Executive Summary

Every Customer Support department, Service Desk or IT Help Desk providing assistance to technology users necessarily faces a common challenge: how to make the most effective use of expensive human resources and increase the speed of problem resolution.  The core factors are time and money.  The greater the demand for service, and/or the longer the average call or other interaction takes, the more staff will be required in order to ensure a satisfactory level of center responsiveness.  The skills and knowledge resources required of support representatives are very costly to build and to maintain.  At the same time, the “human touch” is vital to ensuring continuing customer satisfaction and loyalty, and every support interaction is an opportunity to strengthen the profitability relationship.  The key to success in Customer Support/Service, therefore, is to eliminate all unnecessary interactions and to tightly focus the desirable conversations that do occur on what will ensure maximum customer retention and company profitability.