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SSPA Presents STAR Award To McKesson Corporation(San Diego CA. October 23, 2001) – The Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), the leading industry association for IT support professionals, today announced that McKesson Corporation was recognized for their customer service excellence with a SSPA Software Technical Assistance Recognition (STAR) Award, at the recently held Horizons 2002 World Conference in Savannah, Georgia. Chosen as the best in what they do, McKesson Corporation was honored for delivering exemplary technical support to their customers and was presented with a 2001 STAR Award in the Most Improved category.This Most Improved STAR Award is given to the company that illustrates the greatest increase in the quality of their software support over the prior 12-month period. The winning company must illustrate a dramatic improvement in customer satisfaction along with overall gains in support productivity. In order to compete, you must show your support metrics and customer satisfaction results for both the current and prior year. “The SSPA STAR Award winners provide a ‘best of breed’ showcase of the top talent within our industry, “ said Bill Rose, SSPA Founder/Executive Director. “The McKesson Corporation delivers world class services and the STAR Award serves as the highest form of recognition they can receive in the service and support industry.” McKesson’s Horizon Clinicals center in Louisville, Colo. was honored with the award. The center supports components of McKesson’s Horizon Clinicals, a suite of next- generation, integrated solutions for physicians and other clinicians that provides the advanced functionality required to deliver high-quality, cost-effective patient care across multiple care settings. “Winning the STAR Award shows that our commitment to world-class support, process improvement and best practices is succeeding,” said Pam Pure, group president of product development and support for McKesson Information Solutions. “But the true test of our success is in the eyes of the customers we serve every day.” During the past 12 months, the Louisville Horizon Clinicals center has implemented a wide range of improvements, resulting in a 70 percent increase in customer satisfaction as measured by support event-driven surveys that are administered by a third-party and surveys of chief information officers at customer hospitals. Dorothy Komanich, clinical analyst at Banner Health Services of Colorado, has seen positive results from the center’s move to a real-time support model, which enables cases to be resolved during the initial call. “The people answering the phone knew what I was talking about,” she said. “Now a large percentage of the time, the person answering the phone can solve the problem or get right back to me with the answer.” Recognizing the importance of system reliability to caregivers, the Louisville support center embarked on a series of initiatives that resulted in the following: • Improved support delivery metrics, including more than a 50 percent reduction in case backlog, an average resolution time that went from 18.2 to 6.9 days, and an increase from 2 percent to 43 percent in the number of cases resolved during the initial call. • More knowledgeable support staff through training programs and access to knowledge bases. • Implementation of monitoring tools and processes to proactively identify customer issues before they impact end users. As a result of these initiatives, 19 percent of all support cases are actually outbound calls to customers, alerting them and presenting a solution before they even know a problem exists. Andrew Wright, director of support for the honored support center, gives the 40-plus team members credit for the impressive changes. “Our support analysts rose to the challenge, working hard to define new processes in our mission to deliver world-class support,” he said. “The team met the challenge by thinking ‘outside of the box,’ and within budgetary plans, to create innovative tools that enabled us to automate support processes and proactively prevent customer issues.” All SSPA Member companies are eligible to nominate themselves in any number of the categories -- Sustained Performance; High Call Volume; Most Improved; Complex Support Applications; Outsource Support Provider; Innovative Support; Mission Critical Support: Small/Emerging Company and Support Technology Vendor. SSPA provides each applicant with an electronic application as a benchmark/guideline. The STAR Award applicants take this task very seriously and spend a considerable amount of time on this arduous, but rewarding process. Many non-winners have said that, even though they did not win an Award, the whole process was well worth the time and effort. They indicate they learned a great deal from the process and were able to discover in what areas they can use improvement. For more information on the SSPA STAR Awards please visit www.supportgate.com or send an email to info@supportgate.com. About McKesson Corporation McKesson Corporation is the leader in helping healthcare organizations worldwide provide quality care in the most cost-effective manner possible. Healthcare organizations use our comprehensive solutions to improve patient safety and reduce the cost and variability of care as well as to better manage their revenue stream and resources. For more information, call 1-800-981-8601 or visit the Information Solutions section of our Web site at http://www.mckesson.com. With revenues of $42 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2001, McKesson Corporation ranks No. 35 in the 2001 Fortune 500. About SSPA Founded in 1989, SSPA represents over 15,000 service executives in over 500 member companies worldwide. SSPA gives service and support professionals opportunities to share ideas, discuss developing trends and network with their peers. SSPA offers its members conferences, seminars, specialized training, executive forums, certification programs and a variety of publications. SSPA resides at the web portal of Supportgate at www.supportgate.com. Through these ‘gates’ you will find the Membership Communities of the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), the SSPA Europe, the SSPA Asia Pacific, the SSPA Service Vendor Alliance, (SVA) and the SSPA Professionals Membership. For more information regarding the SSPA and other related divisions, log on to www.supportgate.com or send an email to info@supportgate.com. Editorial Contact: Ron Johnson Supportgate.com 909.244.7002 rjohnson@supportgate.com top of page |
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