Search Our Catalog of Articles

Q:  How can I get my support team connected with our business plan?
 
I noticed a curious phenomenon years ago as a consultant and trainer - support centers who had extensive CRM implementations, lots of metrics and procedures, and support reps who hated their jobs and did the minimum required of them. Conversely, other support centers with no less "infrastructure" would generate consistently high service quality, on the shoulders of support reps who bought in to the company's objectives. What is the difference? In most cases, something that falls far outside the business processes of either of these two kinds of help desks.
 
That difference is, quite simply, what core values drives your help desk organization. I recently completed a book project entitled The Soul of an Organization, which examined the premise that your values, and not your business practices, ultimately drive the success of your business. In the process I looked at the best practices of nearly 100 firms including Wendy's, JetBlue, Cirque du Soleil and Dell Computer, all the way to hunger relief agencies and family businesses. Most followed a set of underlying core values whose side effects filtered into all of their daily operations.
 
Take Dell Computer, for example. They started barely eighteen years ago in a Texas dorm room, driven by the values that you need to survive as a dorm room operation: serve the customer directly, have no middleman and no inventory, and use this cost advantage to build better computers. Today, they are essentially the world's largest dorm room. They still hate inventory, they still sell directly to customers with no middleman, and they still use this cost advantage to build better computers - and as a result, they are not only one of the world's largest computer manufacturers, but one of its few profitable ones.
 
As you look at Dell's help desk operations, the same philosophy governs here as well. Back when most computer makers sent you to an "authorized dealer" for service and support, they implemented massive centralized call centers with high quality standards. They invested heavily in the precursors of CRM technology to track customer activity and manage problem resolution. And they sent competent service people to your door when something went wrong. As a result of this "dorm room" thinking, they legitimized personal computer for corporate America and the world beyond. And in today's cost-pressured support environment, they were pioneers in Internet-based support, at one point asking every employee to purchase a book on Amazon when the technology was still new - with the result that they have now taken a lead role in reaping the cost and convenience benefits of e-support.
 
So, what values tend to drive the success of best-of-class organizations? The truth is that they vary from organization to organization, just as personalities vary from one great individual to another. And in all cases, they go beyond "mission statements" to being principles that truly guide what happens in the trenches. But you can classify many of them into one of seven core categories:

• The Strategists - people who set high standards of operational excellence.
• The Motivators - people who create a positive working environment.
• The Teambuilders - people who get the best from their human capital, all the way from hiring to putting more autonomy and responsibility at the team level.
• The Nimble - people who build an infrastructure for change, and become the early adopters of technologies that benefit them.
• The Customer Champions - people who see customer service as a process and not just an "attitude."
• The Passionate - people who see their business as a way of life, and not just a job.
• The Visionaries - people who lead with a higher purpose, and breed leadership in their own teams.