Webinar 2009 Service and Support Metrics Survey Results: A Look Behind the Scenes in Today's Support Organization

“ Customer Service Survey Results Pete McGarahan, President, McGarahan and Associates Gary McNeil, Vice President, Marketing, Parature Inc.

Our Business

Parature is a leading provider of on-demand (SaaS) software for customer service and help desk.

Parature enables organizations to:

Reduce the cost of supporting their customers

Have a 360 view of customer issues

Retain their customers

Improve customer satisfaction

Generate more revenue from their base

Deliver “legendary” customer service

One stop shopping

One integrated software suite – on-demand

Parature Portal

Parature Ticket

Parature Knowledgebase

Parature Reporting

Parature Chat

Parature Forum

Host of other modules

“ With Parature, we do not have to increase our CSR headcount…we would have needed two to three additional CSR’s with the rate that JobFox is growing.”

- JobFox

Parature - One Integrated Suite

Parature Reduces Support Costs By 5X *A survey published by the Association of Support Professionals compares the high cost of phone support to email and web self-service support.

________ _ __ _________ ___ ____ 750+ Customers In All Industries and Sizes Technology Business Services Gaming and Digital Media Education Associations Healthcare

No unified customer service suite to manage all customer care

Lack of metrics for the service team and executives

Not enough customer self-service options

Static web sites and FAQ’s are frustrating and not worth the time

Service teams are underappreciated by executives

Overburdened with repetitive questions

The answer is not about adding headcount

Customer Service Challenges

Macro-economic conditions warrant a review of how a service team can decrease costs without decreasing customer satisfaction

Customers want many service options:

Customer self-service to look up the answers themselves

Log a chat session with a quick question

Go to a forum to have another customer help them with their answer

Look up their ticket history or see the current status of their ticket submission

This all leads to a richer service experience, higher retention rates, more opportunity to upsell or cross-sell and a happier customer service team

Technology can reduce the support burden significantly

World-Class Service and Revenue

2009 Service and Support Metrics Survey Results: A Look Behind the Scenes in Today's Support Organization Peter McGarahan Gary McNeil

Our Sponsor

This year’s survey, sponsored by Parature Inc., a provider of on-demand customer service and help desk software, reveals that, while support organizations are evolving processes and adopting technologies to improve service delivery, they continue to face characteristic challenges.

About Our Speakers

12 years with PepsiCo/Taco Bell IT and Business Planning.

Managed the Service Desk and all of the IT Infrastructure for 4500 restaurants, 8 zone offices, field managers and Corporate office.

2 years as a Product Manager for Vantive.

Executive Director for HDI.

6 years with STI Knowledge/Help Desk 2000.

Founder, McGarahan & Associates.

2 years as Chairman, IT Infrastructure Management

19 years of marketing experience

VP of Marketing for Vocus Inc.

Helped grow Vocus from almost 8 million in revenue to over 40 million

VP of Marketing for Authoria Inc.

Director of Marketing Programs for Kronos

Pete McGarahan, McGarahan & Associates Gary McNeil, VP Marketing, Parature

The Agenda

Executive Summary

Current State/Summary/Highlights

Challenging Times/Opportunities

Risky Business

Measuring Up

Marketing Your Value

Supply/Demand/Service Levels/Funding

Access Channels

A Diversified Portfolio

The “Bake-Off”

Fostering Relationships

I Can Help You!

Customer Collaboration

Gathering Customer Feedback

Summary and Conclusion

Questions and Answers

Executive Summary

Survey Respondents comprised of high-level executives representing all vertical sectors responsible for:

Senior-level managers (105)

Enterprise help desks / customer-facing service desks / contact centers

45% manage customer-facing support operations

16% oversee internal help-desk functions, 39% do both

Company size ranges in size from SMBs to those with more than 10,000 employees (15%).

Nearly 30% have service and support budgets of $1MM plus

The technology sector (30%) is the largest vertical industry represented in the survey .

Supportindustry.com conducts an annual survey (March, 2009) designed to explore the state of enterprise service and support:

Current industry trends, funding, demand for services, future plans, technology adoption, workforce issues, benchmarking strategies, metrics and other areas.

Reduced budgets.

Constantly selling/proving their value proposition to all stakeholders.

Investigating why demand continues to rise.

Implementing more proactive, call deflection/elimination activities.

Expanding the ‘channel access funnel’, valued service offerings and the customer conversation and relationship through social networking, collaborative environments and face-to-face gatherings.

Today’s service and support organizations continue to deal with:

Improving/optimizing support operations.

Racing to deliver cost-effective, quality, scalable and leveraged services.

Designing/enhancing services that are customer-centric.

Creatively trying to grapple with ever-changing customer expectations

Faster, better, cheaper, easier……

Today’s service and support organizations continue to deal with:

Self-service Benefits What has been the primary benefit from implementing Web-based or self-service technologies in your support organization?

Service and Support Opportunities

Focus on what’s important.

Metrics that matter.

Nail the fundamentals (back-to-basics)

Quality, scalable, strategic & leveraged services.

Reduce operational costs.

Generate a quick return on your tool investments.

Automate, integrate, process mapping & continuously improve.

Enhance the customer experience.

Design services that are customer-centric.

Leverage knowledge for customer self-service.

It’s the end-result that matters.

Constantly observe, measure and report.

A challenging economy. Budgets are tight. Cost reduction opportunities

Service and Support Challenges

A service delivery sense of urgency.

Processes (efficiencies and effective).

People (utilization and knowledgeable).

Tools and technologies (automation and integration).

Metrics and reporting (operational and financial).

Customer Service (survey and satisfied)

Indentify pain points, bottlenecks and create opportunities. Leverage Industry Frameworks / Best Practice Processes (ISO, ITIL, Cobit, CMM, SOX, Six Sigma, etc.)

Risky Business

Customer’s monitor was on fire – called customer service

Response – Get an extinguisher

Customer could not remove a message on screen

Response - CSR went on site – pulled a post it note off the monitor screen

Help get husband out of jail

Response – Can’t help you there

Sir, you need a cable

Response from customer – can you fax it to me?

Customer wanted a refund on his new computer

Response – just send it back to us. Customer response – I smashed it to bits…

Average Cost Per Email/Phone Support What is your average cost per email-based support contact? What is your average cost per phone-based support contact?

The “Shift-Left” Service Strategy

Execute a “Shift-Left” service strategy.

Target repetitive, low-value work to a lower-cost channel/team.

Resolve more complex technical issues at L1.

Address repetitive issues/“How-To” questions.

Know demand. Know relevance.

Explore. Investigate. Ask your customers.

Content doesn’t always have to be technical.

Track/measure every self-service interaction.

Know and manage usage/usefulness/utilization.

Know the customer experience firsthand.

Integrate into tracking tool for measurement/easy escalations.

z Mean time to resolution Cost On-site support $100 + $35+ $18-$23 $2 - $12 Categorize Call Types in Level they are Resolved in Escalated call Call Elimination Automated self-service First contact resolution Cost savings, SLA & Cust. Sat improvements Level-2 Level-1 Level-3 Level-0

Measuring Up

First contact resolution

Time to resolve

Cost per transactions

Customer satisfaction

Resolution quality/consistency

High cost per resolution

Average Speed of Answer/Abandons

Call Elimination

Knowledge Base Utilization

Create a high valued/measurable/cost-effective service strategy.

Operational Report

Does Your Reporting…

Determine Success/Failure?

Tell a story or “Paint a picture”?

Validate beliefs or assumptions?

Measure performance?

Determine your organizational worth?

Trend analysis?

Measure Business Impact?

R U Selling Up/Across?

Marketing/Selling your value proposition to all stakeholders (especially senior management and customers)

Educate them on your value-add in supporting business goals and objectives.

As CEO of the Support Business, you must articulate your:

Value proposition. - Scope of Services.

Your current demand, supply, cost structure and adherence to SLAs.

Key business value metrics depicting the ‘health of your business’.

Key projects and initiatives aligned with the business.

Customer advocates/testimonials, business leader testimonials.

Leverage into an elevator speech

Practice, deliver, push-down to team.

Demand, Supply & Funding

Given your funding and demand, you will need to build a best-in-class support organization that effectively utilizes resources to create a valued customer and business relationship!

Access Channels

A Diversified Portfolio What is not defined cannot be controlled , What is not controlled cannot be measured , What is not measured cannot be managed , What is not defined, controlled, measured and managed cannot be IMPROVED ! Ultimately…

The “Bake-Off”

Hosting/On-Demand/SaaS

Organizations are rushing to these hosted systems and services in hope of decreasing cost of ownership, simplification, flexibility and staying current with releases without incurring the pain of an upgrade/rollout.

Offering both suite and best-of-breed solutions, the customer is attracted to it’s on-demand calculator that charges for use only!

Enterprise suites

Target a portfolio of product modules that address a broader strategy and marketplace.

Product modules leverage integration points and work to put all the necessary functionality/process to deliver against the strategy.

Best of Breed solutions

Targeted solutions to properly address pain point and realize opportunities.

Product//investment/expertise is laser-focused on market pain points and addressing them with a robust product/professional service offering.

Choices - Advantage You!

Fostering Relationships

Organizations are opening-up multiple communication/feedback channels looking for honest/open feedback, opinions and advice!

Organizations are facilitating discussions with their customers, partners, analysts, media, analysts in online forums, social networking, Wikis, blogs and texting!