How to improve the efficiency of technical support hosting company
Foreword
First of all, of course, you need to know how well the technical support staff works. What for? It's very simple, because these are the very people who are the “face” of your company. First of all, it is with them that people who bring you money communicate. It is on their competence and their work, in most cases, whether good or bad reviews about your company on the Internet will depend. The quality of technical support can play a decisive role for your future customers who will be recommended by those who have already had experience with your company.
How to determine how bad it is?
To begin with, it is necessary to define the criteria by which we will judge how technical support should work. Naturally, it will not be difficult to find out. Most companies define customer service standards. This is important, since, in most cases, the clients themselves pay extra for the quality service of a company, for often not even considering that its price is somewhat higher than that of a competitor. This statement is easily provable, since we ourselves are daily confronted with the service sector, for example, when coming to grocery stores, buying clothes or household appliances. We, as clients, choose places where we like to make purchases. We may like the way the goods are presented in the sales area, where it is light and clean, and also where the friendly sellers will give you competent advice, where they will deliver large-size goods on the day of purchase, etc. Therefore, as a client of a hosting company, on the one hand, I set a number of important requirements and criteria for a service that should provide technical support, for example, my Internet projects. On the other hand, as the head of this service, I must ensure that my employees not only meet these criteria, but also exceed all customer expectations.
')
So, what I want to see as a client:
1. Telephone . Having called my service provider by phone, I want to take the phone within 30 seconds, and the maximum maximum I am willing to wait for is 1 minute. Agree, it is very annoying when you have to hang on the phone for 20 minutes listening to terrible music and stories about how important my call is to them. The mode of operation should definitely be 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is a normal desire of the client, since I may have problems not only on weekdays, but also on Sunday. Moreover, I want to get competent and polite answers to my questions, and not general phrases.
2. Ticket system . I want her to be present too. In fact, I generally treat with caution the services that I offer to communicate with the TA through an uninhabited relic of the 90s, such as ICQ. This is not an indicator of the maturity of the company in terms of service in general, as it’s most likely it’s not working to improve the quality of customer service, I’ll explain why. My messages to technical support should be processed within 10 minutes, i.e. I, as a client, should have at least information that they are dealing with my problem. Within 20 minutes, I have to receive a brief report on what has already been done on my report and what time it will take approximately to solve the problem I have voiced.
3. I want TP (Company) employees to be honest with me . Ie if the problem with the work of the service occurred through their fault, they honestly confessed and did not make a fool of me. I still know the truth, but to earn my trust again, this company will already be very hard.
4. Technical support should be free . Yes Yes. It is free. Why should I pay extra? I have already paid, for example, for the rental of several servers, as well as for their uninterrupted work. Not to be confused with the administration services of these servers - these should be paid a priori.
For starters, I think that's enough. Of course, the client’s desires may be generally limitless, but as they say, “we must start somewhere,” and we proceed to the audit.
Usually the audit process takes from about 2 weeks to a month. During this time, you get almost the most complete picture of what is happening in the TP department. You will have to spend a lot of time in the observations. Therefore, we start with the first criterion in order.
Phone calls. Each call to technical support should be logged, and also recording of conversations must be carried. In fact, you need information about the date of the call, the time of the call, the time to start recording the conversation and of course the recording of the dialogue itself. By simple manipulations in Exel or Calc, you can get very important statistical information that will greatly help you in improving KPI indicators for phone calls in the future. Call recording will give you excellent ground for staff development and training.
Ticket system. It is necessary not only to read what TP employees write when answering clients' questions, but also to follow time intervals and intervals. I think it is not necessary to explain that all actions in the ticketing system should be logged. Here it is necessary to isolate information about the time when the ticket was received, the time when the first answer was received, the start time of the ticket execution, the time when the request was sent to the client to complete the task using the ticket text, and the name of the employee who performed the ticket. If these things are not implemented in the ticket system, then they certainly need to be implemented. This is a very important statistical information that will give you an idea of ​​the speed of processing clients' messages, as well as help assess the speeds of your company's employees who are involved in solving the problems encountered by clients in the process of using your services. Therefore, ICQ, Skype and other chat rooms are not suitable for this purpose.
Honesty answers. Information will have to be painstakingly collected from conflicting tickets and calls. Then explain to the careless employees (of course who are suspected of lying) the policy of the "party". Convince the staff that it is best to openly admit to customers in their own doorposts and pay the compensation provided for by the contract than to fuck in the runet label of a company that is deceiving its customers.
How to achieve the desired results?
My many years of experience does not just suggest, but loudly scream at the top of their mouth that any change in the requirements for personnel entails massive and fierce resistance from the staff to whom these requirements are presented. It is good if you have been working in the same bundle with these people for a long time and suddenly the authorities from heaven throws such changes on you. In this case, you always have a chance to communicate with the unspoken leaders of your team and you can find allies in their person who will help you realize these plans. But what to do if you just-appointed to the place of the head? You do not know anyone, nobody knows you, moreover, no one will help you in realizing the goals that you yourself have set for you. The second option is usually the most common.
The main cause of poor results is poorly motivated personnel on whom this very result depends. Therefore, the best medicine of all time is a well-built ...
Staff motivation system
I do not think that I will reveal a great secret if I say that motivation should be aimed at achieving specific goals by performing certain tasks. About the motivation system, in general, there are a lot of holivars, even at the Habré there are sometimes fierce battles in the comments about this, I’ll try to describe my IMHO in more detail.
So, material motivation:
Definitely this thing can be tied either to personal achievement of KPI results that we have planned for ourselves, or to collective achievement of KPI. Personally, in my work I usually use some kind of hybrid collective and personal. Ie create a rating that I update weekly, daily, hourly. In the rating should be traced a certain dependence of personal results and cash bonuses. This information should see everything, it will add a competitive spirit to your team. Also in this rating must be present the general KPI indicators of the department, upon the achievement of which an additional bonus is paid to all employees. Those. I reached the department’s average for a month, for example, 30 seconds for picking up the phone, everyone was charged with a premium, etc. It is also best to work out customer ratings for good and bad comments. Ie to give customers the opportunity to put the pros and cons for quality and not quality answers. These estimates can also be used in the bonus system.
Not material motivation:
It must also exist. VHI, lunches, korparativy - this is of course all is well. But we are interested in achieving certain results. Therefore, you can play a pair of iPhones, laptops, going to a cinema or a restaurant, etc. between employees in the quarter or a year. Also, staff training can be an element of non-material motivation, which enhances them professionally.
Employee training
No need to train employees for the sake of training. Each of your actions should lead to certain results. You can tell the employee as much as you like how he should do his job - he will never believe you, moreover, you will simply annoy him. Here you will have to sit at the workplace of the employee and use your own example to show how the standards that you require from them are fulfilled.
I am in favor of the fact that different skill levels of employees should be paid in different ways. Therefore, most likely you will have to enter the categorization of employees. Depending on the category, employees receive a different salary portion of their salary. She may not be much different, but nevertheless it can settle in the employee a desire to develop herself professionally. Employee categories can be set depending on the results of quarterly testing.
Conclusion
Here it is important to understand that not all employees will want to play according to your rules. Do not be afraid to get rid of such people, they will then put a spoke in the wheel. One such disagreement, can easily embroil the water in the team in such a way that in the end your whole idea will fall through. It is sometimes difficult to calculate such people, but it is possible. Simply enough to communicate with staff more often. They themselves will tell you what they like and what does not.
Of course, this is not all the tricks to achieve the desired results. This is just a personal experience that might help someone, or maybe push on new ideas. I would like to discuss these techniques with the habrasoobschestvom.
First of all, of course, you need to know how well the technical support staff works. What for? It's very simple, because these are the very people who are the “face” of your company. First of all, it is with them that people who bring you money communicate. It is on their competence and their work, in most cases, whether good or bad reviews about your company on the Internet will depend. The quality of technical support can play a decisive role for your future customers who will be recommended by those who have already had experience with your company.
How to determine how bad it is?
To begin with, it is necessary to define the criteria by which we will judge how technical support should work. Naturally, it will not be difficult to find out. Most companies define customer service standards. This is important, since, in most cases, the clients themselves pay extra for the quality service of a company, for often not even considering that its price is somewhat higher than that of a competitor. This statement is easily provable, since we ourselves are daily confronted with the service sector, for example, when coming to grocery stores, buying clothes or household appliances. We, as clients, choose places where we like to make purchases. We may like the way the goods are presented in the sales area, where it is light and clean, and also where the friendly sellers will give you competent advice, where they will deliver large-size goods on the day of purchase, etc. Therefore, as a client of a hosting company, on the one hand, I set a number of important requirements and criteria for a service that should provide technical support, for example, my Internet projects. On the other hand, as the head of this service, I must ensure that my employees not only meet these criteria, but also exceed all customer expectations.
')
So, what I want to see as a client:
1. Telephone . Having called my service provider by phone, I want to take the phone within 30 seconds, and the maximum maximum I am willing to wait for is 1 minute. Agree, it is very annoying when you have to hang on the phone for 20 minutes listening to terrible music and stories about how important my call is to them. The mode of operation should definitely be 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is a normal desire of the client, since I may have problems not only on weekdays, but also on Sunday. Moreover, I want to get competent and polite answers to my questions, and not general phrases.
2. Ticket system . I want her to be present too. In fact, I generally treat with caution the services that I offer to communicate with the TA through an uninhabited relic of the 90s, such as ICQ. This is not an indicator of the maturity of the company in terms of service in general, as it’s most likely it’s not working to improve the quality of customer service, I’ll explain why. My messages to technical support should be processed within 10 minutes, i.e. I, as a client, should have at least information that they are dealing with my problem. Within 20 minutes, I have to receive a brief report on what has already been done on my report and what time it will take approximately to solve the problem I have voiced.
3. I want TP (Company) employees to be honest with me . Ie if the problem with the work of the service occurred through their fault, they honestly confessed and did not make a fool of me. I still know the truth, but to earn my trust again, this company will already be very hard.
4. Technical support should be free . Yes Yes. It is free. Why should I pay extra? I have already paid, for example, for the rental of several servers, as well as for their uninterrupted work. Not to be confused with the administration services of these servers - these should be paid a priori.
For starters, I think that's enough. Of course, the client’s desires may be generally limitless, but as they say, “we must start somewhere,” and we proceed to the audit.
Usually the audit process takes from about 2 weeks to a month. During this time, you get almost the most complete picture of what is happening in the TP department. You will have to spend a lot of time in the observations. Therefore, we start with the first criterion in order.
Phone calls. Each call to technical support should be logged, and also recording of conversations must be carried. In fact, you need information about the date of the call, the time of the call, the time to start recording the conversation and of course the recording of the dialogue itself. By simple manipulations in Exel or Calc, you can get very important statistical information that will greatly help you in improving KPI indicators for phone calls in the future. Call recording will give you excellent ground for staff development and training.
Ticket system. It is necessary not only to read what TP employees write when answering clients' questions, but also to follow time intervals and intervals. I think it is not necessary to explain that all actions in the ticketing system should be logged. Here it is necessary to isolate information about the time when the ticket was received, the time when the first answer was received, the start time of the ticket execution, the time when the request was sent to the client to complete the task using the ticket text, and the name of the employee who performed the ticket. If these things are not implemented in the ticket system, then they certainly need to be implemented. This is a very important statistical information that will give you an idea of ​​the speed of processing clients' messages, as well as help assess the speeds of your company's employees who are involved in solving the problems encountered by clients in the process of using your services. Therefore, ICQ, Skype and other chat rooms are not suitable for this purpose.
Honesty answers. Information will have to be painstakingly collected from conflicting tickets and calls. Then explain to the careless employees (of course who are suspected of lying) the policy of the "party". Convince the staff that it is best to openly admit to customers in their own doorposts and pay the compensation provided for by the contract than to fuck in the runet label of a company that is deceiving its customers.
How to achieve the desired results?
My many years of experience does not just suggest, but loudly scream at the top of their mouth that any change in the requirements for personnel entails massive and fierce resistance from the staff to whom these requirements are presented. It is good if you have been working in the same bundle with these people for a long time and suddenly the authorities from heaven throws such changes on you. In this case, you always have a chance to communicate with the unspoken leaders of your team and you can find allies in their person who will help you realize these plans. But what to do if you just-appointed to the place of the head? You do not know anyone, nobody knows you, moreover, no one will help you in realizing the goals that you yourself have set for you. The second option is usually the most common.
The main cause of poor results is poorly motivated personnel on whom this very result depends. Therefore, the best medicine of all time is a well-built ...
Staff motivation system
I do not think that I will reveal a great secret if I say that motivation should be aimed at achieving specific goals by performing certain tasks. About the motivation system, in general, there are a lot of holivars, even at the Habré there are sometimes fierce battles in the comments about this, I’ll try to describe my IMHO in more detail.
So, material motivation:
Definitely this thing can be tied either to personal achievement of KPI results that we have planned for ourselves, or to collective achievement of KPI. Personally, in my work I usually use some kind of hybrid collective and personal. Ie create a rating that I update weekly, daily, hourly. In the rating should be traced a certain dependence of personal results and cash bonuses. This information should see everything, it will add a competitive spirit to your team. Also in this rating must be present the general KPI indicators of the department, upon the achievement of which an additional bonus is paid to all employees. Those. I reached the department’s average for a month, for example, 30 seconds for picking up the phone, everyone was charged with a premium, etc. It is also best to work out customer ratings for good and bad comments. Ie to give customers the opportunity to put the pros and cons for quality and not quality answers. These estimates can also be used in the bonus system.
Not material motivation:
It must also exist. VHI, lunches, korparativy - this is of course all is well. But we are interested in achieving certain results. Therefore, you can play a pair of iPhones, laptops, going to a cinema or a restaurant, etc. between employees in the quarter or a year. Also, staff training can be an element of non-material motivation, which enhances them professionally.
Employee training
No need to train employees for the sake of training. Each of your actions should lead to certain results. You can tell the employee as much as you like how he should do his job - he will never believe you, moreover, you will simply annoy him. Here you will have to sit at the workplace of the employee and use your own example to show how the standards that you require from them are fulfilled.
I am in favor of the fact that different skill levels of employees should be paid in different ways. Therefore, most likely you will have to enter the categorization of employees. Depending on the category, employees receive a different salary portion of their salary. She may not be much different, but nevertheless it can settle in the employee a desire to develop herself professionally. Employee categories can be set depending on the results of quarterly testing.
Conclusion
Here it is important to understand that not all employees will want to play according to your rules. Do not be afraid to get rid of such people, they will then put a spoke in the wheel. One such disagreement, can easily embroil the water in the team in such a way that in the end your whole idea will fall through. It is sometimes difficult to calculate such people, but it is possible. Simply enough to communicate with staff more often. They themselves will tell you what they like and what does not.
Of course, this is not all the tricks to achieve the desired results. This is just a personal experience that might help someone, or maybe push on new ideas. I would like to discuss these techniques with the habrasoobschestvom.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/285446/
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