Customer Advocacy
Maintain a Customer Focus Throughout the Incident
Management Process
By
Julie L. Mohr
The IT organization exists to efficiently provision and support technology to meet business
objectives. Technology enables companies to perform their core business processes. When the
technology fails, the Service Desk is the first point of contact for the customer into the IT
organization and it serves as the customer advocate throughout the Incident Management process.
In that role as customer advocate, a defined, core set of communication responsibilities ensures
that the customer is the focus of the IT organization. The goal is to improve the customer
experience, fulfill their needs and provide data, analysis and feedback to the IT department and to
develop a customer-facing tactical and strategic organization.
Communication Before the Call
Consistent communication ensures that customers are aware of all offered IT services, additions
and modifications to those services, and any available training. Services should be described and
communicated through a Service Catalog or a Scope of Products and Services. A brochure
created and distributed to existing and new employees to advertise the provided services, who to
contact and how to utilize those services is also recommended. The use of an IT newsletter can
notify the customer of all changes in IT services as well as provide a method for providing just-
in-time training.Before the Incident Management process even begins, the IT organization has an obligation to
identify potential problems and notify the customer of issues prior to discovery at the desktop.
Through proactive notification, the IT organization can communicate scheduled and unscheduled
outages. A system availability Web site linked to system monitoring tools allows customers to
check service availability. In order to ensure customer adoption of service availability Web sites,
the information displayed must be dynamic and reliable.
Another form of proactive communication is the usage of broadcast messages through e-mail,
voice mail or upfront messaging on the ACD system. Once an outage has been identified, the IT
organization can proactively notify customers to eliminate a large volume of calls. Without
proactive notification, IT resources are diverted to handle customer reported incidents instead of
focusing resources to develop a workaround and restore the service. The broadcast message must
communicate the outage, the expected time for restoration and next update.
Proactive communication is important to communicate what services are available to the
customer to facilitate business processes. As the customer advocate, the Service Desk must take
the lead to ensure that proactive communication is a priority within the IT organization and that
information is maintained and timely.
Communication at the Point of Contact
The Incident Management process begins when a customer experiences a problem or issue and
contacts the Service Desk. At this point, the Service Desk must provide excellent customer
service and technical support, and at the same time manage customer expectations.
Wait time during the call handling process can provide valuable information to customers that
may eliminate their calls. Take this opportunity to inform customers of self-service Web sites,
how to submit non-priority tickets via the Web, or e-mail addresses to submit questions to the
Service Desk. Once the Service Desk answers the phone, it is time to capture the problem
completely, verify customer information and provide a resolution when available.
Documentation in the problem management system should adhere to established standards.
Inefficiencies are introduced when inadequate problem descriptions require additional contact
with the customer. It also results in escalations to higher-paid, more technical resources than are
necessary to solve the problem. Ticket documentation standards ensure that adequate information
is available to customers to check on the status of their issues via the Web. Updates must include
actions being taken, expected time to restoration and the time for the next update.
Service Level Agreements define how the organization will respond to customer demands. Goals
for metrics such as average speed of answer, rate of abandonment and first contact resolution
ensure that the Service Desk responds in a timely and efficient manner. The Service Desk
Manager must ensure that the Service Desk staff has excellent customer service and technical
skills. A high rate of first contact resolution enables customers to return to performing their
business processes as quickly as possible.
If a problem cannot be resolved at the Service Desk, it must then be dispatched to the appropriate
technical support partner. Prior to disconnecting the customer, the Service Desk must assign the
appropriate priority to the incident and establish an expectation with the customer for the service
level objective. The Operational Level Agreement with technical support partners based upon
priority must be defined and agreed upon in order to establish customer expectations.
Communication During an Incident
Once the customer hangs up the phone (if the incident is not immediately resolved), the
customerÕs ability to conduct business is impacted, therefore, the Service Desk must establish the
expected time to restoration prior to hanging up the phone and enable the customer to make
decisions to conduct business using alternative methods. Because these other methods aregenerally inefficient, the customer will be anxious for the restoration of service. If the IT
organization is unable to meet the expected time frame for restoration of service, proactive status
updates through e-mail, voice and the incident ticket should communicate the necessary
information to the customer to make business decisions. Without status updates, the customerÕs
frustration will escalate often resulting in additional calls into the Service Desk or escalation to
business unit management.
Notification methods vary by priority. A high priority incident represents a significant impact to
the business. Status updates should have the ability to notify a significant population of the
company. Broadcasts via voice mail, email and emergency ACD messages can more
appropriately communicate to a large audience. As the priority of an incident decreases, the
communication method can be limited to a few customers with a non-critical service outage. The
Service Desk must enable the customersÕ ability to check on their own status of non-critical
issues through the problem management system. Technical support partners are responsible for
adequately documenting the progress of an incident in the problem management system. This is
done by implementing service level management within the problem management system to
proactively notify technical support partners of incidents that are near service level exception. In
addition, the Service Desk can proactively contact the technical support partner to get an update
and document it within the problem management system. The incident ticket must contain
information that reflects the current status of an issue; otherwise it will result in additional calls to
the Service Desk.
It is important that the Service Desk implement a quality assurance problem coordinator role to
track and manage all open incidents. This role facilitates a strong focus on the customer, to drive
focus on incidents based upon priority, and to keep incidents from falling into a black hole. The
coordinator communicates status with the customer while at the same time working with the
technical support partner to achieve resolution.
Communication at Restoration
Once service has been restored, the customer must be notified of the restoration and verification
must be attained of the customerÕs ability to conduct the business process. For high priority
incidents, customers must be notified by the same methods described above. E-mails can be
triggered from the problem management system for lower priority issues. Organizations often
provide the restoration notification automatically and allow up to three days for the customer to
contact the Service Desk if the issue has not been resolved. If the customer doesnÕt respond, then
the incident ticket is auto-closed. The problem coordinator role also provides the functionality of
customer follow-up to verify service restoration.
Organizations often have difficulty in providing justification for the additional resources required
to provide problem coordination. Communication throughout the Incident Management process
provides valuable information back to the customer that enables him/her to make decisions about
business tasks. The problem coordinator ensures that the IT organization continues to assign the
appropriate resources to resolve customer issues and provides consistent feedback to the
customer.
After a service is restored, the IT organization can then determine the root cause and eliminate the
problem permanently. For some incidents this happens immediately, the incident ticket is closed
and the process moves into the closure process. For others, the incident ticket is closed but a
related problem ticket is created and the problem is then handled via the problem management
process. When the incident ticket is closed, this triggers two additional processes that are also
critical to customer advocacy.Communication at Closure
When an incident is closed, this triggers the customer satisfaction process. On an incident-basis, a
percentage of customers should be surveyed on a monthly basis at a minimum. However, if you
are going to survey your customers on the service they receive, you must have processes in place
to analyze the feedback and provide the results of the analysis back to the IT organization.
As the customer advocate, the Service Desk must promote change within the IT organization to
focus on the issues that are important to customers and drive efficient business processes. In
addition to working towards internal change, the Service Desk is instrumental in communicating
that change back to customers. When the customers can see a direct link between the feedback
they provide and changes in the environment, they are more likely to provide valuable and
constructive feedback as well as champion the IT organization back to the business units.
The last component of customer advocacy at closure is the capture of incident resolutions to use
for future customer issues and Service Desk training. Although this step is transparent to the
customer, it is critical to ensure the ongoing improvement in efficiency of the Incident
Management process. When an incident is closed, the knowledge manager and subject matter
experts can facilitate the process of capturing the knowledge, ensuring its accuracy and storing it
in a common repository.
The customer satisfaction and knowledge management processes create the final step in a closed-
loop Incident Management process. Process closure at the Service Desk enables the IT
organization to learn, improve and measure the value of the IT services provided to the business.
Customer Advocacy
The Service Desk is an integral part of the Incident Management process. Their function is to be
the principle interface between the IT organization and the customer. To effectively provide that
interface, the Service Desk must focus on communication both to the customer and with technical
support partners.
Communication with the customer begins prior to the call to the Service Desk and continues
throughout the process to incident closure. The customer experience is delivered through each
communication point in the process. The Service Desk must both define and deliver each touch
point by leveraging all IT resources to accurately provide information to the customer in a timely
manner.
The technologies that are utilized throughout the Incident Management process capture data that
defines the customer demand and the IT organizationÕs ability to meet customer demand. Regular
and consistent reporting provides the ability for an organization to deliver IT services effectively
and plan for the strategic development of IT.
Communication is the one vehicle that can turn the customer experience into a positive
experience, even when IT resources fall short of customer demand. The Service Desk is the
primary conduit of all information. To evolve a support organization into the advocacy role
requires an extensive focus on customer communication.Professional Profile
Julie L. Mohr is the Principal Research Analyst and Author at BlueprintAudits.com. For
over 15 years, she has been passionate about service and support management providing
imaginative insight and dynamic leadership to transform service and support organizations
into best practice, customer-focused environments. She has helped over 50 organizations
including many Fortune 100 companies to implement Knowledge Management, ITSM, IT
Governance, organization enhancements, process re-engineering and service level
management. Julie is an active contributor to the future development of the industry
through speaking engagements at conferences worldwide, researching industry trends and
publishing over 150 articles on best practices. Julie has developed a support organization
maturity model and audit methodology utilized by thousands of organizations to identify
weaknesses and develop improvement plans. She is an expert worldwide instructor in
multiple industry frameworks including ITSM, KCS and COBIT. Julie is a certified Helpdesk Director and certified
¨
ITIL Service Manager. She is currently serving as VP of Membership for the itSMF LIG in Sacramento, a faculty
member with HDI and participated on the HDI Support Center Certification (SCC) standards committee. Julie is the
author of Mapping Support Processes: Blueprint for Success, The Help Desk Audit: Blueprint for Success, The Help
Desk Toolkit: Companion CD and The Help Desk Dictionary, and maintains an informative industry portal for
practitioners at www.blueprintaudits.com. She is a member of IEEE Computer Society, National Speakers Association,
American Society for Quality, Association for Computing Machinery, ISACA, PMI, HDI, itSMF and the Association of
Support Professionals. Julie is a graduate of The Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer
Science.
You)can)contact)Julie)at:)
jlmohr@blueprintaudits.com)
+01­530­750­0240)