From Customer Rep to Customer Advocate:
Changing the Service Desk Mind-set with ITIL
By Lou Hunnebeck
Senior Process Engineer, CCN, Inc.

Everyone these days talks about their company’s dedication to customer satisfaction, their commitment to excellence in customer service, but often this is little more than lip-service or good intentions. In reality, support organizations are struggling with ever-increasing expectations, ever-shrinking budgets and ever-escalating levels of stress for frontline support employees.

If the problem is not a surprise, then the solution may be. Originating in the UK in the late 1980s as a framework for improving the delivery of IT-based services, the IT Infrastructure Library, or “ITIL”, provides a remarkably practical basis for implementing a self-perpetuating system of service management and service improvement in almost any type of support organization.

At its core, ITIL provides flexible, business-based guidance for re-focusing a support organization on the underlying business needs of the customer and how to meet those needs in the most effective and efficient way. The application of ITIL principles creates an organizational culture in which the role of frontline support professionals undergoes a sometimes subtle but powerful evolution into something new – something that can be called the Customer Advocate.

The Role of the Service Desk Representative

A common term these days for support professionals working on the service desk is Customer Service Representative or “CSR”. But who does that CSR actually “represent?” The business? The support center? The customer? Ask that question of most CSRs, and they will probably answer either the business or the support center. Our support personnel frequently do not even see themselves as professionals, but rather as employees, functionaries or just plain workers. They are in the trenches every day and feel that way. And, supporting that impression, they are often treated that way by their own organization.

If we want to motivate front-line support people to increase productivity and customer satisfaction, then we have to make a change in how they are seen, how they are treated and, most importantly, how they see themselves. Support professionals must begin to see themselves not simply as the representatives of the business, but rather as the representatives of the Customer to the business.

In the role articulated in ITIL, the CSR takes on the issue of the customer and makes it his own. He uses his knowledge, talent, tools and energy to navigate the sometimes-complex path to resolution and takes responsibility for getting the customer back to work. He is not a Customer Representative, but rather a Customer Advocate. The change is one of focus and attitude – a change of culture, not of title.

Why Transition to Customer Advocates?

All this sounds well and good, but why should an organization take the time and effort to make such a change? What are the benefits that can be expected? The ITIL framework is designed to provide an organization with a process-based approach to managing their organization with the belief that this type of approach will increase effectiveness and efficiency. Mores simply, the organization will be more successful in giving the customers what they truly need and it will do so with less effort and expense.

Specific benefits can include:

• Improved customer service, perception and satisfaction
• Increased accessibility through single point of contact, communication and information
• Better-quality and speedier turnaround of customer requests
• Improved teamwork and communication
• Enhanced focus and a proactive approach to service provision
• A reduced negative business impact
• Better managed infrastructure and control
• Improved usage of support resources and increased productivity of business personnel
• More meaningful management information for decision support
• Increased support staff job satisfaction
• Improved alignment of services to customer needs
• Clearly defined expectations for support staff

Where are You?

You can determine where your organization is on the path to having a desk staffed with Customer Advocates by comparing the behavior of your own organization to these characteristics:

Customer Representative	Customer Advocate
Is primarily reactive. Responds to customer calls, but rarely calls the customer. Feels responsibility essentially to himself and perhaps to the team or organization, but separates himself from the customer.	Maintains a proactive attitude. Once an issue is assigned, contacts the customer as often as possible and appropriate. Follows up with colleagues who may be helping with resolution to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.
Goals are: To move ticket status to closed as soon as possible To pass the customer off to someone else To somehow make this issue not their own problem (“we don’t do that” or “I can’t help you”)	Goals are: To get the customer what he needs To marshal all available resources and lead the effort To record valuable information for future use To keep accurate records so mistakes or misunderstandings can be minimized
Sees himself as: A barricade to keep the customer away from more senior people (pressure to reduce level two calls) The voice of the company (“You’re not allowed” “the company doesn’t do that”) A worker-bee	Sees himself as: A bridge between the customer and what he needs The voice of the customer A business person/professional

 

How to Get There

The road to improved service management the ITIL way starts at the organizational level. Representatives from all three stakeholder groups should be involved in your improvement program:

Initial steps at the organizational level are to:

• Communicate to the organization that an improvement program is being undertaken and offer opportunities for their involvement.

• Define a new mission statement for the support organization focusing on meeting the needs of the customer

• Identify who your customers are.

• Identify the specific needs of your customers.

• Evaluate how and to what degree customer needs are currently being met. Determine what the critical factors are that indicate success and what metrics can be used to measure performance in those areas.

• Evaluate the capacity of the support organization to deliver service.

• Collaborate with representatives of the customer in the negotiation of Service Level Agreements, defining exactly how and under what terms the customer’s service needs will be met. Ensure success of these SLAs with Operational Level Agreements and/or Underpinning Contracts to manage service commitment dependencies.

If you serve external customers, you must first determine who the customer representative will be in these talks. If you serve other businesses, they will designate a person or persons to negotiate with. If you serve consumers, then someone in your company, possibly in the marketing department, may take the role of the customer in the negotiation.

Regardless of the type of customer supported, someone must represent the customer and specific support commitments should be set. In this regard the ITIL framework can be very helpful in providing guidance about Service Level Management principles and SLA negotiation.

Some of the items SLAs should define are:

• What service levels will be delivered
• How the service levels will be met
• How achievement will be measured
• What customer responsibilities/expectations are
• What support organization’s responsibilities/expectations are
• The process for managing change during the life of the SLA

Service Level commitments need to be realistic, achievable, relevant to the customer’s needs and measurable. A good goal is to negotiate commitments that will challenge the support organization, but not create unreasonable expectations. Consider involving representatives from the frontline support staff in the SLA development process to engender a sense of ownership and commitment to the service levels that are agreed to as well as to the process of shifting the focus to the needs of the customer.

Having formal SLAs, even when you are serving external consumers, is important to establishing a culture that takes the customer seriously and treats them not as an annoyance or a frustrating interruption, but as the central reason for our being here.

Communicate and Propagate

Once SLAs are in place, they must be communicated to those who will deliver the support and those who will receive it. Support professionals at all levels need to be trained on correct processes and procedures and systems and/or tools must be put in place to manage and measure the work.

The keys to success at this stage are the design of the processes and how the program is implemented. Help yourself by designing your processes in such a way as to demonstrate tangibly to staff members at all levels that the commitment is to reaching the service level targets, not to bullying support staff or creating opportunities for terminations.

Your program should include specific methods and training on how to respond to indications that targets might be missed. Methods should reflect the commitment to service. For example, if the service desk manager receives a notification that a resolution commitment is about to be missed, how is that manager to respond? Will he go to the person to whom the case is assigned and give that person a dressing down for neglecting the case, or will he review the current workload and identify ways to help the support professional address the case more quickly?

Shaping the Role through ITIL Process Design

When designing or redesigning support processes, the customer focus is fulfilled in ITIL through the adoption of the service desk as the Single Point of Contact (SPOC) for the customer. This means that, regardless of what method the customer chooses to reach out for help, whether by phone or email or web-interface, the service desk takes ownership of seeing to it that the customer’s needs are fulfilled. The case is assigned to a service desk representative who then takes responsibility that the case is progressing and that the customer is always aware of the status of their issue. If second or third-level professionals become involved, the service desk representative still takes the lead in coordination and communications. The service desk also takes a role in quality assurance by ensuring that the customer agrees that their issue is satisfactorily resolved before final closure.

Many organizations express concern that their service desk people will not have the time for this type of case management, but experience has shown that the SPOC model reduces mistakes due to miscommunication, increases customer satisfaction and ultimately increases frontline support staff job satisfaction by giving them an increased sense of value and responsibility.

Keys to Success

Important to success is understanding that there will be an adjustment period and that everyone in the support organization must be clear on the new role of service desk staff. If a service desk representative calls a network admin for information on an open case, the admin needs to recognize the authority of the service desk to ask and give the request proper attention. If, in turn, service desk representatives show themselves to be energetic and professional, all parts of the support organization will gradually turn to them for coordination of services and communication with the customer.

The early experiences of the support staff in relation to the program will have a huge, potentially decisive impact on your overall success. If staff members feel that managers are truly more interested in getting the job done for the customer than they are in playing Big Brother to frontline support staff, they are more likely to get onboard with the program and take it seriously. This does not mean that there should be no consequences for the behavior of slackers, but rather that staff members be shown respect and given responsibility commensurate to their vital role in the vision of CSR as Customer Advocate.

Remarkably, adoption of the SPOC model advocated by ITIL does not necessarily require significant extra time per case from service desk staff. Effective use of available software can make case management easier and can enable automation of some of the new service desk responsibilities. Key is identifying what your customer base is willing to accept. If, for example, the customer base is accessible via email, follow-up contacts might be made by automated email, using manual contact by service desk staff in only extraordinary cases or for periodic spot-checking.

Throughout the implementation of new customer-centric processes, responsibility for considering the customer should be gradually shifted to the service desk staff. Individuals with a demonstrated interest should be asked to help monitor performance metrics and plan process improvements. Star performers can coach colleagues and line-level staff members can be tasked with participating in management-level planning sessions. Every opportunity should be taken to help CSRs to take themselves seriously as professionals.

Continuous Improvement

Finally, your organization will only succeed in its service improvement efforts if the program is seen not as a one-time effort, but as a new way of doing business. Build a continuous improvement element into every part of your service management system, leveraging the new customer-consciousness of your CSRs and other support staff to regularly look for new opportunities for improvement and engage in creative thinking around how to achieve these improvements. In such an environment all three stakeholder groups reap the benefits of the new focus and your CSRs will contribute ever-increasing value to the organization as true Customer Advocates.

About CCN

For the past 15 years, CCN has been dedicated to delivering support center solutions to the Fortune 500 community. Our process centric, customer-focused support services include Outsourcing on Demand , support center assessment and optimization, education, staffing and CRM solutions. CCN’s solutions are built upon the ITIL process framework coupled with the STI Knowledge best practices. We treat every client as a partner and tailor each engagement to assist our customers in reducing overall costs while increasing efficiency and productivity CCN is proud to be recognized by Inc Magazine as the 42nd fastest growing company in America in the prestigious “Inc. Inner City 100 “For more information, visit www.ccncorp.com.

“We answer your questions and solve your problems”.

Contact CCN today for all of your support center needs

Visit us on the web at www.ccncorp.com
or phone us at 1.877.226.8600