eSharings - march #2 - 2006

Our focus has always been, and always will be on you and your professional and personal needs.

TIPS FROM THIS WEEK’S FEATURED GCS 2006 SPEAKER:  (top)

Pete McGarahan, President, McGarahan and Associates, http://www.mcgarahan.com

Pete McGarahan is an accomplished, widely recognized expert in delivering service and support value to a wide variety of clients for more than 20 years. He blends his extensive knowledge of support industry trends and directions, proven best practices, and business alignment strategies to serve as both a thought leader and mentor for the support community.  He has spoken at all 4 GCS conferences and scores a perfect 10 every year for his delivery and content rich presentations.

It is never easy to wake up one morning and decide to implement a self-service solution.  The complexity, demands, and mile-a-minute business changes already make the life of an IT leader stressful and taxed.  It’s likely that over the past few years, you have consolidated help desks into a single-point-of-contact service desk; continued to handle the entire customer base’s problems, requests, and training needs; and begun to support an ever-growing portfolio of Business Critical applications.

The challenge is clear: Continue to increase contact volume and problem complexity which results in increasing demand against “stay-the-course” service desk staffing levels or develop and implement a self-service strategy to manage demand, deflecting non-value-add requests, issues, and training to self-service while freeing up the phone queue to respond to and resolve issues of greater urgency and impact.

If you choose the self-service option, how do you build your solution with cement rather than quicksand?  Inch by inch, step by step.

1. Build a business case
The business case process, the single most compelling influence on senior management, ensures that your plan is thoroughly researched, and the business needs and value of your investment is well justified. The process forces you to ask the right questions:

• How will customers benefit from this?
• How will this enable them to work more efficiently and effectively?
• How will self-service benefit the business in the short term and long term?
• What are the value drivers that make up the cost/benefit analysis and financial metrics?

2. Create a vision and strategy
There are many compelling reasons why successful companies create a vision and strategy for initiatives such as self-service, but one rises above all. If you don’t define what success looks like, how will you get there, and how will you recognize it?

Envision the end-result first.  What does it look like?  Does it have both functional and emotional appeal? Is it clear and compelling?  Does it define the service desk’s value-added business impact?

An aligned strategy, comprised of business goals, success metrics and performance incentives, brings the vision to life.  The strategy fleshes out and strengthens your pitch, gathering support and momentum for your plan.  Ensure that your pitch passes the senior executive sniff test - brief, direct, and articulates the three most persuasive reasons why self-service is a business imperative. Ask yourself the right questions to build your strategy:

• Does your self-service strategy clearly articulate which activities, roles, and responsibilities are necessary to achieve success?
• Does it set proper expectations in the short- and long-term regarding requirements (resources, processes, tools, training, etc.)?
• How will you change behavior?  How do you get people to visit, use it, and come back time and again?
• What will be the measure of success?

Remember, in the world of business, your vision and strategy remain the undisputed anchor point for any necessary change or action. Don’t make it good, make it great.  It will guide you through all phases of your self-service initiative.

3. Create a change management plan
The change management plan provides the necessary framework and sequence for identified tasks and communications to occur. Your plan should include operational and business metrics, training (customers and service desk professionals alike), and your marketing communications strategy. It should also include activities such as ongoing maintenance, support, and knowledge management.

Above all, do not try to change everything at once. If you have the luxury of time, buy it! Set the right pace to introduce this cultural change. Your change management plan should:

• Recognize where you are.
• Prepare for fear of, and resistance to, change.
• Anticipate criticism and appropriate responses.
• Drive change down to the grass-roots level.
• Get to the heart of the resistance.
• Recognize that you cannot please everyone.
• Celebrate measured success.

4. Engage your customers
The best way to increase your success rate in the short-term of the rollout of self-service is to involve your customers in the functionality requirements and design stages.  Bringing them into the process creates a sense of ownership - now they have skin in the game and become your best partners and advocates. Engage them in all phases.

5. Walk the walk, talk the talk
Business leaders must become influencers, demonstrating the benefits of self-service by consistently and publicly role-modeling the right behaviors. Leaders need to show people how to leverage self-service to get what they need and better contribute to the organization’s bottom-line: “Let me show you how I use self-service to get my job done better and faster.”

6. Communicate creatively, consistently, constantly
Identify the key messages you want stakeholders to communicate.  These core messages should be delivered from and to all levels of the organization. The messages should:

• Address the reasons for change
• Describe how the change will positively impact their day-to-day productivity
• Guide them in using the self-service solution
• Direct them to training and support resources
• Champion the front line
• Address barriers, objections, and outliers
• Create a two-way communication channel
• Capture customer feedback

Remember, you can never over-communicate around an initiative that involves driving cultural change.  Leverage all existing communication channels, be creative in developing new vehicles and ways to deliver them, be consistent in your messaging, and never stop communicating. However, under no circumstance should you over-promise or over-commit.

7. Create a training plan
Make training the lynchpin of your plan. Remember the airline example?  They failed at first because they ignored customer training.

Allocate the proper resources and budget necessary for training. Get traction by identifying training needs, targets, and opportunities. First train leaders, influencers, customer advocates, front-line professionals, and the local experts.  Create a train-the-trainer approach to cascade training to everyone in the company.  During rollout, make sure to use customer feedback and self-service tracking logs to continually improve training and communications.

8. Identify performance metrics
If you are changing the rules of the game for the players, make sure you change the metrics by which their performance is measured.  It’s common sense and good business practice to align job descriptions, key performance indicators, and incentives of service desk professionals who must sell the self-service solution to customers.  Recognition is the best enabler and motivator!  Use incentives, contests, rewards, and celebrations for customers who regularly use the self-service solution, and for team members who drive acceptance of self-service.  Make your recognition plan flexible - both methodical and opportunistic in the way you celebrate customer and team-member wins. Create performance metrics and embed them in your training and communication plans.