HelpMaster Service Management Software Blog

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Practical tips and information about running an efficient service desk. News and information about HelpMaster, PRD Software and the ITSM industry.

Suggestion 1: Change Channels

One of the best costs savers known to a Help Desk is to force contact down non phone channels. That is do whatever you can to get customers logging Jobs via the web (where they can also self help via the Knowledge Base) and email, rather than by phone and popping down and harassing a technician.

This involves a fair bit of re-education and push back on customers, as well as careful design of your Job templates that are to be used in the Web Portal and by Email Manager.  But it is well worth it. The numbers are most convincing for this argument.  If we look at the HDI Practises and Salary Survey 2007 (available for members from www.hdaa.com.au, and www.thinkhdi.com) there is a unit break down of Job logging costs by channel. Don’t forget to convert them to your local currency.

Channel

Median Cost ($US)

Average Cost($US)

Self Help

$8

$12.44

Email

$15

$12.84

Web Request

$15

$20.08

Phone

$17

$24.37

Walk Up

$40

$25.98

TIP: For those of you not familiar with stats, the median is the most commonly occurring value.

How about those phone and walk up costs. They average is double self help and email support! With walk ups commonly costing $40 a pop. Time to lock the Help Desk doors.

Self Help and Email are clear winners. Fortunately for HelpMaster Pro users these functions already exist with the solution. If you have not already then turn them on and use them! If you are not licensed for these modules ask for an evaluation key and investigate these modules. One thing I am very happy to boast about is how sophisticated the Email Manger function is for such an affordable Help Desk solution. Having been at the software end of the support industry for ten years, it gives me a warm glow to know that many Tier 1 solutions (you know, the $100k plus ones) don’t even come close to what HelpMaster Pro has for email management.

Enough about that, I am confident you have been convinced.

Suggestion 2: IVR

Here is an interesting quote from a White Paper called 51 Ways to Reduce Call Centre Costs by Sitel Corporation (also from www.hdaa.com.au).

“A center that moves 25% of its calls from voice to IVR saves approximately 18% in direct labor; a center that moves 25% of its calls to IVR and another 25 % to Web self-service saves almost 40%.”

IVR (interactive voice response), based on those figures, does sound rather tempting.... although you would have do to the sums on the cost of implementing versus the savings in direct labour. This might be worth-while for the mega call centres but not for the smaller folk. Even for the large centres trying to fund new initiatives like this might be hard going in current times, despite the eventual cost saving. Still it’s a nice to know.

PS. the quote attributes a direct labour reduction of 20% to web self-service which supports suggestion 1: Changing Channels!

Your suggestions are also welcome! Blog them here and the good ones will get a PRD Software baseball cap.

 


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