1. WEEK TWO, Session 2 Information Gathering

2. Helpdesk metrics must be reprioritized from measuring internal efficiencies to evaluating customer retention. Traditional call centers practices often fall short in supporting vital customer segmentation by not providing adequate information across channels.

3. Businesses not meeting these new challenges run in a high risk of losing loyal customers. Hence, customer information is the key to delivering quality results. To achieve high performance in Call Centers and Contact Centers, organizations need:

4. 1. The ability to gather information. 2. The flexible infrastructure for supporting multimedia transactions. 3. A customer knowledge base accessible by employees.

5. A customer knowledge base must be capable of storing both real- time and historic information of a customer. Consistent customer information across all communication gateways is essential for retaining customer loyalty

6. To collect and share information throughout internal and external channels, help desk managers need scalable, flexible and easily customized issue tracking systems that are sophisticated enough to adopt to customer needs.

7. I: Purpose of information gathering: In 4 groups - Discuss and come up with your ideas and recommendations. Time: 20 minutes. A group member read the list.

8. I: Purpose of information gathering: 1. Build and maintain a problem/solution knowledge base

9. If you keep track of how you solve problems, you will be able to use that information if other people experience similar problems. Ideally this will be stored in a database so when a customer calls you can scan the database for information on similar past problems. Such databases range from simple relational databases to complex expert systems

10. I: Purpose of information gathering: 2. Identify recurring problems

11. Lack of communication between help desk staff: each person might be getting similar calls but be unaware that others are receiving the same types of calls. It wastes time if each person invests time to fix the problem independently.

12. I: Purpose of information gathering: 3. Identify major problems before they occur

13. Early detection and correction of problems tends to lessen their severity. Monitoring the network can help you notice degradations in performance, enabling you to fix the systems before they generate additional help calls.

14. I: Purpose of information gathering: 4. Measure Helpdesk performance

15. Tracking held you measure the performance of your help desk. How many calls you answer, the number of users you are supporting, your rate of successful resolution, etc. remember that an important part help desk service is customer satisfaction.

16. sometimes it appears as though you're successful because you are getting fewer calls IS THIS THE REAL TRUTH?

17. NO

18. this may be because customers are going to places other than your help desk for support!

19. I: Purpose of information gathering: 5. Identify opportunities for training and awareness

20. Help desk workers commonly complain that customers don't know the technology they are using. Such customers ask the same questions over and over again, ask very simple questions or ask questions that make it clear that they do not understand the basics of the software.

21. Tracking these kinds of calls will help you identify groups of customers that need training. For every one of these callers that you successfully get into training, you are decreasing your help desk load.

22. I: Purpose of information gathering: 6. Keep customers informed

23. Notify your customers into the impending problems, maintenance, or shutdowns---in advance. This prevents and help maintain call volumes.

24. II: How does gathered information impact your decision making: In 4 groups - Discuss and come up with your ideas and recommendations. Time: 20 minutes. A group member read the list.

25. II: Decision making by using the information gathered: 1. Find out if the decision is based on data or assumption

26. making decisions based on assumptions can be extremely risky, especially when you discover that your assumptions might be based on incorrect mental models.

27. Analyze ASSUME

28. ASS - U – ME Making an ASS out of U & ME

29. II: Decision making by using the information gathered: 2. Finding out if the data you are using for decision making is up-to-date, appropriate and relevant

30. Using data that was assembled based on an environment that is different than the one you are in will be as good as flipping a coin. Check to see if your data is good.

31. II: Decision making by using the information gathered: 3. Check to see if the data reflect common sense

32. Quite often, data may be very good, but it does not represent current realities.

33. II: Decision making by using the information gathered: 4. Do not believe that quality of data is more important than quantity of data

34. Reams and reams of multi- colour reports are not as good as one or two pages of solid usable information that you can help base your decision.

35. II: Decision making by using the information gathered: 5. Be open to fact that data can come in many forms

36. often people think of general ways and means. Usually you miss identifying those data which has been affected due to a decision making during the cause.

37. II: Decision making by using the information gathered: 6. Be conscious of what is behind the data, and how it was collected

38. if you are one trying to collect data on your own performance, you risk skewing the results because often people feel pressured to give you the data they believe you are looking for.

39. II: Decision making by using the information gathered: When making decisions, the challenge is two folds. What are these?

40. 1. ensure data you use as a reference point for decision- making is current, appropriate and relevant.

41. 2. At the same time, make sure that the common sense is applied as a test to measure that what you want to do is both logical and rational.

42. NEXT WEEK: Helpdesk Staff and Service Orientation What are the perspective views by: Customer/employees; Helpdesk technicians; System administrator and Helpdesk Manager?