Matthew Healey wrote:
On 05/07/2005, at 7:56 PM, Craig Ringer wrote:
Does anybody here know why companies put these scripts in place?
I've never seen the logic behind it.
Companies are usually obliged by law (or industry practice) to
provide support. A script means that they can hire unskilled workers
to perform that support. It costs money to hire someone who can
actually think and comprehend.
Any monkey can read a script, and you can pay them peanuts.
Uhm, no.
On the face of it, that may seem what is happening, but on the other
side of the fence there is Helpdesk burn-out.
The reason a majority of companies scripts support calls is to increase
both employee and customer satisfaction. The idea is that a consistent
answer will give consistent results, require less stress on Helpdesk
staff, allow for centrally coordinated answers and quicker response
times. Bean-counting is an aspect, but by no means the major one.
Generally the process happens a little like this:
* A company puts a product in the market place.
* Phone calls to the company with questions result in the
establishment of a support phone number.
* The support phone number is swamped with calls and more staff is
hired.
* Typical Helpdesk burn-out occurs when staff still has too many
calls to handle and staff turn-over increases.
* More support staff are hired.
* The cycle repeats.
* Helpdesk staff gets more over worked because due to the high staff
turn-over more time is needed to spend on training new employees.
* Helpdesk management attempts to reduce induction times by trying
to standardise training and introduces a Helpdesk Manual as a
tool. (Other tools like calling queues, pre-selection, email
access, Helpdesk tickets, etc. also fall into this category.)
* The manual proves hopelessly out of date the moment a new employee
receives it.
* At some point a bean-counter points out that a lot of costs are
associated with running a Helpdesk that don't actually generate
direct income.
* They decide that the manual works well enough and gets offered a
"too good to be true" proposal from a call centre which would
reduce employment costs, standardise their answers, reduce call
hold times, increase customer satisfaction.
The disconnect happens when the bean-counter and Helpdesk management
cannot explain to each other what their respective problems are. The
bean-counter sees money flying out the door, Helpdesk management sees
overworked, stressed and misunderstood staff. The bean-counter also
doesn't see sales advice happening on the Helpdesk and does not realise
that Helpdesk staff are the biggest subliminal sales force a company has.
Some companies then notice:
* The number of complaints about their Helpdesk increases.
* The turn-over of their company slows.
At that time, the local Helpdesk is generally re-instated and the cycle
begins again.
I should point out that I used to manage a Helpdesk, went to the USA in
1997 and visited the help desks for SGI, HP, Sun and another whose name
I forget. At that time Curtin was considering spreading the Helpdesk
across multiple departments and locations. It proceeded to close its
central Helpdesk on Friday the 19th of December, 1997 to force the issue.
In stark contrast to this, the companies I visited had gone through the
decentralisation woes and had re-consolidated their help desks.
In my experience many things like this in Australia run three to five
years behind any US trend.
I suppose I'm buttering you up for: "It will get worse before it gets
better."
--
Onno Benschop
Connected via Optus B3 at S34°45'36.5" - E139°00'08.7" (Mount Pleasant, SA)
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