BITS PilaniPilani Campus

Case study on the Problem reporting – customer side activities.

EC1 – Software Maintenance Management

Bakshi GulamNomalathaSankarVenkata NarayanaViswanath

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Nobody's perfect. That's a fact, not an excuse.

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

The Issue: Every business can expect complaints from customers. It's how a business handles the complaints that matters most, and many do so poorly.

The Problem: When companies don't give upset customers a fair hearing or some assurance that the problem won't happen again, they are putting repeat business, profits and growth at risk.

The Solution: Treat all customer issues with equal priorities. Even crazy looking problems are sometimes real and all problems seem to be simple only when we find the solution, with cool thinking.

Focal Point

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Life Cycle of Customer Issue

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Looking at the Customer Issue Lifecycle,

“Self-Troubleshoot” is the number one step any customer takes when they have a question.

A crucial component to this problem solving step is whether the user has access to helpful documentation.

If the documentation doesn’t evolve or grow with the needs of its users, then the users will become frustrated and will have to call/chat/email a support agent.

Experience in this fields suggests users don’t prefer to contact support over finding the solution themselves.

If the answer is available in documentation, it will always take less time for the user to consume the answer than from re-explaining the problem and working through a solution with a support agent.

Tools to raise an Issue

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Provide a Self-Troubleshoot guide

Provide a Knowledge Base (KB)

– Reduce no. of support cases & Avoid customer frustration– Make the best documentation in the world, with videos, pictures, and interactive

walk-through

KB - easily accessible to users

– Search & Browse facilities of KB– Remove the emphasis on submitting a ticket

Support Ticket– Make it as simple as possible - Keep min. no. of mandatory fields– Get important details

Keep the support accessible by various means (Call / Chat / E-Mail) and respond promptly.

With the steps above it is possible to effectively manage the lifecycle of the customer issue

How to control Lifecycle of a customer Issue?

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

The Kaidara Advisor Knowledge Management (KM) system at Hyundai

Challenge: With the increased complexity in today’s vehicle’s Electronics, even experienced technicians can not be familiar with every vehicle issue.

Solution: application to most effectively capture legacy and new service

knowledge and make it quickly available for all service technicians.

Implementation:

- define new business workflows necessary to capture key new service knowledge

- capture legacy (technical service bulletins, service notes, and service manuals) into the KB

- improving lack of search precision – dividing KB into domains

KB Case Study

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

The Kaidara Advisor Knowledge Management (KM) system at Hyundai

Success Story: Hyundai’s key performance metric for the call center (calls-per-case) metric has decreased by 15% since the deployment of the KM system.

KB Case Study

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Say a bank customer requests a cash withdraw from an ATM but the machine fails to issue the cash.

The customer becomes worried and goes to one of the bank tellers. The teller checks the account, and assures the customer that there is no problem, that the no amount was deducted from the account.

But if the teller only focuses on the fact that the account was credited, he or she has ignored what in the customer's view was the most severe and critical aspect of the service failure:

“The worry initially felt, and the extra time it took to verify the deposit”

A classic Example

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Customers often want to know within a reasonable time

– Not only that their problem has been resolved,

– But how the failure occurred and

– What the company is doing to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Customer In-site

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Offer more communication channels for customers to file complaints easily.

Collect as much data as possible.

Don’t try to Delight Your Customers.

Don’t try to assume all is well by providing an immediate solution, an apology and some sort of compensation.

Don’t see complaining customers as the enemies

Do’s and Don'ts

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

A service-level-agreement(SLA) is a part of service contract where a service is formally defined.

In practice, the term SLA is sometimes used to refer to the contracted delivery time (of the service or performance).

Agreement between 2 or more parties, where one is customer and others are service providers.

Can be a legally binding formal or an informal “contract”

Service-level agreement

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

SLAs commonly include segments to address

A definition of services

Performance measurement

Problem management

Customer duties

Warranties

Disaster recovery

Termination of agreement

SLAs includes

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Customer-based SLA

Service-based SLA

Multilevel SLA– Corporate-level SLA– Customer-level SLA– Service-level SLA

SLA at different levels

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

New Cases:

- Classification based on impact on the field. Non-Urgent Technical Cases

E.g., Log File rollover. Auto-Refresh functionality not working etc.

Urgent Problem Reporting E.g.,

Process Crashes so frequently. IP Address reservation issues etc.

Existing Cases:

Tracking Cases. Regular monitoring on the Problem resolution flow. Providing necessary details to the Engineering / Service team.

Escalation of Cases

Juniper Case Category and Follow up.

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

While creating new cases, the customer must ensure that he has the right and necessary data with him .

Listed below are few items that are required by the Juniper Technical Assistance Center (JTAC) from the customer to proceed further with the case.

Customer’s Internal tracking serial number

Definition of the problem in detail

Priority level and impact of the problem

Software version

Appropriate configuration and/or debug data

Current network topology

Remote access

Basic Requirements while reporting Problems

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Problem Replication

In Customer Lab

In JTAC/Engineering Lab.

Troubleshoot live on the affected equipment

Audit Trail

Status on resolution progress.

Common Bug Tracking Tool (GNATS)

Close the case when you agree that the problem has been resolved.

Tracking the Cases

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

The chart below provides Juniper Customer targets for providing responses and communication from JTAC/Engineering.

Case Priority Initial Response Target Update Frequency

P1 within 1 hour Updated every four hours

P2 within 1 hour Updated every business day

P3 within 8 hours Updated every three business days

P4 within 24 hours Updated once per week

Customer Communication Guidelines

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Option When to Select

Faster progress Select this option If you need faster progress on your case

Case status update Select this option if you require an update on your case

Support Engineer now Select this option if you need a Support Engineer to contact you.

Case reassignment Select this option if you feel that the case needs to be reassigned for any reason.

Escalation of Cases.

Customers must participate in Escalation meeting where all the stakeholders are present. This brings the current customer problem into more focus.

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Mutual understanding between a customer and the vendor/service personal.

Misconduct have direct Impact on business.

Example:- Terilogy / AT&T – PR Cases- Egypt customer

(The case that spoiled the Christmas holiday )

Customer mood / Reaction.

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Conclusion

Two critical findings emerged that should affect every company’s customer service strategy.

– First, delighting customers doesn’t build loyalty; reducing their effort—the work they must do to get their problem solved - does.

– Second, acting deliberately on this insight can help improve customer service, reduce customer service costs, and decrease customer churn.