Lean Customer Service Helpdesks – Part 2: Eliminate Waste

In Part 1 of this series, I touched on the short history of the Lean Movement in manufacturing and its entry into other industries and leadership theory. I also went into the first of three general concepts surrounding the Lean Movement and how it relates to customer service, or more precisely, how to use a helpdesk to conform to the “lean” ideals. That first concept was identifying and creating value. This blog post discusses the second concept:

Eliminate Waste

Waste can come in a number of forms, from an agent’s time wasted due to a lack of information from the end user to a customer’s time wasted searching through a KB system for information that’s just not there. A key to lean customer service is being able to identify waste as it occurs and to act upon it and eliminate it.

Funnel communication through the most cost-effective channels available

At first glance, this may seem contradictory to an earlier point (offer multi-channel support and allow customers to communicate with you in whatever way they are most comfortable), but it really isn’t. While you can give customers a number of ways to contact you, nothing prevents you from guiding them to finding their answers. What that means is you can start them at the most cost-effective solution, like community support resources or self-service options. Then you can offer them additional options in order of the costs incurred by your business for providing those options. Customers still have all of the options available to them, you’re just guiding them down a cost-effective path. The diagram below offers a good example of how this funneling of customer communication could go.

Flexible tool set, implemented and integrated on an as-needed basis

Help desk waste often comes in the form of an incomplete solution. For example, a solution may only offer live chat, or maybe live chat and a ticketing system, but lack things like call logging and phone system integration, a task management system or even a robust reporting engine.  That means wasting time finding complementary systems and integrating them with your existing solution. Then there’s customer data – what good is having a robust customer relationship management system in place if you can’t tap into that wealth of information and integrate it into your help desk (or vice versa)?

In addition, while it’s good to have a full tool set at your disposal, there’s no need to activate them all at once. You should be able deploy your helpdesk in pieces, if needed. The main goal is to have a cohesive set of tools on hand that integrate seamlessly and allow for a consistent look and feel. Keeping those tools within a single, hosted helpdesk solution means you have the tools you need, when you need them, and can implement them at your leisure.

Gather information at the outset to facilitate communication

Most people who work with customers know that the largest barrier to properly handling customer service is ensuring both parties have complete and accurate information. Things like not having an account number handy or not knowing the model number of a device can cause unnecessary delays in getting requests handled quickly and painlessly. Having the ability to do things like building custom ticket submission pages or providing links to relevant knowledge base articles as customers are typing up their tickets, or even using things like pre-defined responses for quickly supplying answers to common questions can go a long way in providing a truly satisfactory customer service experience.

What difference can this level of customization offer? Well, let’s use a Web hosting company as an example and look at two ticket submission screens. The first uses a basic form that many helpdesks offer. While good, it doesn’t give the user the ability to easily provide a lot of information. Sure, they could type out the full text of the problem, but it’s easy to miss some pretty important pieces of information.

The second is a bit more detailed. Using custom fields, the support department can discover crucial information right from the start, like what server the customer is on, what mail server they’re using, what database server is being accessed, the customer’s domain name and customer ID and more. Having this information in front of them as the agent initially looks at the ticket makes it easier to quickly diagnose issues. For example, if a server is down for maintenance, the agent can check if that customer is on the affected server and  use a canned reply to let the customer know their server is offline for maintenance. If the canned reply is written well, it may even include a link to the news item and/or email that originally alerted customers of the scheduled maintenance.

Conclusions

Eliminating waste by looking at how your company gathers and disseminates information can make for a very lean customer service department. As we can see, there are many things companies should look for when planning out their customer service plan strategy, but having the right helpdesk can help make the planning much easier and benefit the customer in the long run.

In part 3 of our little series, we’ll examine the last basic concept of building a lean customer service strategy: the process of continual improvement. As always, thanks for reading, and feel free to comment or discuss any part of this series.

Lean Customer Service Helpdesks – Part 1: Identify and Create Value

The GM plant in Fremont, CA

The initial foundation of the whole “lean” movement was popularized in the 1980’s with a joint venture between General Motors and Toyota. The joint venture was a way for both companies to use a former GM plant located in Fremont, California, to manufacture vehicles. The resulting relationship allowed Toyota to gain their first U.S. factory while GM spent time learning Toyota’s efficient manufacturing process. The efficiency that GM gained is really the crux of the entire “lean” movement, regardless of how it’s implemented in manufacturing, how it’s been co-opted by the software industry, or even how it has become a foundation of leadership training.

As far as customer service goes, the efficiency inherent in lean practices is found by following three core concepts:

1. Identifying and creating value for end users
2. Eliminating waste in the customer service process
3. Continually improving outreach and delivery of that service

Focusing on these three main goals leads to a lean operation and ultimately an increase in the level of customer service a company provides. In this short series of posts, I’ll touch upon each concept, how it applies to the customer service ideal and what your helpdesk and customer service software can do to start you on the road to a lean operation. We’ll start with the first concept:

Identify and Create Value

Creating value means actually participating in the support and customer service process. That means answering questions completely, extending professionalism and empathy, treating customers and end users as human beings and, of course, creating helpful content for people to consume. Some other things to consider:

Communicate with users on the user’s own terms

Give users the ability to contact you however they want. That means providing multi-channel support options like being available via phone call,  live chat, having email ticket support options or simply empowering customers and end users to find their own answers to questions using self-service resources like a knowledge base.  Having these various support options does a number of things for your company: It puts the customer at ease as they’re using a communication method they’re comfortable with, and if the customer is initially at ease, then that carries over into how their question or request is delivered to your front-line employees. Secondly, it can help build brand loyalty. Studies have shown that allowing customers to chose their own method of communication not only eases their interaction with a company but it also keeps customers loyal. Lastly, the combination of the customer being at ease and using their preferred communication method means that their comfort level carries over to your agents and leads to an increase in overall customer satisfaction.

Consistency in communication methods

Consistency is key when dealing with customers and that consistency extends beyond your overall support message (i.e., how agents address concerns, refer to products, etc.) and the customer interaction from agent-to-agent. It’s just as important to give customers a consistent set of tools and consistent methods of communicating with you as it is to ensure that all of your front-line agents handle customers in a consistent manner. Whether it’s contact via telephone, email, web-based ticketing systems, live chat or even self-service methods, making all of your communication methods available from one location (or even from within one application) is key to keeping customers comfortable. If customers have to use a variety of different solutions to communicate with your agents (say you use Zendesk for your knowledge base but LivePerson for live chat), they can become confused or frustrated, thereby beginning their interaction with your agents on the wrong foot. The reason for the frustration? Well, it’s difficult to keep the look and feel of these different applications consistent with what your customers are used to. While many products offer some form of customization so that you can make their solutions look like your website, you’re only going to be as good as the customization tools you’re provided. However, if your knowledge base, live chat, email ticket submission and support portal are available from a single entry point, it’s easier to offer customers a consistent interaction with your support channels.

That consistency is just as important for your agents as well. If you have to cull together a variety of different solutions, agents can become flustered and have a hard time adapting to how the different systems are used, how they’re integrated into the customer life cycle and how each is managed and monitored. Offering a single solution with multi-channel support options, not to mention a single point of management and measurement, puts both customers and agents at ease and can lead to a much more satisfying customer service experience.

Mobility for customers and agents

Mobile support is key, especially in this day and age. Part of lean customer service means keeping costs to a minimum and that task can lead to things like agents using their own devices when providing support (i.e., the “consumerization of IT”) or even having “out of office” days where agents and management work from home to help keep utility costs low. Having systems in place to accept mobile communications, like emails sent from a tablet or even allowing for mobile chat, are key.

Conclusions

All of these concepts–from offering consistent, identifiable interactions across multiple channels to offering mobility for both agents and end users alike–creates value for customers. Being able to identify these benefits and act upon them is crucial for a lean helpdesk and customer service experience.

In part 2 of this short series, I’ll look at the second core concept of lean customer service: Eliminating waste. Thanks for reading and feel free to comment.