How to organize a paid support for a complex product: the experience of "Hydra"

We in Latera have been developing billing for telecom operators (providers of wired and wireless Internet, TV and telephony, main and satellite providers) for 8 years already, and during this time have participated in more than 80 implementation projects.



Over time, the internal structure of the company and our approach to the organization of customer support have seriously changed. Today we will talk about how it works now.

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Business on support

Historically, our company has a single department for product implementation and support - Hydra billing. We have no engineers who would deal only with support or only with implementation issues, each of them has competencies in these two areas. This allows you to quickly connect additional engineers in case of urgent tasks.



Billing is a complex product, and it is difficult to avoid difficulties when independently developing or implementing such systems. To reduce the number of possible errors, we will organize separate projects for the implementation of Hydra for our clients.



Product support is paid - there are several tariffs that imply a certain amount of working hours for our engineers, which the client can “spend”. Three out of four customers use our technical support for outsourcing billing support.



Customer support is one of our sources of revenue. This fundamentally distinguishes our technical support from the usual (free), the cost of which any company seeks to minimize.



Thus, we need not only to maintain the highest level of this service, but also carefully monitor the working hours of engineers.

What customers pay for and what customers don't pay for

There are two types of logged support service time - paid by contract (system setup, consulting), and unpaid. The latter may include, for example, fixing bugs that have arisen during the development or implementation phase. If the incorrect setting was the cause of the system error, the client should not pay to correct the problem.



Also unpaid time is the time spent by employees on their own training (or the transfer of knowledge to colleagues). Also, the fee from the client is not taken, for example, for the time spent on the transfer of the application between the support department staff.



In order to determine what type of time (paid or not) is the work done, employees use the appropriate tags in the application system. Here are some of them:

• DEVBUG - work on the defect system developers. For example: “Solving a problem together with developers. DEVBUG.
• SUPBUG - work on the implementation of the defect and technical support. For example: “Adding missing services to autoload. SUPBUG.
• STUDY - getting help (to your side). For example: “Consultation of colleagues, reading documentation. STUDY.
• HELP - assistance (towards colleagues). For example: “Consultation to work out a solution. HELP.
• ORG - solving organizational issues with the manager and learning from previous work. For example: “Getting information from a manager. ORG.

If an employee (for example, a beginner) does not have the knowledge sufficient to solve the problem directly, then the time for his training is not paid by the client. However, if the solution of the problem requires some highly specialized knowledge that is not included in the standard rate, the time spent on this will be already logged, as paid.

Tools used

Initially, the Jira system was used for the tasks of the implementation and technical support department. However, over time it became obvious that adapting this tool for developers to the tasks of the implementation and support department is not so easy. As a result, we began to look for alternative means.



One of the options considered was the Zendesk service, but the inconvenient one-page interface was an obstacle to its use, in which and only in which, according to the authors, the support department staff should work. In addition, the speed of Zendesk left much to be desired. We encountered these problems in 2013, perhaps now the project has taken a step forward, however we have already found an alternative to it.



She became the service Freshdesk - it is similar to Zendesk, but has a more friendly interface and is developing quite actively. The developers promptly respond to requests, the API interface is implemented in their system (admittedly, it is inferior to the Zendesk API).



To manage implementation projects, we use the Irish PM-service Teamwork, also for some tasks Jira is still used (management of tasks that are not suitable for any purpose in other management systems).



In addition, we have organized our own data warehouse (Data Warehouse), into which information from all existing systems and Hydra billing itself is unloaded, which is used for charging time paid (it is automatically loaded into the billing from the storage) and billing. This information is then used to organize the work of the support department.

How things are arranged

Our paid billing support has little to do with the usual support services for consumer products. Rather, it can be called technological consulting in the field of billing and telecom operators.



After completing the probationary period, employees are given the opportunity to independently take applications for work, and not just receive them from the manager. After six months or a year, after gaining experience, they begin to work on billing implementation projects. Almost no one is engaged in "pure" technical support.



Information from the repository is used to build schedules for employees to load (applications, their status, the progress of the task). We pay special attention to the analysis of how the main indicators change.

Control

For a paid service, correct logging of the time spent is very important.



If the employee spent the time, but did not secure it in the helpdesk, the PM system, or Jira, then this time is simply lost, and the possible profit is lost. In other words, the source of funding for employees of the implementation and support department is the time paid by customers. All this is well understood, so a high level of control does not cause anyone negative emotions. The task of the support department staff is to increase the amount of useful, paid time and reduce unpaid rates. Naturally, the clients must always be satisfied.







To collect feedback on satisfaction after each call, the client is invited to evaluate their experience of interaction with the support service.



Estimates are emoticons - green, yellow and red. The client selects the appropriate emoticon with one click of the mouse. Because of the simplicity of this rating system, there is a lot of feedback, and the feedback is reliable. There is an “internal SLA”, according to which out of the last 100 assessments at least 96 should be green smilies. Information on the satisfaction of Hydra users is open and available on a special page , and technical support staff is constantly visible on a special wall screen.



For each negative assessment, a trial is conducted with the employee who received it.

bonus program

In order to achieve good results, one control is not enough, it is also necessary to motivate employees. That is why we have a special bonus program - for employees who perform certain tasks, are assigned points (or cu), each point represents a certain percentage of salary.



At the end of the month, points earned in this way are paid in the form of a bonus. Of course, there are penalty points, which, on the contrary, are deducted from the bonus.



This is what an employee can get points for:

• For the green smile left by the client (for yellow or red - fine).
• For each paid (secured) hour of support work.
• For a quick solution of an urgent application.
• Problem solving by the duty officer not during the main working time.
• For the large amount of time spent on “training” (gathering information on the application, studying the systems needed to solve it, etc.), fines are also charged - as a result, new employees immediately have a premium that is usually small, which motivates them to get on top .

Regulations and work with clients

The work of the support department is regulated by a number of documents. There are detailed regulations for typical problem solving procedures and communication with customers.



“Hydra” is a complex product that is constantly evolving, so the support department staff need to keep in mind a large amount of knowledge and keep replenishing their luggage all the time. To facilitate this process, we constantly conduct trainings and meetings, during which employees learn about innovations. Tests are conducted several times a month, the results of which also affect the future premium.



There is a document that governs customer communication with technical support. In particular, it describes how exactly it is necessary to assign priority to requests to the support service - not everything that at first glance seems urgent to the client is indeed such.



Also in the personal account of the system, customers can see the details of the hours of technical support used. This allows them to see how many hours they still have paid for - technical support can be obtained even after the limit has been exhausted, but at an additional cost. The system also sends messages when approaching and after overcoming this threshold. Clients receive detailed details of the hours spent and if they disagree, they can dispute how exactly the time was credited - if the arguments are confirmed, the time is reclassified from paid to unpaid.



In addition to direct support, customers can ask their question in our open forum . Other clients who have previously faced a similar task can also give an answer to it - such communication not only helps to solve emerging issues, but also contributes to the formation of a cohesive community of users. Also on the forum, customers can leave their suggestions for improvements - this allows you to determine the relevance of a particular "feature".

Developer Relations

Very often, in different companies, the relationship between support staff and developers leaves much to be desired - after all, it is the programmers and the bugs they left that often cause them to call for support. Only the developers who have no time can finally solve the problem.



We solved this problem by introducing the developer on duty - this employee communicates directly with the support department through an internal forum or through other channels. He not only deals with urgent improvements, but also helps his colleagues deal with difficult situations, clarifies insufficiently documented points, and also oversees the evaluation of improvements for customers.

Conclusion

When working with complex systems, which include billing, it is impossible to do without any problems. However, with the help of a small number of software tools and organizational steps, we were able to significantly increase the level of service and reduce the amount of time spent on solving problems that have arisen due to our own mistakes.



For example, the average response time for a client's request has decreased from 7.5 working hours to 5, and responses to customer comments on the application arrive, on average, for 6 working hours - earlier than 11. Response time for critical requests stably remains at 10 minutes



The number of customer interactions in one application has more than halved, from an average of 10.5 interactions to 4.5. Customer satisfaction has increased from 87% and the presence of 4% red smiles to 97%. In addition, the proportion of paid support time increased by 1.5 times due to more efficient expenditure of working time by employees.