From the Horizon FrontLine

Steve's Transitions Journal: Customer Service and Sales Support as "Message Central"

I often get calls directly to my office from customers looking for assistance on a particular issue or wanting to know if a solution exists.

I always try to help out as much as possible but often get pulled away by other meetings. In many of those times, I say "have you asked support?" This isn't a brush-off - it's a valuable question because when a query comes through me, I will try to log it but it may be answered so quickly, it doesn't get logged or it may be one of those "hmmm....let me think about it" type of questions.

On the other hand, when something goes in through support, it really does get treated as the "message central" that Steve describes so well in this post. It is logged - but more importantly, it gets measured.

In recent demonstrations, our sales team cries out "what gets measured gets managed". But we try to do this internally as well. When a call comes into support, it gets logged into our tracking system but it also shows up on our daily statistics page (which is similar to ExecView).

While it might be nice if EVERY call you made to anyone at MTI was tracked that way, sometimes it's just not feasible. I may be on the road when I take your call or in the middle of another demonstration (the fact that I can multi-task in that circumstance is often NOT a blessing).

I always look for easier ways to ensure everyone hears the message of all the calls. For example, I mentioned RSS in a recent post, and I actually have RSS feeds for every call that gets updated from our Track system. That means, when a customer calls Dale or Peter or anyone, or if Todd or Tommy updates a call, I can find out about it - without waiting for details.

So when you see those emails coming out from support or anyone that says "refer to this number", don't think of it as simply assigning an issue to a number = think of it as your own personal telephone number for the problem you're having. That ANYONE at MTI can find out what's going on. And when you get off the phone with someone, anyone in the company, make sure you have that number. That way, you know, everyone's in the loop on what you need done.




Steve's Transitions Journal: Customer Service and Sales Support as "Message Central"

posted by Andrew MacNeill @ 8:11 AM