Case Study
Technical Services Assessment
Topics
Global High Tech Manufacturing Company
Background
Challenge
Our client manufactures best of breed products. But as with all products, there are occasions when support is needed for those using the products. Our client has always provided support for its customers, but that support was in the form of knowledgeable resources answering phone calls when customers called with questions. As their operations grew, the volume of calls did as well. Not only were there more folks needed to field questions, but the hours became longer and the urgency of a timely response for customers more critical than ever. It was clear to our client that they had grown beyond their current support procedures and needed to figure out how to quickly scale to meet their customer needs.
Assessing The Needs
The client engaged Notch Above to help them assess the full range of capabilities needed, and how to sequence them. They wanted to identify some quick wins to alleviate unsustainable manual efforts, in addition to a roadmap to layout the right sequence of capabilities and solutions to meet their evolving needs.
To address the need, the Notch Above team endeavored to complete an evaluation across the full spectrum of services capabilities, noted here:
The Notch Above team conducted interviews across 36 key stakeholders, including external customers, executives, and key employees to assess the current state of the organization. This provided a strong basis for the existing challenges and helped inform the critical gaps that needed to be solved.
With several large gaps across the identified capabilities, it was critical to determine which were most important for the client to solve. A maturity matrix was completed across each of the sub capabilities that mapped the maturity on a scale of 0-5 (0= Not Applicable; Does Not Exist and 5= Optimized) as well as the criticality to the client. This then informed the sequence of needed capabilities.
Like so many client challenges, the needed actions to address the gaps spanned across people, process and technology. More specifically:
- Organizational Definition and Alignment
- Clearly define the scope and responsibilities of a newly formed Services and Support organization
- Hire dedicated resources to support off hours coverage
- Dedicate or hire capacity to document common root cause issues and solutions; in addition dedicate capacity for common themes (i.e. latency challenges reported)
- Identify executive sponsors to support needed technology investment and implementation
- Global Consistency of Processes
- Develop a set of global processes and best practices for improved resolution time and global consistency
- Implement a training certification process for new employees entering service organization to ensure consistent service to customers
- Formalize process for capture of technical documentation to aid in resolution for key technicians
- Solution and Tool Gaps
- Implement key enhancements (as provided) to current Dynamics platform to solve immediate painpoints
- Evaluate alternatives to current Dynamics CRM to determine fit gap against defined requirements;
- Proceed to RFP process for top two providers for Contact Center solutions address the needs of incoming calls
- In future state planning, consider timing of a Professional Services platform leveraging top solutions as provided
Conclusion
With the assessment provided by Notch Above Consulting, the client was able to implement some needed short term improvements to allow their business to scale. They were also provided with the basis of a roadmap around which technology plans could be made to prioritize critical incremental investments.
