How to increase the efficiency of hosting company technical support
Foreword
First of all, of course, you need to know how well the technical support staff works. What for? Everything is very simple, because these are the very people who are the “face” of your company. It is with them, in the first place, 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 already had experience in dealing with your company.
How to determine how bad everything is?
First you need to determine the criteria by which we will judge how technical support should work. To find out, of course, is not difficult. Most companies set customer service standards. This is important, since in most cases customers themselves pay extra for the quality service of a company, for often without even considering that its price is slightly higher than that of a competitor. This statement is easily provable, since we ourselves daily face the service sector, for example, coming to grocery stores, buying clothes or household appliances. We ourselves, as customers, choose places where we like to shop. We may like the way the product is presented on the trading floor, where it is light and clean, and also where the friendly sellers will give competent advice, where they will deliver bulky goods on the day of purchase, etc. Therefore, as a client of a hosting company, on the one hand, I set out a number of important requirements and criteria for a service that should provide technical support, for example, for my Internet projects. On the other hand, as the head of this service, I have to make sure that my employees not only meet these criteria, but also exceed all customer expectations.
So, what I want to see as a client:
1. Phone . Having called my service provider by phone, I want to pick up the phone within 30 seconds, and the maximum maximum that I am ready to wait is 1 minute. Agree, it’s very annoying when you have to hang on your 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 problems can arise not only on a weekday, 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 am wary of the services that they offer me to communicate with TP through an undeveloped remnant of the 90s, such as ICQ. This is an indicator of the company’s lack of maturity in terms of service in general, since most likely work to improve the quality of customer service is most likely not carried out in it, I will explain why below. My technical support messages should be processed within 10 minutes, that is, as a client, I should have at least information that they are involved in my problem. Within 20 minutes, I should receive a brief report on what has been done according to my message and what time it will take approximately to solve the problem I voiced.
3. I want TP (company) employees to be honest with me. That is, if the problem with the service was due to their fault, they honestly admitted this and did not make a fool of me. I still learn the truth, but to earn my trust again, this company will already be very difficult.
4. Technical support should be free . Yes Yes. It is free. Why should I pay extra? I have already paid, for example, for renting several servers, as well as for their continuous operation. Not to be confused with the administration services of these servers - these should be a priori paid.
For starters, I think that's enough. Of course, the client’s desires can be unlimited, but as they say, “you have to start somewhere”, and we begin the audit.
Typically, 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 observations. Therefore, we start with the first criterion in order.
Phone calls. Each call to technical support should be logged, and a record of conversations must also be carried. In essence, you need information about the date of the call, the time of the call, the start time of the recording of the conversation, and of course the recording of the dialogue itself. Through simple manipulations in Excel or Calc, you can get very important statistical information that will greatly help you in improving KPI indicators for phone calls in the future. Recording conversations will give you excellent ground for staff development and training.
Ticket system. You will have to not only read what TP employees write when answering customer questions, but also keep track of time periods and intervals. I think there is no need to explain that all actions in the ticket system should be logged. Here it is necessary to isolate information about the time when the ticket was received, the time when the first response was received, the time the ticket started to start, the time the client submitted a request to complete the task in 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 must be implemented. This is very important statistical information that will give you an idea of the speed of processing customer messages, and will also help to evaluate the speed of your company’s employees, which are involved in solving problems arising from customers in the process of using your services. Therefore, ICQ, Skype and other chat rooms are not at all suitable for these purposes.
Honesty of responses. Information will have to be painstakingly collected from conflicting tickets and calls. Then explain to the negligent 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 their own jambs and pay the compensation provided by the contract than to have a runet label for a company that is deceiving its customers.
How to achieve the desired results?
My many years of experience not only suggests, but loudly yells out loud that any change in the requirements for personnel entails massive and fierce resistance from the employees to whom these requirements are presented. It’s good if you have been working in the same connection with these people for a long time and suddenly the bosses from heaven are releasing such changes on you. In this case, you always have a chance to talk with the unspoken leaders of your team and you can find allies in their person who will help you implement these plans. But what if you have just been appointed to the position of leader? You don’t know anyone, no one knows you, moreover, no one will help you in realizing the goals that you either set or set for you. The second option is usually the most common.
The most important reason for poor results is poorly motivated personnel on whom this very result depends. Therefore, the best medicine of all time is a well-built ...
Personnel 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. There are a lot of holivars about the motivation system, even fierce battles sometimes take place in the comments in the comments on this subject, I’ll try to describe my own IMHO in more detail.
So, material motivation:
Definitely this thing can be tied either to the personal achievement of the KPI results that we have outlined for ourselves, or to the collective achievement of the KPI. Personally, in my work I usually use a hybrid of collective and personal. Ie I create a certain rating, which I update weekly, daily, hourly. The rating should show a certain correlation of personal results and cash bonus. Everyone should see this information, this will add a competitive spirit to your team. Also in this rating should be present the general KPI indicators of the department upon reaching which an additional bonus is paid to all employees. Those. the department reached an average monthly indicator, for example, 30 seconds to pick up the phone, everyone received a bonus, etc. It is also best to work out ratings from customers for good and bad comments. T. Do not allow customers to put pros and cons for high-quality and low-quality answers. These ratings can also be used in the bonus system.
Non-material motivation:
It must also exist. VHI, lunch, corporate - of course, all is well. But we are interested in achieving certain results. Therefore, you can play a couple of iPhones, laptops, going to the cinema or a restaurant, etc., between employees at the end of a quarter or a year. Staff training can also serve as an element of non-material motivation, which increases them professionally.
Staff training
No need to train employees for training. Each of your actions should lead to certain results. You can tell the employee how much he needs to do his job - he will never believe you, moreover you will simply annoy him. Here you will have to sit down at the employee’s workplace and show by your own example how the standards that you require from them are implemented.
I am a supporter that different skill levels of employees should be paid differently. Therefore, most likely you will have to enter the categorization of employees. Depending on the category, employees are charged a different salary part of their salary. It may differ not by much, but nevertheless, this may lodge in the employee a desire to develop himself professionally. Categories of employees can be set depending on the results of quarterly testing.
Conclusion
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 sticks in the wheels for you. One such person who does not agree can easily muddle the water in the team in such a way that in the end your whole idea will go wrong. Calculating such people is sometimes difficult, but possible. Simply enough often to communicate with staff. They themselves will tell you what they like and what not.
Of course, these are not all the tricks to achieve the desired results. This is just a personal experience that will probably help someone, and may lead to new ideas. I would like to discuss these techniques with the habrasociety.
First of all, of course, you need to know how well the technical support staff works. What for? Everything is very simple, because these are the very people who are the “face” of your company. It is with them, in the first place, 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 already had experience in dealing with your company.
How to determine how bad everything is?
First you need to determine the criteria by which we will judge how technical support should work. To find out, of course, is not difficult. Most companies set customer service standards. This is important, since in most cases customers themselves pay extra for the quality service of a company, for often without even considering that its price is slightly higher than that of a competitor. This statement is easily provable, since we ourselves daily face the service sector, for example, coming to grocery stores, buying clothes or household appliances. We ourselves, as customers, choose places where we like to shop. We may like the way the product is presented on the trading floor, where it is light and clean, and also where the friendly sellers will give competent advice, where they will deliver bulky goods on the day of purchase, etc. Therefore, as a client of a hosting company, on the one hand, I set out a number of important requirements and criteria for a service that should provide technical support, for example, for my Internet projects. On the other hand, as the head of this service, I have to make sure that my employees not only meet these criteria, but also exceed all customer expectations.
So, what I want to see as a client:
1. Phone . Having called my service provider by phone, I want to pick up the phone within 30 seconds, and the maximum maximum that I am ready to wait is 1 minute. Agree, it’s very annoying when you have to hang on your 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 problems can arise not only on a weekday, 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 am wary of the services that they offer me to communicate with TP through an undeveloped remnant of the 90s, such as ICQ. This is an indicator of the company’s lack of maturity in terms of service in general, since most likely work to improve the quality of customer service is most likely not carried out in it, I will explain why below. My technical support messages should be processed within 10 minutes, that is, as a client, I should have at least information that they are involved in my problem. Within 20 minutes, I should receive a brief report on what has been done according to my message and what time it will take approximately to solve the problem I voiced.
3. I want TP (company) employees to be honest with me. That is, if the problem with the service was due to their fault, they honestly admitted this and did not make a fool of me. I still learn the truth, but to earn my trust again, this company will already be very difficult.
4. Technical support should be free . Yes Yes. It is free. Why should I pay extra? I have already paid, for example, for renting several servers, as well as for their continuous operation. Not to be confused with the administration services of these servers - these should be a priori paid.
For starters, I think that's enough. Of course, the client’s desires can be unlimited, but as they say, “you have to start somewhere”, and we begin the audit.
Typically, 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 observations. Therefore, we start with the first criterion in order.
Phone calls. Each call to technical support should be logged, and a record of conversations must also be carried. In essence, you need information about the date of the call, the time of the call, the start time of the recording of the conversation, and of course the recording of the dialogue itself. Through simple manipulations in Excel or Calc, you can get very important statistical information that will greatly help you in improving KPI indicators for phone calls in the future. Recording conversations will give you excellent ground for staff development and training.
Ticket system. You will have to not only read what TP employees write when answering customer questions, but also keep track of time periods and intervals. I think there is no need to explain that all actions in the ticket system should be logged. Here it is necessary to isolate information about the time when the ticket was received, the time when the first response was received, the time the ticket started to start, the time the client submitted a request to complete the task in 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 must be implemented. This is very important statistical information that will give you an idea of the speed of processing customer messages, and will also help to evaluate the speed of your company’s employees, which are involved in solving problems arising from customers in the process of using your services. Therefore, ICQ, Skype and other chat rooms are not at all suitable for these purposes.
Honesty of responses. Information will have to be painstakingly collected from conflicting tickets and calls. Then explain to the negligent 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 their own jambs and pay the compensation provided by the contract than to have a runet label for a company that is deceiving its customers.
How to achieve the desired results?
My many years of experience not only suggests, but loudly yells out loud that any change in the requirements for personnel entails massive and fierce resistance from the employees to whom these requirements are presented. It’s good if you have been working in the same connection with these people for a long time and suddenly the bosses from heaven are releasing such changes on you. In this case, you always have a chance to talk with the unspoken leaders of your team and you can find allies in their person who will help you implement these plans. But what if you have just been appointed to the position of leader? You don’t know anyone, no one knows you, moreover, no one will help you in realizing the goals that you either set or set for you. The second option is usually the most common.
The most important reason for poor results is poorly motivated personnel on whom this very result depends. Therefore, the best medicine of all time is a well-built ...
Personnel 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. There are a lot of holivars about the motivation system, even fierce battles sometimes take place in the comments in the comments on this subject, I’ll try to describe my own IMHO in more detail.
So, material motivation:
Definitely this thing can be tied either to the personal achievement of the KPI results that we have outlined for ourselves, or to the collective achievement of the KPI. Personally, in my work I usually use a hybrid of collective and personal. Ie I create a certain rating, which I update weekly, daily, hourly. The rating should show a certain correlation of personal results and cash bonus. Everyone should see this information, this will add a competitive spirit to your team. Also in this rating should be present the general KPI indicators of the department upon reaching which an additional bonus is paid to all employees. Those. the department reached an average monthly indicator, for example, 30 seconds to pick up the phone, everyone received a bonus, etc. It is also best to work out ratings from customers for good and bad comments. T. Do not allow customers to put pros and cons for high-quality and low-quality answers. These ratings can also be used in the bonus system.
Non-material motivation:
It must also exist. VHI, lunch, corporate - of course, all is well. But we are interested in achieving certain results. Therefore, you can play a couple of iPhones, laptops, going to the cinema or a restaurant, etc., between employees at the end of a quarter or a year. Staff training can also serve as an element of non-material motivation, which increases them professionally.
Staff training
No need to train employees for training. Each of your actions should lead to certain results. You can tell the employee how much he needs to do his job - he will never believe you, moreover you will simply annoy him. Here you will have to sit down at the employee’s workplace and show by your own example how the standards that you require from them are implemented.
I am a supporter that different skill levels of employees should be paid differently. Therefore, most likely you will have to enter the categorization of employees. Depending on the category, employees are charged a different salary part of their salary. It may differ not by much, but nevertheless, this may lodge in the employee a desire to develop himself professionally. Categories of employees can be set depending on the results of quarterly testing.
Conclusion
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 sticks in the wheels for you. One such person who does not agree can easily muddle the water in the team in such a way that in the end your whole idea will go wrong. Calculating such people is sometimes difficult, but possible. Simply enough often to communicate with staff. They themselves will tell you what they like and what not.
Of course, these are not all the tricks to achieve the desired results. This is just a personal experience that will probably help someone, and may lead to new ideas. I would like to discuss these techniques with the habrasociety.