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ASP Forum
Task-Specific Support Teams?
"We've recently organized one team for ongoing customer support,
and a separate 'implementation' team for new installations and
training. When one team is short-staffed, the other team helps
out—but a few managers think this encourages poor planning,
while others want us to go back to a single unified support team.
Has anyone managed to solve this problem?" Advice?
—Willie from Wilmington
Willie—
The idea of 'task-specific teams' is excellent if implemented
correctly. The concept is similar to using 'Skills-based Routing'
(SBR) to get calls to the person best qualified to handle it. That
approach is great when it comes to the 'quality' of the service
provided. Whether you are using task specific teams or SBR, it will
be in the customer's best interest to have the best person for the
job working on their issue.
The challenge is in balancing the staffing levels and you seem to
have already recognized that by the statement that one team will
help the other when necessary. It would be a lot easier to staff if
everyone did everything (the generalist model). It would be a lot
easier to achieve service levels if every agent could take any call
(eliminate SBR). But, what would that do to the quality? Most
organizations reach a point when it is no longer feasible for
everyone to know everything — or at least they all can't be
expert. So, that's when we implement SBR and that's when
task-specific teams makes sense.
To implement either task-specific teams or SBR successfully, you
need a good staffing plan. You also need a process for handling the
workload when one group gets overwhelmed. In SBR, we overflow calls
to a secondary group that has been cross trained as the 'back up'.
You should be able to do this with task-specific teams too. You can
either send some work to the back-up group or you can have specific
people that get 'loaned' when necessary. Either way, this is a great
approach that should help you provide better service to your
customers!
—Dave Brown
dave.brown@SupportCenterU.com
303-494-4932
www.SupportCenterU.com
We implemented “task-specific teams” about 2 years ago separating
them from our general support queue and it was one of the best moves
we’ve ever made in supporting our customer base. In reviewing our
complaint calls we quickly realized that we were receiving most
complaints from 2 groups of customers, larger organizations (7+
stores) and new customers (recently installed). We created 2
Specialty Teams one with 3 dedicated CSRs focused on larger accounts
and a second with 4 CSRs focused on new implementations.
What we found is new customers take approximately 8 weeks to become
comfortable with their new system and finish making configuration
changes to the software. Our new customer team takes the customer
immediately after the implementation and continues with them for
these first 8 weeks. New customers like the dedicated team of 4
people versus calling and getting any one of 35 general CSRs,
especially while getting used to their new system. After the 8th
week the new Implementation team contacts the customer assuring all
open issues and questions are resolved and then transitions them to
the general support team.
When a new Implementation CSR is out on vacation we fill in with Sr.
CSRs from the general support team giving them an opportunity to show
off their skills and also a change in job responsibilities for a
short time. We have found newer CSRs on the general support team
strive to be on these Specialty teams both because of the increased
salary but also for the recognition. It also allows us in management
to give “try outs” without assigning a person full time and then when
the team expands or needs an additional permanent resource we know
who to select.
As far as keeping our Specialty CSRs motivated we bonus them on
keeping a higher productivity goal 80% vs. 75% general CSR goal (CSR
login time to time spent working a customer issue). This higher goal
entices them to assist with calls in the general call queue which
also helps the department meet response time goals.
Willie can feel free to contact me at 330-645-4200 if he has any
questions.
—Dane Vough
Director Customer Support and Service
DRB Systems, Inc.
330-645-4200
DAVough@drbsystems.com
Technical Call Center for POS Software – 35+ CSRs, 250+ IB calls per
day, 3000+ Support Members
[If you have any other advice on this question, please send an
email to membership director Jane Farber at jfarber@asponline.com,
and we'll post your feedback.]
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