Service/Support --a Level to Strive For
Service/Support --a Level to Strive For by Communicado
Here’s a document that is not to be missed! At the same time it can serve two purposes that will help your company be stronger and more successful in the UC marketplace:
- Provide a competitive edge
- Offer a roadmap for ensuring that your service and support are ready to meet the needs of the customer with unified communication solutions
While a very clever vendor, Communicado, developed this vendor-neutral tool as a Customer Bill of Rights, we have taken the liberty (with their approval) of focusing it on your service and support offerings. How about your feedback in the Forums section – since this document makes a pretty powerful statement?
1. 5 Minute Acknowledgement…provide 24/7 vigilance with 5 minute acknowledgement if a problem is detected. Your customers have a right to learn immediately that potential trouble is being dealt with and avoid the work of reporting potential issues.
2. Communications Continuity…guarantee continuity of converged communications at the level that makes sense for your business: hot failover, recovery point guarantee, recovery time guarantee, or offsite backup. Your customers have a right to buy the level of protection appropriate given the importance of quick restoration of business communications should disaster or equipment failure strike, no more and no less. It is not acceptable to be left at risk.
3. Vendor Management…manage vendors for your customers. Your customers have a right to maintain focus on their core competency and expect that one of your core competencies will be to isolate them from the issues that arise among the hardware, software and carrier organizations that support their converged network.
4. MACs…manage Moves/Adds/Changes for your customers. They have a right to expect MAC automation across telephony, voice mail and other messaging services as part of their service, preferably with self service made so transparent that their users prefer to doing it themselves online rather than phoning a change in.
5. Unified Communications KPIs…provide Unified Communications Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Your customers have a right to quantified understanding of the improvement to their business processes driven by converged communications.
6. Guaranteed Closure Level or Refund…close 95 percent of problems within a guaranteed amount of time. Your customers have a right to expect the vast majority of their converged communications issues will be resolved quickly because you apply the appropriate remote access tools and knowledge. Moreover, you will back up the guarantee with financial compensation (free service, lower fee).
7. Real-time Service Level/Value Measure…provide real-time visibility into the service level and availability your customers are receiving. They have a right to thorough and automatic reporting on the level of Service they are being provided in such a way that they see they're getting sufficient value for their monthly management as a service fee.
8. Automation… see repeatable processes and intelligence applied to managing your customers' communications. They have a right to affordable management as a service, and it cannot be affordable without automation.
9. Free optimization and performance reviews…offer no-fee optimization and performance reviews. Your customers have a right to free assessment of their changing and growing converged communications needs. Moreover, you pledge that such assessments will be offered proactively in the interests of avoiding potential drags on your customers' business efficiency and growth.
10. Vetted Expert Availability…offer vetted experts in everything from audits of carrier billing to audits of communications security. Your customers have a right to expect whatever specialized expertise is needed to improve the performance of their converged communications from the experts they entrust it to.