Call Reduction Strategy

3. Benefits of a Call Reduction Strategy Minimize any business impact Increase employee productivity Increase adherence to service levels Increase customer satisfaction Lower overall support costs Repositioning the support team to handle more strategic, value-add and business critical types of issues

4. Call Elimination Increases Cost per Call – T or F? True, assuming no increase in aggregate call volume You must reduce targeted and categorical call volume It Must be measurable – before and after It Must be linked to an initiative – something you did Good news! We reduced our Total Call Volume Bad News We did not do anything except………force our customers not to call

5. Something Simple What is a Abandon? Positive or Negative? Do you take credit for placing an Emergency Message (EM) during a Global Outage? You Should! A simple Proactive, Call Avoidance strategy that communicates the situation/update to your customers so they can make an educated decision of what to do next – hopefully go back to work! Doughnuts and Coffee Anyone? “What else do you do when the network is down?”

6. Reducing Cost Per Solution The real benefit of doing Root Cause Analysis is that you know WHY your customers are calling and what problems and Call Types are reoccurring in your environment. The Real Value Add is: Targeting these reoccurring problems for elimination at a very real cost savings (25 application ‘How To’ problems eliminated per month equals 300 per yr. @$25 a contact yields a support savings of $7,500 a yr.). This is not just one months savings we are talking about – these were problems and Call Types that happened every month and now they are reduced every month. Target these reoccurring problems for movement from Level-3 to Level-2 to Level-1 to Level-0 and eventually elimination. Once Call Types are identified – they should be systematically targeted for movement down to a lower cost per contact. This focus on identifying Call Types and pinpointing them at the Level they are resolved will yield you the cost of resolving those Call Types at those Levels (100 Virus infections resolved by desktop visits, 50 PeopleSoft application corrupted files resolved by desktop visits @ $100+ a call quickly adds up to a great deal of money). This is not just one months savings we are talking about – these were problems and Call Types that happened now they are reduced every month. You now identify all of the Call Types that are escalated to the level-2 teams ( e.g. network, applications, email, data base, security, etc.) and you identify numbers and costs associated with all escalated Call Types. You then follow the same process for all of the calls that are being resolved at Level-1 on first contact. As you gain visibility to where these Call Types are being resolved, you will now work to shift where they get resolved and hopefully, one-day, eliminate them. Something that is not readily and easily understood by senior managers is the Total Cost of Support. This chart and the ability for YOU and YOR customers to explain it – will give them more visibility as to the real impact and value the support team can have on the business and improving the quality of support at a lower cost. To emphasize how expensive Call Types being resolved at Level-3, I use the analogy of “a taxi cab ride” - when a Call Type gets first reported to the Level-1 team, if not resolved then escalated to Level-2 and eventually Level-3 – all of this time the ‘taxi meter’ is running from the very first contact. This translates to adding all of the costs associated with all of the Levels of support people needed to resolve this Call Type. (Level-1 costs$ + Level-2costs$ + Level-3 costs$). Shifting them to the lower cost support alternative means you need to put work plans, incentives and metrics into action. For example, desktop remote control, backup and restore, anti-virus protection software and tools will reduce the amount of desktop visits for those Call Types and shift them to Level-1 or even better Level-0. Working with your Service Providers to reduce calls escalated by implementing documented problem resolutions into the Knowledge Base to be leveraged by Level-1 or High Impact Training or shadowing, etc…. Will focus in shifting Call Types from Level-2 to Level-1. It all results in a clear focused strategy to reduce support costs, improve employee productivity and leverage and utilize the support resources better to provide more value-add to the business and resolve more complex problems – inexpensively. It also makes for a great senior management report (e.g. The Marketing Report) where you clearly show the support cost savings by shifting Call Types to a lower resolution cost as well as eliminating Call Types and providing big savings from reoccurring Call Types – month over month. My executive marketing report would show my month over month savings by shifting and eliminating Call Types. It would also target next months Call Types for shifting and eliminating. One Slide – tons of value and cost savings. The real benefit of doing Root Cause Analysis is that you know WHY your customers are calling and what problems and Call Types are reoccurring in your environment. The Real Value Add is: Targeting these reoccurring problems for elimination at a very real cost savings (25 application ‘How To’ problems eliminated per month equals 300 per yr. @$25 a contact yields a support savings of $7,500 a yr.). This is not just one months savings we are talking about – these were problems and Call Types that happened every month and now they are reduced every month. Target these reoccurring problems for movement from Level-3 to Level-2 to Level-1 to Level-0 and eventually elimination. Once Call Types are identified – they should be systematically targeted for movement down to a lower cost per contact. This focus on identifying Call Types and pinpointing them at the Level they are resolved will yield you the cost of resolving those Call Types at those Levels (100 Virus infections resolved by desktop visits, 50 PeopleSoft application corrupted files resolved by desktop visits @ $100+ a call quickly adds up to a great deal of money). This is not just one months savings we are talking about – these were problems and Call Types that happened now they are reduced every month. You now identify all of the Call Types that are escalated to the level-2 teams ( e.g. network, applications, email, data base, security, etc.) and you identify numbers and costs associated with all escalated Call Types. You then follow the same process for all of the calls that are being resolved at Level-1 on first contact. As you gain visibility to where these Call Types are being resolved, you will now work to shift where they get resolved and hopefully, one-day, eliminate them. Something that is not readily and easily understood by senior managers is the Total Cost of Support. This chart and the ability for YOU and YOR customers to explain it – will give them more visibility as to the real impact and value the support team can have on the business and improving the quality of support at a lower cost. To emphasize how expensive Call Types being resolved at Level-3, I use the analogy of “a taxi cab ride” - when a Call Type gets first reported to the Level-1 team, if not resolved then escalated to Level-2 and eventually Level-3 – all of this time the ‘taxi meter’ is running from the very first contact. This translates to adding all of the costs associated with all of the Levels of support people needed to resolve this Call Type. (Level-1 costs$ + Level-2costs$ + Level-3 costs$). Shifting them to the lower cost support alternative means you need to put work plans, incentives and metrics into action. For example, desktop remote control, backup and restore, anti-virus protection software and tools will reduce the amount of desktop visits for those Call Types and shift them to Level-1 or even better Level-0. Working with your Service Providers to reduce calls escalated by implementing documented problem resolutions into the Knowledge Base to be leveraged by Level-1 or High Impact Training or shadowing, etc…. Will focus in shifting Call Types from Level-2 to Level-1. It all results in a clear focused strategy to reduce support costs, improve employee productivity and leverage and utilize the support resources better to provide more value-add to the business and resolve more complex problems – inexpensively. It also makes for a great senior management report (e.g. The Marketing Report) where you clearly show the support cost savings by shifting Call Types to a lower resolution cost as well as eliminating Call Types and providing big savings from reoccurring Call Types – month over month. My executive marketing report would show my month over month savings by shifting and eliminating Call Types. It would also target next months Call Types for shifting and eliminating. One Slide – tons of value and cost savings.

7. Are your Services Value-Add? List all services you currently deliver Rank in order of importance/value to customer Categorize services into problems and requests Identify services where you add no value Look for ways to deflect or eliminate Implement best practices Estimate cost to deliver services Map your team’s skills to your services Any bandwidth?

8. You Really Made It When… 1. Work to find and win more responsibilities, customers, call volume, work load, business units, etc. 2. Maintain or improve on SLA commitments to the business while supporting new business 3. Implement call reduction strategy to reduce targeted call volume periodically 4. Capture support savings that can be returned to bottom-line or leveraged for cost-avoidance

9. Talk to your Customer lately? Customer conversations are critical to your success and value-proposition Learn their business from them Talk to customers that leverage your services and ones that do not Ask three questions What are we doing well? What are we not doing well? What are we not doing to help you achieve your business goals and object?

10. Root Cause Analysis The Root Cause Analysis (RCA) process was to provide results in the following areas of concentration: Trend Analysis Problem Prevention Call Avoidance Methodologies Feedback loops to Help Desk training and Client Educational Programs Reports Top Cases Logged by Category Frequency of Category Tree Top Cases by Time Spent Pareto Rule = Frequency X Time Spent Top Cases by Value Dollar Impact Leverage Reporting to substantiate your case to “Do The Right Thing for the business and your customers”

11. Back to Basics and Best Practices Utilize call categorization data (reporting) Know what types of calls should be targeted for reduction/elimination Using the Pareto analysis, concentrate your efforts on the issues that produce the: highest percentage of calls highest percentage of handling time largest pain and business impact highest cost per resolution Guarantee that your analysis is based on sound numbers first by 100% call logging Must train your professionals to properly categorized all problems and requests correctly and consistently

12. Call Elimination and Reduction Best Practices You must have a well-maintained, updated and robust knowledge base with self service and learning capability Training/educating customers to prevent problems or questions Conduct a simple basic training/maunal for new employees Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) publication Mandatory during a new roll out or change process Professionals can use a talk training format to step the customer through “how-to” requests or ‘simple solutions” while on the phone Hopefully, customer won’t rely on the support center next time A role in Change Management and technology rollouts Communication of global outages presented in: Front-end phone message Portal or intranet Targeted communication for customers Web-enable as many functions as possible to eliminate or deflect calls Case submittal, Requests, Status checks and Password resets

13. The Built-In Call Reduction Strategy Understand why your customers are calling Understand the impact and determine where to focus efforts Identify the 'owners' of the root of the problem/question Conduct interviews with repeat offenders and “owners” of problems, questions, and requests Seek recommendations (360 degrees) on what can be done to eliminate, reduce or deflect calls Engage and get the buy-in from the owners to work to eliminate or reduce the impact of the root cause Debrief global outages, technology rollouts and changes

14. Formulate recommendations for solutions Update metrics to avoid any conflict Implement ‘80-20 rule” solutions Train/education all involved parties on the solution Communicate and market the solution, business impact and results to all involved parties. Continuously improve and reinforce use of automated and self service solutions Review Change Management process for improvements Always monitor progress and set new targets The Built-In Call Reduction Strategy

15. Make Full Use of Support Automation Always look for ways to: Eliminate calls Deflect repetitive, non-value-add calls to a non-phone support alternative Reduce the diagnostic time for complex calls, the number of desktop visits, and customer reliance on the phone Communicate, educate, and train your customers to be self-sufficient Prevent problems from impacting productivity by using auto-correcting features Support the 365x7x24x60x60 availability model – don’t be a barrier to it! It’s about keeping the phone-queue open for mission-critical problems It’s about shifting work to more high value, business impact

16. Project Scorecard

17. Real Case Studies Allstate Insurance Company

18. Call Reduction Strategy

19. Call Reduction Trends

20. Kemper Insurance Companies

21. Kemper Insurance Companies Assign a Customer Support Center (CSC) professional to all new project teams Firsthand knowledge Influence and improve design, training, testing and communications with problem prevention in mind at all times Review all technology communications Identify potential points of confusion and suggest wording changes Use real examples and stories to make a point Recently we worked with a business area rolling out a new application, but we were not provided an opportunity to review their communication. One poorly worded sentence resulted in over 200 calls in one day Once the cost of lost productivity was explained to that business area, they committed to involving us in all future communications

22. Kemper Insurance Companies Daily/weekly "spot" identification of problem trends Daily and weekly changes are communicated to the entire Support Center When technicians notice or managers hear a trend developing, “on the spot" analysis is done to: Understand what's going on Determine the root cause Get the right outside people involved Assess remedial steps Take action Most common after a significant change has been introduced into the environment (e.g. Application/Infrastructure change or rollout) Good relationships with our business customers and the other IT departments enable quick identification of root causes and quick remedial steps

23. Kemper Insurance Companies Monthly review of tickets for identification of problem trends Proper categorization by System, Component, Item, and Module For example, PCSoftware/Notes/Email/Attachments Use a Cause Code when closing tickets Monthly reports determine the highest volume problems by Category/Cause Code The category view tells us the nature of the problem The cause code view helps us understand what caused that problem Where customer lack of training is the cause, the business area is involved in the problem solving process Trends and remedial actions are summarized and reported to Business Partners, the CIO and IT Directors quarterly. Implemented Ticket Quality Program to ensure that problems are labeled correctly Involves "spot check" reviews of tickets each month with feedback to technicians for improvement

24. Welcome! Alston & Bird

25. Alston & Bird Help Desk and Training Dept. report into same organization Greatly improved the relationship between the two groups Call records are regularly reviewed Frequently asked questions are incorporated into training classes and shared in an e-mail "Tip of the Week" that is sent firm-wide The Help Desk staff: Works hand-in-hand with the Trainer in developing the courseware and documentation for all new applications Is the pilot training class, adding "real life" foresight into what will be covered in the training class delivered to employees. Results: Training related calls to the Help Desk were reduced by 20% within 4 months of combining the two departments

26. Refined the process for proactive system status notification A real-time system status scrolling "marquee" is on every desktop throughout the firm New employees are trained to check the marquee when experiencing system problems Additional notification methods include: Voice mail Email Greeting message updates Positive abandon Roles and responsibilities are defined throughout I.T. to ensure that the communication and delivery of timely system status information is top priority. Alston & Bird

27. Know What and Who You Should Know Identify the Critical Elements of Your Support Business Supply, Demand and SLA adherence Total Cost of Support, Cost per Contact and Solution Help Desk Professional Utilization Top 5 Call Types by Volume and Mean Time To Resolve Identify and Report Business Impact and Employee Productivity Trends Barriers to Total Contact Ownership Identify Key Sponsors and Champions of Help Desk Senior Level Management Customers Business Drivers

28. STI Knowledge Educationand Certification Program Launching refreshed and new education and certification content CHDD – refreshed CHDP Online - refreshed CKM – refreshed MindShare – relaunched Certified Team Lead –new Emotional Intelligence – new Community Building Increased RoundTables, Webinars and Executive Consortiums Certified Education Center (e.g. New Horizons) - new Seminar series - new Managing Change and Conflict Time Management Root Cause Analysis Sales Strategies