5 Big Steps to Better Technical Assistance

I’'m Tim Schuh, the new Director of Service at Voxox In Business. I was happy to be given the opportunity to post to tell you about some exciting changes coming to Customer Service, or should I say the Technical Assistance Center.

But first, some quick history. When I came to Voxox In Business the first thing I noticed was the passion and commitment of the people; from the CEO down through the entire organization. I was impressed and excited to see so many people wanting to give our customers better service and solutions; many working nights and weekends to make it a reality. I also found that entrepreneurial spirit where people wear many hats and get pulled in many directions.

While this works in the start-up phase, we needed to change to meet the demands of our customers, not just for Voxox In Business, but for the entire organization. It was time to take that passion and commitment and apply best practices and implement a technical assistance delivery solution that will meet or exceed our customer expectations for great technical assistance.

So what's the plan?

The list of changes below will establish a support structure that is aligned with our business goals. Consistent technical assistance is about finding the right people, developing easy to understand processes and policy, and getting the tools to increase operational efficiency. I believe the changes in structure and approach will help us reach our goals.

We will provide our customers with a technical assistance experience that has a positive impact on their day – we will not just meet their expectations, we will exceed their expectations and “delight” them!  In order to reach this objective, we need to take better advantage of existing skills and technical knowledge, identify areas where new skills and experiences will increase our value, and refine policies and procedures.

Talk is cheap – action is what we need!

• Create a tiered technical assistance structure based on best practices (Tier 1 & 2).  We will improve first contact resolution, reduce customer downtime, and reduce average handle times
• Separate provisioning tasks into non-technical and technical functions.  We will improve customer communications, align with Sales and Sales Support, integrate the LNP process into provisioning, and increase the technical requirements for provisioning.
• Establish a Sales Engineering position reporting to Sales.  We will improve  the “pre-sale technical evaluation” process to establish  customer expectations and base-knowledge, as well as clearly establishing the capabilities of the product suite.
• Develop new data capture and reporting.  We will improve our understanding of our product issues, required enhancements, and demonstrate data-driven needs.
• Improve alignment between LNP functions and provisioning.  We will establish clear criteria to integrate the porting process into the Project Coordinator role.

Change is in the air, and we love it

The service team is excited about the changes and we are looking forward to having a positive impact on your day. For us this is just the beginning. We are committed to constantly searching for ways to improve technical assistance for our customers. The changes above will take some time to complete; we are estimating about 60 days get everything/everybody in place.

The key ingredient is you

We hope you are as excited as we are about the changes. To help guide us along in the process we will be implementing a survey to collect feedback from our channel partners and our customers. We are looking forward to hearing from you and working together to make this a success, and please don't hesitate to get in touch with me if you have any feedback as we implement our new plan- we want the good and the bad.