Operational Assessment

Measuring, Benchmarking & Certification

Have you ever felt like your Help Desk or Support Center performs below its potential? Or maybe you'd like to know how your center compares to others, and where you might tweak your operations to make them just that much better? An Operational Assessment is a great way to find answers to those questions. During an Operational Assessment, we examine your current processes, structure, human resource programs and technology and compare them to the Help Desk Institute's Site Certification standards. We make recommendations for improvements, create a project plan for implementing changes and assist in implementing change. You get peace of mind, knowing exactly what to do to bring your center up to world-class standards.

KR Consulting, Inc. will visit your support center for several days to thoroughly investigate current operational practices. We use an assessment questionnaire based on the Help Desk Institute's Site Certification Standards to compare your operations to world-class best practices. During the assessment, KR Consulting acts as a Detective Agency, observing employees as they perform their duties, interviewing the management team, reviewing phone statistics and any available service reports, and calling 3-5 internal customers to assess their satisfaction with the current service, among other tasks. The time spent on-site gives KR Consulting a thorough understanding of current procedures, how internal departments and individuals work together, the personalities involved, what tools are needed, and the customer's current level of satisfaction.

Deliverables might include:

· An individualized Assessment Summary and Recommendations report.

· An individualized Action Plan that describes how to achieve our recommendations.

· PowerPoint Summary Presentation of the detailed documents.

· A reference CD that contains service tools, articles and databases of information to help you manage your support center.

If you would like more details about this service, click here.

Process Design or Tune-Ups

Re-Design Processes or Start New Services

Not sure how to start a new service? Are you wondering how to re-design some processes that you KNOW are out-of-date and no longer effective? We can help you design and document new workflows and processes for greater efficiencies and to contain costs in your contact center.

This step usually follows a thorough Support Center Assessment. KR Consulting recommends creating a small Process Tune-up Task Force, composed of members of the affected organizations, to help design and create new processes, and, very importantly, to be the champions of the changes. We work closely with the Task Force, educating the group first about best practices. Together, we then examine current operations by creating flow charts and other visuals to help identify bottlenecks in procedures, and compare your operations against the industry-standard best practices. The Task Force develops a Pilot Program to test the new procedures, and KR Consulting works closely with the group during this time to identify opportunities to tweak and improve the changes. Rollout to the group is a big celebration, and KR Consulting is there to help assess the benefits of the implementation. If you would like more details about this service, click here.

Startup Management

Building a Successful Support Center

If you are just starting a new support center or the service for a new product, you may be facing many uncertainties and challenges. You know that you have an exciting opportunity to create an organization of lasting value, but don't really know what pitfalls to avoid. KR Consulting provides expert guidance in creating a new support center, offering project management and coordination skills. We make sure you do it right the first time and create an organization that is a positive reflection on you!

Startup management encompasses all the building blocks of a successful support center! We will work with you to create any or all of the following:

· Meeting with all stakeholders, including executive management, internal peer groups, and customers, to calibrate their expectations of the new support center.

· Create a Service Level Agreement and present it to stakeholder groups.

· Create and document all service and support processes.

· Working with internal groups to assess expected demand for services, calculate staffing levels and shifts needed.

· Create job descriptions and a hiring plan.

· Interview candidates.

· Create a new hire and ongoing training plan, and work with others to create the needed training materials.

· Train the support center management staff on support center procedures.

· Create a quality assurance and coaching program.

· Coordinate all startup tasks and work with internal personnel to meet deadlines.

If you would like more details about this service, click here.

Knowledge-Centered Support

Knowledge Management for Support Centers

Answer these questions about your current knowledge management process:

Are you frustrated with your current knowledge management process?
Does it take too long to get knowledge published to your knowledgebase?
Are you seeing too many escalations to experts in your company – on issues that should have been solved on first contact?
Is the amount of knowledge needed to adequately support customers too much for analysts to remember?

If you answer yes to any of these questions, it may be time to examine your knowledge management processes. Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS^sm) is an approach to knowledge management designed specifically for the support center environment. It reduces escalations, reduces time to publish new knowledge, increases first call resolution and reduces new hire training. To learn more about Knowledge-Centered Support, click here.

Certification & Auditing

Certified Support Center Program

Is your company focused on certifying their operations, perhaps using ISO protocol? If so, you may be looking for a certification targeted specifically for Help Desks and Technical Support. KR Consulting works with Service Strategies Corporation to provide the prestigious Support Center Practices certification. This globally recognized certification ensures that your support operations comply with standards complied by a consortium of companies who provide world-class technical support. If you would like more details about this service, click here.

Click here for more information about Service Strategies Support Center Practices certification: http://www.servicestrategies.com

Service Level Agreements

Managing & Setting Customer Expectations

If you don't have a Service Level Agreement that defines the who, what, when, where and how of your services to your customers, chances are, your customers expect you to do everything for them - immediately! Allow us to assist you in creating Service Level Agreements that define the services and metrics that your support center will deliver. More importantly, you will learn how to use Service Level Agreements to influence your customers' expectations of you.

KR Consulting gets all stakeholders - customers, managers and support professionals - involved in contributing their ideas about Service Levels. Experience confirms that when you obtain buy-in from all affected parties, they become champions of the new standards. While taking stakeholders' input into consideration, we then work with the Support Center management to create a reasonable Service Level Agreement that describes programs that serve the customer within budget constraints. Marketing and selling the new agreement is as important as creating it, and KR Consulting uses the stakeholders that were interviewed in the beginning of the process to be the spokespersons for the changes. If you would like more details about this service, click here.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing Decisions and Vendor Selection

Is outsourcing right for you? We work through a checklist of criteria, including a thorough financial analysis, to see if outsourcing is the right business decision for your company. We can guide you through the process of selecting a vendor that closely fits your business requirements, and also manage the implementation process. Our expertise in this area helps you avoid many common and costly pitfalls in implementing an outsourced relationship. If you would like more details about this service, click here.