| Support Center Assessment Program
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Why perform a Support Center Assessment?
Top 5 reasons companies perform an assessment:
Management is concerned about service/support performance, and may be experiencing any of the following:
- Frequent complaints from customers regarding speed or quality of service
- Headcount and/or costs are growing at a rate higher than the rest of the company
- Ratio of support headcount to problems handled or other key metrics don't add up
- Service levels (performance) seem to be declining
- High staff turnover is stressing capabilities (losing experience/knowledge and increasing new hire/training costs)
Some relatively dramatic events have occurred:
Merger or acquisition activities have resulted in multiple support groups, which may or may not need to be consolidated
New product success has dramatically increased customer support volume
The company/department is embarking on a major event (and wants to be sure Support is prepared), such as:
Implementing CRM, KM, or other technology
Changing the service offerings
Launching a new product that is expected to create increased or different demands on the service organization
The company has made major investments in Support (i.e. CRM or KM) and has not achieved the expected benefits.
The company has questions (and wants an outside opinion), such as:
- Are there any major opportunities for improvement that could be acted upon?
- Are our processes optimized?
- Could we reduce the support burden by implementing web-based self-service or other tools?
- Could outsourcing reduce costs and/or improve performance?*
- Should support be consolidated or re-located to a lower-cost area?
Benefits:
- An unbiased, professional assessment of the current operation
- Methods & performance benchmarked against industry standards
- Understand the strengths and weaknesses of the current operation
- Identify root cause of problems
- Identify opportunities for improvement
- Specific recommendations to achieve goals
Deliverables:
- A comprehensive written report (The typical report document is 50-100 pages in length) which includes:
- A detailed analysis of the support center capabilities, identified problems, and specific recommendations for improvement
- Appropriate industry studies or benchmark reports will be included or referenced
- Process flow diagrams (current versus recommended)
- Gap analysis of current versus potential performance
- Staffing models and other quantitative analysis
- An estimated ROI for key recommendations
- Preliminary project plan for implementation of key recommendations
An on-site presentation and working session
- Review the findings
- Present and discuss the recommendations
- Discuss the strategy/tactics required to implement the recommendations
- Q & A
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