The STAR Awards for Best Practices

The STAR Awards for Best Practices recognize companies that have developed, implemented, and benchmarked the most innovative and efficient processes for service and support delivery. Companies seeking this award must pass through a rigorous review by a select industry committee, providing specific baseline data, a detailed description of the process, performance metrics, returns and benefits, and other information about what makes their best practice unique.

2008 STAR Awards for Best Practices finalists and winners were announced at the SSPA Conference in Santa Clara, CA, May 4-6, 2008.

Important dates and deadlines are as follows:

• Call for nominations: TBD
• Nomination submission deadline: TBD
• Closing date for submitting applications: TBD
• Finalists notified: TBD
• STAR Awards Luncheon: Spring 2009

Categories for the 2008 STAR Awards for Best Practices:

• Best Customer Commitment
• Best Knowledge Management Practices
• Best Online Support
• Best On-Site Support
• Best Service Delivery Optimization
• Best Support Staff Practices
• Best Practices in Value-Added Support^TM
• Best Embedded Product Support – Software  NEW!
• Best Embedded Product Support – Hardware NEW!
• Best Emerging Company Support

Past winners for STAR Awards for Best Practices Categories may be found here.

Best Customer Commitment
2008 Winner: Cisco-Linksys

Presented to a company who successfully demonstrates organizational commitment, alignment and focus around gathering and responding to customer feedback, issues and requests, including using Voice of the Customer (VOC) input to improve support operations and offerings.

Criteria:
Companies with exceptional customer feedback capabilities should reflect and provide evidence of one or more of the following:

• Customer Advocacy. Provide evidence of a customer advocacy function, including mission statement or charter description and organization chart. Please also identify who is designated as the customer advocate within the support operation and describe their sphere of influence.
• Voice of the Customer. Describe ongoing processes for collecting customer input on support requirements and/or to provide input on proposed new support offerings or strategies. Applicants are required to cite specific VOC examples that may include focus groups, customer advisory boards, user conferences, online forums, surveys or web-based customer feedback mechanisms
• Follow Through. Describe the closed-loop process used to keep customers informed of the status of their issues or requests, including documented processes for handling customer escalations and critical customer situations, and documented communication processes to keep customers informed of the status of open issues.
• Improvement Initiatives. Provide examples of initiatives driving change to support operation processes and/or support offerings.
• Customer Impact. Provide trended Customer Satisfaction data or other metrics to demonstrate how resulting changes related to customer feedback have improved the customer support experience over time. At a minimum, applicants must provide 6 quarters of trended CSAT data covering the relevant time period. Other customer impacts to include may be shortened implementation times or faster customer ROI.
• Business Impact. Planned and actual business impacts should be documented, including metrics illustrating actual cost savings or efficiency gains from customer driven initiatives. Applicants should also include details for revenue generation that can be directly attributed to the process of customer advocated improvements.

Best Knowledge Management Practices
2008 Winner: NetApp

Presented to a company whose knowledge management strategy includes repeatable, effective processes for capturing, publishing and maintaining content in order to solve customer problems in a consistent and efficient manner.

Criteria:
Companies with exceptional knowledge management should reflect the following attributes:

• Knowledge-Centric Culture. Companies with a successful knowledge management program create a knowledge-centric culture, including job descriptions, performance assessments, leadership communications, etc., that reinforce the transition from a transaction-centric to a knowledge-centric culture.
• Creation and Maintenance. Describe how streamlined processes minimize time between knowledge discovery and publishing and how you use tools to identify missing, unused and overlapping content automatically.
• Cross-Channel Consistency. Describe your processes to ensure consistent information is provided to customers via every touch point and that content in the knowledge management system is available to agents and customers across all assisted and unassisted channels: phone, email, chat, Web self-service, etc.
• Integrated Repository and Searching. Agents and customers can perform a single search to access all structured and unstructured content repositories, including knowledge base articles, previous case notes, forum postings, etc.
• Retrieval Capabilities. Demonstrate how multiple paths to content are provided to meet the needs of all users, including searching, diagnostic aids, FAQ lists, etc.
• Customer Impacts. Provide Customer Satisfaction metrics that illustrate customer impacts of the knowledge management implementation, such as decreased hold time or increased first interaction resolution rate. At a minimum, applicants must provide 6 quarters of trended CSAT data covering the relevant time period.
• Business Impacts. Provide metrics that document cost savings or efficiency gains from knowledge management implementation, such as reduced average handle time and reduced escalations to Level 2.

Best Online Support
2008 Winner: Symantec

Recognition for a company who is leveraging web-based technologies and Knowledge Management processes to provide an effective web self-service experience for their customer, including raising awareness and driving customer adoption of online support, personalizing the experience, using customer feedback for improvement, and measuring customer success through usage metrics for ongoing improvement.

Criteria:
Companies with exceptional online support should reflect and provide evidence of one or more of the following:

• Rich Content. Describe how the web site provides rich, relevant content including (but not limited to) documentation, FAQs, on-line tutorials, downloads, etc, including an effective search capability to facilitate finding content.
• Creation and Maintenance. Describe how content is kept relevant through streamlined processes that minimize the time between knowledge discovery and publishing. Provide information about tools used to identify missing, unused and overlapping content automatically.
• Cross-Channel Consistency. Demonstrate how information consistency is maintained to customers via every touch point. Provide examples of how content in the knowledge management system is available to agents and customers across all assisted and unassisted channels: phone, email, chat, Web self-service, etc.
• Personalization. Describe how web layout and/or content is personalized for customers by demographics, registered preferences, purchase history, or other ways to minimize navigation time.
• Web 2.0. Describe use of Web 2.0 technology such as forums and wikis to build a community and encourage customer participation.
• Transition to Assisted Support. Show how customers are provided an easy way to transition from unassisted to assisted support; i.e. customers struggling with self-service may be automatically prompted with an assisted service option.
• Promotion. Describe ongoing campaigns to familiarize customers with self-service options and encourage adoption, with supporting metrics to show growing customer adoption.
• Customer Impacts. Provide Customer Satisfaction data that illustrates the customer experience with self-service. Also provide metrics for customer adoption of self-service, such as number of cases created via self-service increasing, and usage metrics such as successful searches performed, unique logins, etc. At a minimum, applicants must provide 6 quarters of trended CSAT data for Online Support covering the relevant time period.
• Business Impacts. Planned and actual business impacts should be documented, including metrics illustrating actual cost savings or efficiency gains such as case deflection, or call/case avoidance. Applicants should also include details for revenue generation attributed to the process of Online Support.

Best On-Site Support
2008 Winner: Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Presented to a company whose field installation and repair operations for either consumer or enterprise customers offers a highly streamlined and automated process for capturing customer requests, dispatching the right individual with all necessary parts, and tracking of the issue through to a successful resolution. (Note: This category is intended primarily for hardware companies. Software companies may elect to participate. The SSPA reserves the right to judge hardware and software applications separately.)

Criteria:
Companies with exceptional On-Site Service operations should reflect and provide evidence of the following:

• Case Management. Describe how customer issues are captured and routed correctly, with every step of the process adapted to customers’ needs and the constraints of the service offerings.
• Dispatch/Scheduling. Demonstrate how field service technicians are assigned appointments according to location, skills, available parts, customer preferences, or other criteria, with GPS enabled tracking to identify agent locations and determine accurate arrival times.
• On-site Resolution Process. Describe the process for field staff to not only perform installations or diagnose and fix problems, but also to perform any required preventative maintenance appropriate for the equipment.
• Case Resolution. Describe the process for customer case documentation with work performed, parts used, as well as any additional onsite information, ideally in real-time using a wireless device.
• Closed-Loop Communications. Describe the process for Failure Analysis and Root Cause Analysis through data that are tracked and monitored. Describe how results are reported back to customers and are factored into the product development process.
• Customer Impacts. Provide Customer Satisfaction metrics that illustrate customer impacts of the field service operations, such as satisfaction ratings for service visits, issues resolved on first visit, on time arrivals, etc. At a minimum, applicants must provide 6 quarters of trended CSAT data for On-Site Support covering the relevant time period.
• Business Impacts. Provide metrics that document cost savings or efficiency gains from field service operations, such as increased number of service visits a day due to optimized scheduling, reduced time onsite due to tech support triage or diagnostics, eliminating multiple service visits by arriving onsite with needed parts, reduced instances of failed parts, etc.

Best Service Delivery Optimization
2008 Winner: Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Presented to a company who has successfully improved its support delivery operations through the use of outsourcing, consistent global processes, service technology development or deployment, and/or a quality improvement methodology such as Six Sigma, ISO 9000 to optimize and improve efficiency.

Criteria:
Companies with exceptional service delivery optimization capabilities should reflect and provide evidence of one or more of the following:

• Service Delivery Initiatives. Describe committed service delivery optimization initiatives, including problem statement and project goals; specific optimization strategy to be undertaken; projected benefits to be obtained,
• Quality Improvement Program. Show how the organization uses a Quality Improvement methodology, like Six Sigma or ISO 9000 to create service delivery efficiencies, including a case study example of a quality improvement initiative. For outsourced operations, how is quality monitored and what processes are in place to address performance issues?
• R&D Interface. Describe how R&D is a part of the Quality Improvement initiative to drive quality and serviceability into its products.
• Customer Impacts. Provide Customer Satisfaction metrics that demonstrate the customer impact of service delivery optimization efforts, with specific examples related to improvements on how cases in handled in a changed support operation. At a minimum, applicants must provide 6 quarters of trended CSAT data covering the relevant time period.
• Business Impacts. Planned and actual business impacts should be documented, including metrics illustrating actual cost savings or efficiency gains through the Service Delivery Optimization improvement initiative. Applicants should also include details for revenue generation resulting attributed to the initiatives.

Best Support Staff Practices
2008 Winner: EMC Corporation

Presented to a company who successfully demonstrates commitment to and best practices in the area of developing, motivating and retaining support staff.

Criteria:
Companies with exceptional support staff management capabilities should reflect and provide evidence of one or more of the following:

• Job Classification. Describe your support roles, job levels, and provide evidence of having documented job descriptions and skill requirements in place.
• Development Plan. Describe how you provide documented employee development plans that are updated annually or in conjunction with the company-standard performance review process.
• Training. Describe ongoing skill assessment, training and certification programs, including budget allocations for training expenditures, annual goals for training and certification, and tracking of status and completion rates for training and certification programs.
• Recognition. Describe your reward and recognition programs, including examples of what has proven to be most successful.
• Performance Review. Describe your annual performance review process and what you use as your performance category guidelines.
• Talent Retention. Describe your programs for motivating your employees to stay positively engaged in providing top quality customer support and reducing unwanted attrition.
• Customer Impacts: Provide Customer Satisfaction metrics that show the impact to customers of having highly satisfied and trained employees. Metrics should focus on data related to the professionalism, technical knowledge and customer service skills of support staff, in addition to overall case satisfaction data. At a minimum, applicants must provide 6 quarters of trended CSAT data covering the relevant time period.
• Business Impacts: Provide planned and actual business metrics that show the impact to the business of having highly satisfied and trained support staff. Data should include multi-year attrition rate and/or multi-year employee satisfaction data.

Best Practices in Value-Added SupportTM
2008 Winner: Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Presented to a company who successfully demonstrates its commitment and focus on developing and delivering support offerings designed to help customers increase or accelerate the ROI on their product or technology investment or to help the company increase overall product sales.

Criteria:
Companies with exceptional Value-Added Support capabilities should reflect and provide evidence of one or more of the following:

• Value-Added Support Offerings. Provide a description of new Value-Added Support offerings with a focus on how they are directed at improving the customer experience with the product.
• Revised Customer Processes – Describe which customer usage process (for example, installation, implementation, operation, problem identification and resolution, etc.) is changed and how the Value-Added Support offering improves the customer experience.
• Resource Optimization. Describe initiatives undertaken to free up or redirect service delivery resources away from traditional break-fix support in order to focus on delivering new Value-Added Support
• Reduced Time to Value. Describe improved revenue creation opportunities derived from initiatives undertaken to improve the customer usage process including the opportunity for cross sell/up sell of products or services at the point of service delivery.
• Customer Impacts. Provide metrics that demonstrate how the Value-Added Support offerings are helping customers achieve faster or greater ROI on their use of your products. Include Customer Satisfaction metrics to demonstrate the improvements that ValueAdded Support have made in the customer experience. At a minimum, applicants must provide 6 quarters of trended CSAT data covering the relevant time period.
• Business Impacts: Provide planned and actual business metrics that demonstrate the impact to the business of new Value-Added Support offerings and/or cross-sell / upsell initiatives such as increased product and service revenue, higher gross margins, or increased or more accelerated product purchases.

Best Embedded Product Support – Software NEW!
2008 Winner: Oracle Corporation

Presented to the software company that demonstrates leadership in implementing diagnostic and “self-healing” functionality within the product to reduce or eliminate the need for a customer to contact support.

Criteria:
Companies with exceptional software automated support capabilities should reflect and provide evidence of one or more of the following:

• Self Diagnostics. Describe product functionality that monitors system or product performance to detect configuration, known defects, or other failures and provides a way to alert the customer or the company for correction.
• Alert, Auto Case Creation. Describe how the customer is alerted to identified/known potential failures, and/or a case is created with the company, including what diagnostic information is provided to facilitate issue resolution.
• Update Download/Install. Describe the process used to “auto-update” software products with incremental product fixes, particularly to address potential security issues.
• R&D Interface. Provide information on the working process with R&D to provide feedback on issues discovered to provide immediate fixes, and to improve the offering over time.
• Customer Impact. Using Customer Satisfaction data trended over time, show how implementation of product self service has improved the customer experience. Provide metrics such as improved response/resolve times to demonstrate how the customer experience has improved over time. At a minimum, applicants must provide 6 quarters of trended CSAT data covering the relevant time period.
• Business Impact. Planned and actual business impacts should be documented, including metrics illustrating actual cost savings or efficiency gains from product self service. Applicants should also include details for any resulting revenue generation attributed to this process.

Best Embedded Product Support – Hardware NEW!
2008 Winner: Cisco Systems, Inc.

This award provides recognition of the company that has established the best practice for product monitoring and detection of failing or potentially failing hardware components and has processes in place for fast response and replacement of failing components.

Criteria:
Companies with exceptional hardware automated support capabilities should reflect and provide evidence of one or more of the following:

• Self Diagnostics. Describe product functionality that monitors system or product performance to detect configuration, known defects, or other failures and provides a way to alert the customer or the company for correction.
• Alert, Auto Case Creation. Describe how the customer is alerted to identified potential failures, and/or a case is created with the company, including what diagnostic information is provided to facilitate issue resolution.
• Replacement Parts. Describe the process for ordering, shipping and installing replacement parts based on provided diagnostic data. Provide metrics on how this process has reduced fix time for the customer.
• R&D Interface. Provide information on the working process with R&D to provide feedback on issues discovered to provide immediate fixes, and to improve the offering over time.
• Customer Impact. Using Customer Satisfaction data trended over time, show how implementation of product self service has improved the customer experience. Provide metrics such as improved response/resolve times to demonstrate how the customer experience has improved over time. At a minimum, applicants must provide 6 quarters of trended CSAT data covering the relevant time period.
• Business Impact. Planned and actual business impacts should be documented, including metrics illustrating actual cost savings or efficiency gains from product self service. Applicants should also include details for any resulting revenue generation attributed to this process

Best Emerging Company Support
2008 Winner: Approva Corporation

Applicants in this category provide technical support within emerging businesses (defined as companies with under $500M in total annual revenue) for which exemplary customer support is important for company growth and is typically provided with constrained resources. Applicants should demonstrate how their technical support effectively maintains their customers’ satisfaction and loyalty, and helps drive new business.

For software companies these would typically be application implementations, or core systems infrastructure offerings. For hardware companies these would typically be servers, network components, etc.

Criteria:

• Customer Support Center Responsiveness: To demonstrate how your support organization meets and exceeds customer requirements for responsiveness, describe processes for issue capture and resolution, including escalation, with emphasis on proactive systems and processes. Include goals and actual performance for key responsiveness metrics such as average response and resolution time. For onsite repair, include average time to onsite, first time fix, average fix time, etc.
• Web Self-Service, Knowledgebase: Both customers and agents should have direct access to log incidents, search incident history, and research relevant resolution information. Describe initiatives to expand the use of technology and processes to capture, publish and maintain a searchable knowledgebase and diagnostic aids for agents and customers, as well as any metrics that demonstrate how Web self-service and knowledgebase technology is streamlining support processes and deflecting live agent interactions.
• Product Supportability: Companies at this stage should have a close working relationship with the R&D organization. Describe the processes or initiatives undertaken by your support team to influence your development organization to engineer supportability features into your products. Include metrics that demonstrate the impact of improved product supportability features such as case avoidance metrics or metrics on the number of remote support cases trended over time.
• Proactive Service Offerings: Describe initiatives to address the unique needs of your largest or most demanding customers. This could include support offerings or support features you provide that are specifically focused on problem prevention. Examples may include periodic health checks, monitoring services, etc. Provide metrics that demonstrate the impact of your proactive service offerings on improving the customer usage experience with your products.
• Customer Impacts. Metrics should be documented that illustrate actual customer impacts of your technical support. Include metrics showing improvements to customer satisfaction, incident volume, resolution time, system downtown, escalations, etc., with commentary linking customer-facing improvements critical support processes and technology. Applicants must, at a minimum, provide actual trended CSAT data for the most recent 6 quarters.
• Business Impacts. Describe how the initiatives you have implemented have improved your business metrics such as license, support service revenue growth and support services gross margin improvements.

If you have any questions, please contact us us at StarAwards@thesspa.com or
858-674-5491.