequate ticket documentation of resolution, or service level breech. Incorrect assignment to the appropriate resolution group is an error within the dispatch process. This error is a common mistake that plagues many service centers. And the greatest potential error for closure is that the customer’s issue was not resolved.

Errors within Incident Management result in a lower customer perception of the quality of the services your organization provides. Even with great customer service skills and rapid response to fix the errors for an individual customer, the overall problem may not be addressed and overall process efficiency decreases with many repeat steps in the process.

Six Sigma provides a framework for measuring errors in process. The concept is that to achieve Six Sigma, your organization must only have 3.4 defects per million opportunities. Achieving Six Sigma may be too expensive for a service organization and must be weighed against the customer benefits in service to the cost to provide those services. Some organizations have no choice but to deliver their services with little or no defects. Usually these are organizations that are providing such a critical service that even one mistake is costly. In most organizations, some error can be tolerated without a result in loss of customer loyalty.

To determine your organization’s error rate, first you must have the ability to track to the individual steps in the process. Often these metrics are captured within our incident management or telephony systems. These metrics provide us with the volume information but may do little to provide information on the number of errors associated with a particular step. For example, we can easily provide information on how many incidents had to be dispatched for higher technical resolution. This information can be obtained by running a report on the number of incidents assigned to resolution groups from the service center. However, to determine how many of those incidents were assigned to the incorrect resolution group may require modifications such as a tick box within the ticket screen that can be checked by the resolution group before forwarding the ticket to the appropriate group.

Without an adequate understanding of error rates, the incident management process may meet all of its service level objectives and key performance measurements but the underlying process is still inefficient and prone to failure. To assist you in your efforts to measure error rates throughout the incident management process, please visit http://www.blueprintaudits.com/tools.html for a free error rate calculator.

About the Author

Julie Mohr is the Director of Professional Services with IHS Support Solutions. For over 14 years, Julie has been passionate about service and support management. Julie is a certified Helpdesk Director and certified ITIL Service Manager. Julie is an active contributor to the future development of the industry through speaking engagements at conferences and publishing articles on best practices. Julie is the author of The Help Desk Audit: Blueprint for Success, The Help Desk Toolkit: Companion CD and The Help Desk Dictionary, and maintains a service desk enhancement website at www.blueprintaudits.com.

Comments? Suggestions? We would like to hear from you. Please email the editor at sspanews@thesspa.com.

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