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ASPonline.com
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> Call Center Operations |
Call Center Operations
REPORTS
Management Performance Benchmarks
Relative importance rankings for ten areas of management
performance.
Tech Support Turnover Rates
(2006)
Benchmarking data on employee departures for various sizes of
organization and experience levels.
Maintenance & Services
Ratios (2007)
Revenue and cost benchmarks based on 100 individual public
companies, updated annually, plus expert advice on revenue
recognition, services accounting, and other financial
issues.
Tech Support Reporting
Channels (2005)
Prevailing org chart models for support organizations.
Tech Support Cost Ratios
Survey (2004)
Benchmark data for revenue and headcount ratios, labor and
overhead costs, productivity, escalation, fee-based support,
and other useful metrics.
How to Manage Junk
E-Mail (2004)
Spam is overwhelming tech support auto-responders and e-mail
mailboxes.
Doing More With
Less (2003)
Advice from support managers and other experts on how to
improve efficiency and cut costs.
Tech Support
Outsourcing (2002)
A look at outsourcing costs and performance metrics, with
advice on how to negotiate better contracts.
EXPERTS
 Indicates
complimentary Open House hours
Mikael
Blaisdell, principal, Mikael Blaisdell &
Associates
George
Dale, CEO, The BCT Group (Business,
Communities & Technologies Group)
Rick
Kilton, principal, RWK Enterprises
Darci
Moore, partner, Adroit Consulting
Kristin
Robertson, principal, KR Consulting
Tom Sweeney and Ladd
Bodem, principals, ServiceXRG
Colin
Taylor, president & CEO, The Taylor Reach
Group
Françoise
Tourniaire, principal, FT Works
LIBRARY
Escalations:
The Ticket to Successful Problem Resolution
(Kristin Robertson)
A formal methodology for managing escalations and SLAs.
Combining Service Excellence
with Profitability
Purdue University's Dr. Jon Anton offers a strategy for
making the "middle 60%" ("customers who cannot be ignored,
but who are hard to serve in a profitable manner") a new
source for services growth and profitability.
Why Customers Call Tech Support
and What Tech Writers Can do About It (Jack
Molisani)
One way to reduce call volume is to fix the documentation.
Timberline's Turnaround
Tactics
An inside look at how a dysfunctional support group got back
on track.
Tech Support Teamwork
(John Gniadek)
Six tested methods for creating a more tightly-knit support
team.
How to Motivate Middle
Managers (Mia Melanson)
Managers need a supportive work environment as much as the
people they manage.
E-mail Management
Tips (ASP)
Some fresh ideas on expediting e-mail support requests.
Tech Support Hours
Survey (ASP)
A 1999 survey explores hours of coverage for live phone support,
after-hours compensation methods and related topics.
Scheduling: The Relationship is
Not Linear (Kay Khandpur)
Advice on efficient staff scheduling using queuing theory
mathematics.
Management Tips From The
Experts (ASP)
Practical and non-textbook tips for improving productivity,
customer satisfaction, morale, team building, recruiting,
career development, budgeting and forecasting.
FORUM POSTINGS
After-Hours
Equipment
"When techs work at home providing after-hours coverage, is
it customary for their company to provide a notebook computer
and Internet connection? My new boss wants me to use my own
PC, but it's often used by other family members. Any advice?"
Waiting for Auto-Close
"How long should we wait for a response from the customer
before automatically closing an open incident? And should we
send out reminder notices? Right now, we're probably closing
cases too quickly, but if we auto-close after a longer period,
this will have a negative effect on our performance stats."
Getting to Know a
Consultant
"We'd like to bring in a consultant to give us an independent
look at our support programs. But we don't want to spend a ton
of money and then end up with a report full of vague generalities
and recommendations about things we already know. Is there a
smarter way to get a feel for a consultant's works?"
Office closures and
telecommuting?
"We occasionally have to close our offices because of heavy
snow. Most of our employees have PCs and can keep working
from home, but a few don't. I don't feel it's fair to dock
the pay of the people who can't telecommute, but it also
doesn't seem right to pay them for not working when everyone
else is being productive. Advice?"
How do we benchmark our
productivity?
"I've been studying the productivity benchmarks in various
research studies (including the ASP's), and the numbers
suggest that my own reps are superstars by comparison. I
guess that's reassuring-but I don't honestly believe we're
that good. Your thoughts?"
Call center
mergers
"My company has just merged with a major competitor, and I'm
supposed to develop a plan for integrating the call centers
(which are a thousand miles apart). Help!"
Overseas
escalation?
"Our support organization is transitioning from one U.S.
location to multiple, global locations. Issues will be
escalated to specialists across the globe. In the past, with
only one support office, the original support engineer
retained ownership, using a 'touch and hold' model. Will it
make more sense now to switch to a 'front-line/back-line'
escalation model for global support?"
How should our chargeback
system handle indirect costs?
"Our company recently put a chargeback system in place that
was supposed to allocate support costs to individual product
groups. Now the product managers are arguing that we should
only charge them for direct labor costs, while I say we
should add an overhead factor (about 50%) that captures all
of our indirect costs. How do other companies resolve this
problem?"
USEFUL LINKS
[Under construction—recommendations welcome]
DMG Consulting,
West Orange, NJ 07052; 973/325-2954.
Web: www.dmgconsult.com
Westbay,
West Sussex, UK; +44 1293 88850973/325-2954.
Web: www.erlang.com.
Erlang C calculators for forecasting call center traffic; other
tools.
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ASP Alert
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Join our special ASP Alert e-mail
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Spectacular Support Centers
Kristin Robertson
Click image for details.
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The Ultimate Customer Support Executive
Phil Verghis
Click image for details.
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The Help Desk Audit
Julie L. Mohr
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Help Desk Practitioner's Handbook
Barbara Czegel
Click image for details.
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The Art of Software Support
Françoise Tourniaire and Richard Farrell
Click image for details.
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Microsoft Sourcebook for the Help Desk
(Second Edition)
Meg Olsen, project manager
Click image for details.
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