1. Blackboard Client Support Listening Session
Process, Technology, and Key Performance Indicators
Presented By Bill Schroeher
September 29, 2005

2. Agenda Overview Client Support Standards People Technology Process
Blackboard Support Offerings
Client Support Standards
The 4 C’s
People
Who is part of the Client Support Team
Technology
How Blackboard Provides Support
Process
How Blackboard works with you
Performance Indicators
Measuring the service
Listening Session
We welcome your feedback, suggestions and comments

3. Overview: Blackboard Client Support
System Administrator Support
Dedicated Technical Support Manager
24 hour support and toll free number
Access to Behind the Blackboard, the web-based support solution
Surveys, newsletters, and other client communication
Client service reviews
Six global support locations
“You and your staff quickly responded to the problem and understood its importance. The service we received this week in response to this issue was exemplary. You really care about your product and your customers.” Larry McGrath, University of California Riverside
"I simply can't be happier with the level of quality support that I'm receiving from Blackboard right now!“ Eric Kunnen, Grand Rapids Community College

4. Client Support Standards
Expectations surrounding the Client Experience have increased dramatically as Blackboard and other enterprise solutions have become more mission critical
Fundamental changes in quality of service can be the differentiating factor for one company in every market
Blackboard understands the needs of our clients and strives to exceed expectations
By developing client support standards, Blackboard has created a culture of superior client service

5. Blackboard’s Support Standards: The 4 C’s
Competency
Professional and efficient communication
Thorough analysis
Leverage of knowledge resources
Commitment
Exceeding expectations
Ownership
Developing relationships
Holistic and forward-thinking approach to assisting clients
Communication
Responsive
Proactive
Clear
Care
Respect and understanding
Sensitive to the importance of every situation

6. How Blackboard Implements our Support Standards
People
Technology
Process
Performance
Indicators
System Administrators
Client Advocacy
Underlying Technology Expertise
TSM AM
Community
User Groups
List_serv
Behind the Blackboard
Peoplesoft
Google
IP Telephony
Parature
Lab infrastructure
“How to” Documentation
Release Notes
Tutorials
Project 24
Engineering Services
Global Services and ASP Operations
Client driven requirements
Enhancement Requests
Application Packs
Performance Benchmarking Team
Root Cause Analysis
Client Satisfaction
Response Time
Case Reviews
Live Call Rate
Total Contacts
Employee Satisfaction
Cost/Productivity Goals
Organizational/ Maturity goals

7. Rely on Dedicated Resources
People
As you all know every client of Blackboard is assigned an Account Manager and Technical Support Manager. These individuals works in concert to set and achieve the high service standards that we put in to place for our staffs. This combination works well to meet your business and technical support needs. It is important to note how close the TSM and AM relationship is to support such a large community and a growing organization within Bb as a company. The purpose of this relationship is to show that even though we as a company are growing we are still dedicated to delivering personal service.
CLIENT #
Technical Support Manager Greg Poland X 1234
Account Manager Michael Weber X 2833
Clients interact through 2 dedicated points of contact
Account Manager and Technical Support Manager

8. Dedicated Support Contact: The Technical Support Manager
People
Skill Set
Experience across front-end and back-end of Blackboard applications
Expertise with Operating System and Database architecture
Responsibility
Dedicated to resolving client issues and maintaining ongoing communication around outstanding requests
Limited client pool enables personalization
Measurement and Performance
Responsiveness
Quality of case management and
client service
Overall client satisfaction
Regionally Aligned with Blackboard
Teams
The Dedicated TSM have a variety of backgrounds but mostly these are former consultants or Blackboard administrators that are familiar with the technical support environment of an enterprise software implementation. The TSM is responsible for ongoing communication about your open issues and has a limited client pool so they have time to provide personalized service to you.
These are measured around a 5 point quality report card on metrics such as client satisfaction, responsiveness, case management, and contribution to knowledge management.
The other important thing to note is that these individuals are regionally aligned with the other Blackboard teams so they should be working approximately the same business hours that you have.

9. Root Cause Analysis
People
Dedicated resources focused on identifying root cause of client reported issues
Training and Quality
Trend analysis of client reported issues
Recommendations to Product Management on product and technology changes
Training of staff on new products and features
Knowledge Management
Manage organizational knowledge around processes and products
Ensure appropriate communication and content management methods
Monitor and assess client list_serv postings
This Root Cause resource is not assigned to any accounts. They aren’t solving tickets. They are focused on being the wide angle lens of the organization looking for trends in things like the gradebook, the assessment engine, keeping an eye on new functionality such as the adaptive release tools. The RCA also is required to perform training programs for the team, monitor list_serv acviivity and work extensively on improving information available to clients on BTBB.

10. Growing Communities and Collaboration
People
And finally the last part of the People pillar hast to do with the community of practice. We strongly believe in our community of users and how people represent Blackboard and provide feedback for useful product suggestions. This happens not just on the list_servs, which are just a terrific resource, but at Blackboard days, User groups and through the building blocks program. Our greatest ally are the users of the system and you are driving the future of Blackboard’s product roadmap.

11. Client Support Infrastructure
Technology
Enables easy replication of client issues using support lab environment
Over $100K spent on hardware infrastructure
Hardware Load Balancer for replication of enterprise environments
Multiple Blackboard versions installed and configured on all supported platforms
Performance benchmarking team for robust testing in client-simulated environments
Blackboard Client Support continues to invest in Technology Infrastructure Enhancements to improve the client experience. Some of these investments occur behind the scenes, like upgrades and enhancements to our PeopleSoft CRM system, and expansion of our Voice Over IP telephony that enables our Global Call Center and “Follow the Sun” support strategy. Another example is our Support Lab.
Blackboard Client Support spent over 100 thousand dollars last year on hardware for our support lab environments. In the lab, we now have configurations that are representative of most client configurations. These environments enable us to easily replicate most client issues as part of the troubleshooting process.
In addition, Blackboard has a Performance Engineering group that works closely with Product Development to benchmark and improve performance and platform parity from release to release. This team has generated a wealth of knowledge that we leverage for performance tuning and complex configuration issues.
These internal-facing technology improvements are not readily visible to clients, but they have a real and positive impact on the client experience. Other technology improvements that are underway have higher visibility in the client experience…

12. Self Service - Behind the Blackboard
Technology
Comprehensive web-based service center
7,000 system administrators and 165,000 students and instructors
2,300 Knowledge Base Articles
Product-related documentation
Personalized account information
Create, view and update support cases
…probably the most visible is Self Service.
Behind the Blackboard was launched about 2 years ago, with a very positive response from our user community. Use of our web-based service center has expanded accordingly, and you see some of the current statistics on this slide. It provides easy access to documentation, the Knowledge Base, support case management functionality and more through an interface that is familiar to Blackboard users.

13. Search - Behind the Blackboard
Technology
Single engine searches across all resources including:
Knowledge Base Articles
Behind the Blackboard Web Content
Client List_servs
Documentation
Release Notes
Known and Resolved Issues
We have purchased and are about to launch a Google Search Engine on Behind the Blackboard. …This will enable users to search across the Knowledge Base, Behind the Blackboard web content, Blackboard Documentation and Release Notes, even Client Listservs like ASU and BbAdmin with a single search tool.
You may have noticed that Behind the Blackboard was recently redesigned. It now features a much more intuitive, logical organization scheme and is easier to navigate to the resources users are looking for. It is now built upon .NET, which has improved performance and provides opportunities to integrate and leverage additional technologies, for example RSS feeds. This has been widely requested by our user community and is now enabled for the “Latest Blackboard News” module. This will soon be expanded to include things like new documentation and support case activity.
Other recent enhancements include the addition of Client Support Statistics, Issues from the field are now updated several times a week, and your Account Manager and Technical Support Managers names will now be displayed on the main pages. Future improvements we’re planning are additional RSS feeds and other Self-Service improvements, an example might be Web Chats.
These are all exciting improvements to Behind the Blackboard, and we recognize that Self-Service technologies can only be meaningful to the client experience when they provide access to high-quality resources and information that helps them toward the success of their Blackboard implementation.

14. Enhanced Documentation
Technology
Revamped Release Notes to enable easier reference of product issues
Clearly highlights new features
Complete Known and Resolved Issues in easy to report Excel format
Quick Tutorials that demonstrate key Blackboard capabilities
“How to” documentation to explain advanced features
Key Documentation now available in MS Word format

15. Global Call Center
Technology
Netherlands
Phoenix, AZ
Japan
Washington, DC
Mexico
Singapore
Follow the sun model with six Global Support locations
VOIP Telephony System integrating global offices
Multi language capabilities
Blackboard staff fluent in English, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Swedish, Japanese, Chinese
24 x 7 access to any over 200+ language interpreters

16. Project 24
Process
Blackboard Client Support will respond to all client requests within 24 hours
Client Requests
Case creation via phone call to Blackboard Client Support or entry on Behind the Blackboard
Client reply to s from
Notes added to existing cases via Behind the Blackboard
Project 24 does not override Blackboard Service Level Agreements (SLA) 
Severity 1 and Severity 2 issues carry higher responsiveness requirements
One of the themes that came up in our discussions with clients and listening sessions during the User’s Conference in the US earlier this year was responsiveness.
To take the first step in resolving the “responsiveness” question we have instituted a program called Project 24. The program was designed to measure the team around responding to each client request within 24 hours.
Now that we have this metric in place we are in a position to identify which TSM’s are really good at responding and which ones are having trouble at responding in 24 hours. We can then do the appropriate coaching and mentoring around this or more workload around to ensure our TSM’s are in a position to respond to these requests in a timely manner.
The end result here is very simple. If you contact us you should expect a response within 24 hours and if not sooner.

17. Influence Product Direction
Process
Client-driven Requirements
Enhancement Request Program
Blackboard Idea Exchange
Messaging Lounge
Early Development Dialogue
Product Development Partnership
Product Testing (Beta)
Client-focused development
Application Packs
Rapid response to market needs
Engineering Services Team
Dedicated development resources for client reported issues
Performance Operations Workbook
Another area where process plays a critical role is that we pride ourselves on giving clients that ability to influence product direction. This includes Enhancement Requests which are reviewed by product management or through programs like the communities site, beta testing programs, and the developers network.
Our development strategy will not change when it comes to serving our clients. We will always have an engineering services team focused on fixing software defects, as well as a performance architecture team making sure that the performance of the application is able to scale as product adoption becomes more prevalent.

18. Measuring our Progress
Performance
Indicators
End User Satisfaction
Surveys sent to contact after every case is closed
Comprehensive client satisfaction survey
Costs/Productivity Goals
Support Infrastructure vs. Human Resources
Multi channel contact avenues (e.g., , phone, web)
Cost-effective and customer centric
Employee Satisfaction
Job satisfaction
Motivation
Advancement
Organizational Maturity Goals
Financial success does not equate to maturity
What was good enough last year is not good enough this year
Now that we have covered the areas of people, process and technology - we recognize that there needs to be a way to measure all of these client experience improvements. As every manager knows what gets measured gets done. This is never more true than in a call center. What we as an organization need to make sure we do is measure the team not just around the client experience but around the complete experience of serving our clients needs.
This obviously starts with end user satisfaction. Those client satisfaction surveys are reviewed by the management team on a weekly basis to ensure the proper follow up occurs.
We also have to look at cost vs productivity goals. As we all experience, our budgets include only so much we can spend on people and the technology to support them. I could certainly throw away a bunch of technologies and hire 10 more TSM’s but that won’t necessarily serve the end users experience. We want to improve the effectiveness of the operation and that is going to come from the hiring of qualified people as well as making the most out of the multi channel interaction tools that we have for our clients.
Employees satisfaction is certainly going to lead to client satisfaction. With any call center, there is a certain level of turnover that occurs. We make sure that there are opportunities for advancement, motivated staff and ultimately job satisfaction so they want to be in their role, grow, pick up new skills, help our clients for the long term.
And finally the organization must be mature and ready to take on new initiatives. Certainly web chat would be a great solution to add to our infrastructure but it is not necessarily something we are ready for.
Most importantly what was good enough last year isn’t good enough this year…the advantage is that we know that and are making sure to set the bar higher all of the time. By measuring the team around quantifiable metrics like these we can ensure that progress is being made year over year.

19. Client Support Response Statistics Blackboard Academic Suite
Client Facing Metrics
Performance
Indicators
Client Support Response Statistics
Blackboard Academic Suite
(1/1/05 through 6/30/05)
Client Satisfaction (percentage)
Live Call Handle Ratio (percentage)
Average Call Wait Time (seconds)
Total Resolved Client Requests ,877
Total Contacts ( and phone) ,350
When it comes to certain metrics some companies actually post their key performance indicators online and make them visible to their clients. This is a risk but certainly something that we don’t want to be shy of. We have now posted our metrics online on BTBB for clients to see. Certainly there are areas to improve and you will hopefully see these numbers change over time for the positive.

20. Summary Quality service standards Dedicated Technical Support
Industry leading technology infrastructure
Client-focused development through partnerships
Measured through strict performance metrics

21. Questions, Discussion