Building a Modern Help Hub Empowering End Users with Knowledge Bases and Communities Steve White, Director of Customer Service Jay Keating, SVP Cloud & Managed Services #Cloudscape2017

Technology Adoption Trends What else has changed? Expectations

The Nature of Help Is Changing Face-to-face Face-to-face, telephone, then email late in the 1990s Omnichannel 1900s 1800s 2000s Face-to-Face Chat / SMS Telephone Social Media Email Self-help Web Portal Peer-to-Peer

Two Obvious Constants? People are getting busier and busier, and really want / need their busy times to be productive. None of us is smarter than any of us.

Abandon Rates Ticket Aging Handle Times Ticket Volumes What Is the Focus of Today’s Help Desk? Ticket Volumes Channel Utilization Abandon Rates Ticket Aging Handle Times Knowledge Management Utilization Survey Scores After Call Work

What Is the Focus of Today’s Help Desk? Answer: Largely…Itself Question: Why do companies pay for help desk support? Hint: unless your company is in the business of PC repair or call center support, neither PC repair or call center support is valuable to the business… Help Desks are not funded specifically to fix PC’s, or to answer calls within a specific timeframe. Help Desks, from a financial perspective, have been created to return callers to Financial Productivity as quickly as possible in a fiscally responsible way. Good help desks also actively participate in identifying ways to reduce ticket volume drivers – avoid the problems all together! Answer: To maximize financial productivity of employees! If your Help Desk’s primary mission is to focus on the financial productivity of employees in a financially responsible way, your #1 metric is: Time to Resolve (Or, how quickly you are returning people back to productivity)

Traditional Help Desk Structure Level 3 Vendors/Specialists Level 2 Server/Security/Network/Application Teams Level 1 Help Desk According to research from MetricNet, reported in The Economic Impact of Support, the average cost of an IT support ticket starts at about $22 for Level 1 (service desk) support and rises dramatically as issues are escalated, reaching $196 per ticket for field support and a whopping $471 for vendor. Jul 30, 2013

Left Shifting Left Shifting The single best way to improve Time To Resolve is by “Left Shifting.” Understanding your First Contact Resolution (Or the ability to resolve issues at your Tier 1 Help Desk without escalation) is a great first step. If financial productivity is the primary mission for your Help Desk, Left Shifting should be your primary goal Goal: Move resolutions capability as close to the requestors as you can Left Shifting

Why Left Shift? Left Shifting Makes Help Desk It’s significantly less expensive to resolve an issue at the Help Desk. Escalations take both Tier 1 and Tier 2 resources. It’s significantly faster to resolve issues on first contact as opposed to escalating and waiting for a Tier 2 agent to respond. The overall respect and satisfaction of the Help Desk within the organization. It resolves project/support conflict at Level 2. Improves the morale of Level 1 while increasing morale Left Shifting Makes Help Desk Cheaper, Faster, with Higher Levels of Satisfaction

It’s All About Knowledge Management: So…. I Should Hire Engineers for Level 1? Help Desk agents are hired for skills other than technical, which also plays a critical role in Help Desk support. Additionally, Engineer level skills typically come at a premium, negatively impacting the financials of the Help Desk KCS (Knowledge Centered Support) is a great framework to get your organization on the path of capturing and using knowledge in the focus of left shifting capabilities within your support organization Not Recommended How do I left shift without hiring higher skilled technicians and increasing costs? It’s All About Knowledge Management: the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge.

Knowledge Management If you are relying on the “memorized” skill of your Tier 1 technicians… you may be doing it wrong. Questions: In addition to the benefits of a more effective Tier 1 (Faster, Cheaper), you can significantly decrease the risk of losing critical knowledge while significantly increasing your time to proficiency for new employees! How long does it take to ramp up a new technician to proficiency level? What happens when one of your proficient technicians leave?

Wait…There’s More There is one more “level” of left shifting! Self Service

People want to have the ability to help themselves! What Is Self Service? Self Help is a very close relative to an internal KB – the two differences: Who can see it What you should assume your audience knows Knowledge Frameworks, such as KCS, can be implemented to keep knowledge ‘fresh’, helping to drive continue self-service adoption People want to have the ability to help themselves! In today’s interconnected world, Support Speed is critical Companies are trying to meet support demand with a growing user base and limited personnel Supported users are more technically savvy with a shorter patience for customer support

How to Start Self Service Highly Recommended: start with an Internal Knowledge Base first. Determine how you want to present your articles (various solutions exist). Categorize or track which tickets could be “self-serviceable” Keep Articles simple – assume your audience is NOT technical! Include pictures and have non-technical employees review your articles Keep content fresh and updated Put someone in charge of your Self Service success! Customers today want effortless engagement, and they increasingly leverage web or mobile self-service as a first point of contact with a company. – Forrester, Vendor Landscape: Knowledge Management for Customer Engagement

Communities/Crowd Sourcing? There is a depth of knowledge outside of your Help Desk which you can tap into! While Help Desk typically is the central point for technical break/fix requests, many “how to” questions are actually better answered by the very employees who use your systems on a day-to-day basis. Communities are simply “conversations” online where questions can be posted and answered by other members of your company. You have probably been using Communities for years – Public Forums are used by all of the large technical companies including Apple, HP, IBM

Community Considerations Clearly state “support” expectations in all forums (no SLA, call the help desk if you do not receive successful assistance.) Make sure users know this is not the place for technical support, and to contact the help desk for things above “how-to” type issues. Dedicate resources to monitor, review and possibly answer forum requests. Keep an eye out for incorrect advice.

Summary Your employees are starting to demand new channels of support. The good news is… they can be faster and cheaper—a great combination! Tip to focus on: “Time To Resolution” as a Key Goal Empowering the Help Desk to Reduce Support Costs Rolling out Knowledge Base, Self Help, and Community Support

Next Steps!

Thank You Q&A Steve White steven.white@logicsone.com Jay Keating #Cloudscape2017 Thank You Q&A Steve White steven.white@logicsone.com Jay Keating jay.keating@logicsone.com