Certifications for the Support Professional: Do they make Cent$?

Kristin Robertson, KR Consulting, Inc.
January, 2003

Would you consider seeking legal counsel from an individual who had failed to pass the Bar Examination? Would you be eager to consult with a “doctor” who is not licensed to practice medicine in your state? Or, for that matter, would you purchase a beef sirloin steak that was not USDA certified? Most of us would answer “no” to all of these questions. So, if we believe that the Support Industry is a valid and respected profession, why don’t we insist that all of our support analysts and managers are certified? As a support manager or executive involved with the Support Center, this is a question that you must consider.

Just like a wedding ring, certification is the “outward and visible sign” of a commitment – for the individual, it is the sign of his or her commitment to the profession, and for the company or organization, it is the sign of its commitment to employees and customers. Through certification, a company demonstrates its commitment to providing world-class service to its customers, who can expect professionalism, courtesy and knowledgeable assistance from the Support Center.

What does certification really mean and does certification make sense for every organization? This article can help you understand the current state of certifications, and help you make a decision on whether certifications are right for your organization.

Certification Basics

Certifications for the Support Center Professional fall into categories: technical skills and soft-skills. The purpose of technical skills certification is to ensure a level of mastery of technical knowledge. These certifications are well-known to the Information Technology profession, and include the following certifications:

CompTIA’s A+, Network+
Microsoft certifications – Microsoft Certified Professional, Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, Microsoft Office User Specialist
Cisco Certified Network Associate
Certified Novell Engineer Administrator

Many Support Centers insist that their employees have one or more of these certifications – either as a condition of employment or as part of their training program.

Less common, but increasing in importance, are the so-called soft-skills certifications for Support Center personnel. This article mainly focuses on these Support Center certifications. Unlike the technical certifications, the purpose of these is to teach customer service skills and knowledge of the business processes and technologies used in a world-class Support Center. For managers, soft-skills include leadership and managerial skills, strategic thinking, and the understanding of how to run a Support Center like a business. These certifications recognize the importance of customer service skills in the success of the entire company or organization. In a recent Gallup poll, CEO’s were asked what is the most competitive advantage they see for their company. The most important advantage they cited was Customer Service, followed closely by Product/Service Quality. Especially in tough economic times, customer service is a sales differentiator and a large part of a customer’s purchase decision. Attention to soft-skills training is based on economic imperatives, and is ignored at a company’s peril.

Soft-skills certifications are focused on the different levels of responsibility typically found in a Support Center. Generally, you will find certifications for frontline analysts, senior analysts, managers and directors.

There are three associations that provide soft-skills training for the Support Industry, two with an internal customer focus (corporate Help Desks), and one with an external customer focus (Technical and Software Support Centers). However, each organization provides similar skills training that can be applied to any Support Center (see side-bar for internet resources):

Help Desk Institute
STI Knowledge (Help Desk 2000 certifications)
Service and Support Professionals Association

Certification Benefits

There are many benefits to individual certification, both for the individual being certified, and for the organization or company. For the certified individual, certification is first and foremost a way to upgrade and maintain a cutting edge skill set. Many of the technical certifications, such as the MCSE, are coveted because of the opportunity to build skills that are in demand in the workplace. Certifications can be a hiring advantage. I have seen resumes that proudly display the logo of the certification held by that individual. As a hiring manager, wouldn’t you give more consideration to a certified individual over another, non-certified applicant? The designation reflects a dedication to the profession that gives an edge to that person’s candidacy. Certification can help someone obtain a promotion within his/her company for the same reasons. Lastly, in a profession that historically has not held a high position in the traditional corporate pecking order, certification demonstrates the professionalism of support analysts and garners respect for its recipients from the rest of the company and customers.

For the Support Center and the company, there are several important benefits. Certification ensures that your employees are trained in leading edge skills, enhancing the overall skill set available in your Support Center. Better-trained support staffs equate to higher efficiencies, lower costs and more satisfied customers. Certification is a meaningful way to invest in your staff, demonstrate their value to the organization, improve morale and create more loyal employees. Your training and certification investment will benefit the organization in the form of lower turnover in your Support Center – which will be especially as the economy turns around. Soft-skills certification will improve your customer’s satisfaction level with your Support Center because your analysts will be better equipped to provide professional service to your customers. It is interesting to me to discover how many support organizations provide no customer service skills training until their analysts are sent to certification training. When no training is provided on how to handle angry or difficult customers, an odd standard gets established within a Support Center – and that standard is usually based on the sophistication (or lack thereof) of the most senior analysts within earshot. Certification creates a standard of service within the Support Center that helps to ensure that your customers are supported with courtesy, professionalism and skill.

Perhaps one of the most important benefits to the Support Center is the marketing leverage that results from certification. By certifying its analysts and managers, a company can demonstrate to its existing and potential customer base that it is committed to providing superior customer support. Certification has become a competitive advantage in a marketplace in which service quality has become a strong factor in purchasing decisions. Even in an internal help desk situation, certification of the support staff can mean more internal respect and a way to head off a decision to outsource the Help Desk. That “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” is a powerful marketing tool, both internally and externally.

Disadvantages of Certification

There are certainly instances in which certification doesn’t make sense for an organization, and the reasons for that center on the disadvantages to certification. Most importantly, certification is costly. Period. Usually, the investment in certification can be easily justified by benefits that we’ve already enumerated. However, if your organization is already providing customer service and technical skills training to your analysts and there is no need to market your Support Center, then the cost of certification may outweigh its benefits. In some smaller Help Desks, this is a reality. Clearly, providing customer service skills training without layering on the cost of certification is going to be more cost-effective alternative to certification. Just be sure that you provide soft-skills training and reinforce them with an appropriate Quality Assurance program.

Some hiring managers feel that certification is only worth the paper it is printed on, and complain about candidates who possess “book-learning” but lack real life experience. Certification cannot ensure that an employee is a good hire, nor will it make all your customer service problems go away. In soft-skills training, there is nothing to ensure that a support analyst will apply the skills learned during classroom exercises. This complaint can be levied against any classroom training, whether it is certification-related or not, and is a very valid concern. In my experience, the best way to ensure that any customer service skills training is effective in changing analysts’ behavior is to coordinate training with your quality assurance program within the Support Center. You train on the customer service skills standards that you expect in your Support Center, then reinforce those skills while monitoring and coaching your support analysts.

In a well-functioning Quality Assurance program, the Support Center clearly defines its expectations for a high-quality customer encounter and creates evaluation forms that reflect those standards. Usually, both a Ticket Review form and a Customer Interaction Evaluation form (for both email and voice interactions) are created and used simultaneously. The Ticket Review ensures that analysts have completely documented the interaction in the call tracking system, and the Customer Interaction form lists the criteria for a quality dialogue with a customer. After creating these tools, you conduct Certification Training for your Support Center staff, and then monitor customer interactions to reinforce the skills learned during training. The results of the quality monitoring sessions are fed into both coaching sessions and performance reviews, but can also inform managers of the need for spot training sessions to maintain lagging skills. As a simple example, if your quality monitoring reveals that analysts are no longer using the standard greeting developed for the Support Center, you schedule mini-training sessions during team meetings to remind representatives of the value of using the standard greeting.

So, how to choose?

There are several decisions to make in resolving the certification dilemma: Do we need to certify our support professionals, and if yes, which certification is the best for us? I suggest a four-step decision-making process:

Define your goals
Prioritize your decision criteria
Research options
Create and implement your plan

Let’s look at each step individually.

1. Define your Goals

What do you wish to accomplish with certification? The answer to this question is very important and will greatly influence your decision.

Here are some results that you might hope to achieve with certification. Use this as a checklist, and indicate which ones are important to you:

Improve Customer Service Skills
Improve effectiveness and efficiency, increase profitability
Improve morale, invest in your people
Improve your image with existing customers
Marketing/Competitive Advantage
Increase respect within the company for the Support Center

Look over the list and notice which advantages you have checked. If you checked only the first three results (Customer Service, Effectiveness and Morale), perhaps you only need to establish customer service skills training and a quality assurance program in your Support Center. This option, as noted above, can be much less costly than pursuing individual certifications for your entire support staff, especially if you can provide training and create a quality program with your existing personnel. If certification isn’t for you, congratulate yourself on saving money for your organization, and get to work with your training and quality programs.

On the other hand, if you checked any of the last three advantages (Improved image, Competitive Advantage or Increased Respect), then certification of your support staff probably makes sense (and cents) for you. If so, please continue with these recommendations.

2. Prioritize your Decision Criteria

We assume that you are still interested in certification after working on the first step above. The question you need to answer now is: What criteria are important in deciding which certification to pursue?

Here are some possible criteria:

Cost
Availability and convenience
Facilitator-led training or self-study
Appropriateness of the certifying organization
Prestige of the certifying organization
Examination procedures

Cost, availability and convenience are intertwined. All certifications are costly, as noted above, but the availability and convenience of training sessions can increase or decrease your costs. Obviously, if your analysts and managers have to travel to attend training, costs will increase. Look for a provider that offers public classes in your area to minimize or eliminate travel expenses. Or, if you have more than 7-8 people to certify, it can be very cost-effective to arrange for on-site certification training for your staff.

Is it important for you to offer facilitator-led training or is self-study sufficient for your staff? Some experts believe that soft-skills training is best delivered by an instructor because it allows for interactive exercises and feedback. If that is a concern for you, then facilitator-led training is what you need. Appropriateness and prestige of the certifying organization may be important to you, and so you should choose accordingly. However, as noted above, much of the soft-skills training curriculum is very similar. Lastly, examination procedures differ across the certifying bodies. For example, Help Desk Institute certification requires that the individual go to an independent Testing Center to sit for the examination. This can either be a plus or a minus, depending on your point of view: The testing procedure is monitored and no study materials are allowed in the testing room, ensuring that the student has retained the training materials. However, it may be inconvenient to drive to a testing center.

3. Research your Options

The following matrix represents the first step in your research. It compares the three certification-granting organizations, and the major criteria. Please note that information on this matrix is current as of January, 2003.

Analyst Training

		—Facilitator-led training—		Online training	—————-Examination——————
Certifying Organization:	Name of Certification:	Class length:	Training Cost:	Cost:	Method:	Cost:	Training mandatory?
Help Desk Institute	Help Desk Analyst (HDA)	3 days (Boot Camp)	$1295/$1395*	$645/$795*	Prometrics Testing Center	$99	No – standards openly available
STI Knowledge	Certified Help Desk Professional (CHDP)	2 days	$1,195	$495	Online	Included	Yes
*Service & Support Professionals Association*	Certified Support Professional (CSP)	2 Days	Onsite only	$299	Online	$99	No

Manager Training

		—Facilitator-led training—		Online training	—————-Examination——————
Certifying Organization:	Name of Certification:	Class length:	Training Cost:	Cost:	Method:	Cost:	Training mandatory?
Help Desk Institute	Help Desk Manager (HDM)	3 days	$1295/$1395*	$645/$795*	Prometrics Testing Center	$99	No – standards openly available
*STI Knowledge*	Certified Help Desk Manager (CHDM)	2 days	$1,495	$495**	Online	Included	Yes
*Service & Support Professionals Association*	Certified Support Manager (CSM)	5 Days (4 days of instruction)	$3500 for 1 student, $3300/student for 2-3	N/A	At end of class	Included	Yes

* HDI Member Cost/HDI Non-Member Cost

** STI Knowledge offers this in “interactive” form – booklets are shipped to you for study. Webinars are also available.

Be sure to conduct your own research. A good place to start is on the web. The side-bar, above, gives you some good websites to jumpstart your search. You should complete your research by directly contacting the certifying organizations, speaking to other professionals who have become certified, and talking to the trainers themselves.

4. Create and Implement your Plan

You’ve identified your goals, researched your options – now you just need to choose which certification suits you and make arrangements for training and testing. Don’t forget to include a Quality Assurance program in your plan to reinforce learned skills.

You may also need to document your plan, justify costs and present it to executive management for approval. Feel free to use the matrix, above, as a starting point for your presentation. You can justify certification costs by quantifying benefits in three areas:

Increased productivity in the Support Center, which decreases the need for additional headcount
Increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, which increases profits (for external support centers) or increases end-user productivity (for internal help desks)
Increased employee retention, which decreases costs associated with staff turnover

You can create a spreadsheet that details the expected increase in revenues and reduction in costs.

Conclusion

If we are committed to the support industry as a true profession, then we must consider the need for certification of our support professionals. Just as the medical and legal fields certify their practitioners, so should we. The benefits are many, but smart managers will use a disciplined thought process to choose what is best for their organizations.