Giva® today announced a significant new cloud product release for the industry's first visual reporting tools for information technology help desk organizations.

"The new Giva reporting module is more comprehensive and an order of magnitude easier to use when compared with FrontRange® HEAT reporting," said Juan Carlo Muro, IT Director, Sante Health System.

"The new Giva reporting module is more comprehensive and an order of magnitude easier to use when compared with FrontRange® HEAT reporting," said Juan Carlo Muro, IT Director, Sante Health System. "There is an extraordinary amount of functionality in Giva Reports that allows me to be much more productive." [Click to download the case study.]

Real-time reports can be generated within seconds even with very high volumes of complex data sets, allowing managers to instantly identify emerging trends and patterns to facilitate better and faster decision-making. Most of the real-time visual reports run in ten seconds or less with visual representation of data and drill-down capability.

The new product release features full color, high contrast charts and graphs that allow for more graphically driven data presentation to better understand relationships between all the IT department data. Metrics, business analytics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are now displayed with more graphs and charts and allow customer service and call center managers to better identify emerging problems, issues, trends and patterns so that systemic changes can be made.

This new product release significantly benefits information technology organizations which like to focus on increasing first contact resolution, increasing customer satisfaction, decreasing call volume with root cause analysis and exceeding service level agreements (SLAs). Giva's visual reporting tools make identifying trends and patterns easier and quicker and with less time building, running, sharing and reviewing reports. CIOs, IT managers and help desk managers can also finally measure differences in performance between individuals and teams with data driven objectivity to know who to reward, who to warn and who to terminate.

"Giva's reports now have significantly more visual aspects and new functionality with this new product release resulting in even faster and higher quality decision-making", said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc. "Our reports and dashboards are extremely easy to use and do not require a company 'report guru' as with most competitive products."

Learn more by taking a tour of Giva's help desk reports, charts and graphs or sign up for a 30 day trial of Giva.

About Giva:

Founded in 1999, Giva was among the first to provide a suite of help desk and customer service/call center applications architected for the cloud. Now, with hundreds of customer driven releases, the Giva Service Management™ Suite delivers an intuitive, easy-to-use design that can be deployed in just days and requires only one hour of training. Giva's robust, fast and painless reporting/analytics/KPIs quickly measure team productivity, responsiveness and customer satisfaction resulting in faster and higher quality decision-making. Customization and configuration are all point and click with no programming or consultants required to deliver a substantially lower total cost of ownership. Giva is a private company headquartered in Santa Clara, California serving delighted customers worldwide.

The current business climate of fast paced change requires IT service providers to deliver products and services at a justifiable cost without negative impacts to the infrastructure and end user. To compete in the global marketplace, IT service professionals are required to manage their infrastructure using an end to end holistic approach to deliver reliable service on a consistent basis.

Many organizations of all industries have implemented ITIL to effectively compete. Of the multiple ITIL processes, Change Management is considered difficult to implement but often shows the greatest return on investment. This paper will address the following six questions in detail to aid IT practitioners in their Change Management planning and implementation process.

· How to start a Change Advisory Board?

· Is a tool required before we can start?

· Do we need a Change Coordinator?

· What metrics should be created?

· How do we involve the business customers in the process?

· How do we initiate a post-implementation review process?

The ITIL Concept

IT service providers, particular in the United States, have struggled for years to prove to its internal and external customers the value of "what we do." ITIL, or The Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a set of books outlining the most widely accepted best practice approach to IT Service Management in the world. This framework, developed from the international private and public sector, (OGC) Office of Government Commerce, U.K. and with collaboration from it SMF (Information Technology Service Management Forum), aides IT service providers in planning consistent, documented, and repeatable processes that improve service delivery to the business.

Our first order of business was to change the name of our "Help Desk" to "Service Desk" which within the ITIL framework becomes the single point of contact between the business customer and the service provider providing advice, guidance, and quick restoration of service. With the single point of contact concept, customer service is a consistent and repeatable method for service, as the staff should have strong technical skills, business savvy, and a service-based orientation. Additionally, customer problems can be logged and trended to provide valuable information to the business.

The next step was to implement Incident Management, which is the rapid restoration of normal services to limit the negative impact to the business. The ITIL definition of an incident is "Any event which is not part of the standard operation of a service and which causes, or may cause, an interruption to, or a reduction in, the quality of that service." This process helped move IT from a "hero" culture to one of a proactive, service based culture. We built a formal Incident Management process and the benefits are numerous. Once we established a formal Incident Management process we were ready to focus on Change Management, which is one of the most visible of the ITIL processes.

Change Management is the process of planning, coordinating, monitoring and communicating changes affecting production. Change Management ensures that standard methods and procedures are used for the efficient and prompt handling of all changes in order to minimize the impact of change related incidents and improve day-to-day operations. We will discuss Change Management in more detail later.

Configuration Management is considered the most challenging and time consuming process to successfully implement. Configuration Management is the process in which IT components are identified, logged and reported on and it provides significant benefits to any IT organization. In many companies, Configuration Management is considered the "foundation" of the ITIL processes.

Release Management's goal is to take a high level look at IT change and make certain that all the technical and non-technical details are considered and well thought out. A release is a collection of approved changes that may consist of multiple fixes or enhancements. Release comes in multiple types including Delta, Full and Package. Other components of Release include the Definitive Hardware Store, which is isolated and secure storage of hardware spares. Another component is the Definitive Software Library, which is a repository of master electronic copies of software and their respective license documents.

Service Level Management is the process whereby the IT service provider and customer define, negotiate, agree and monitor levels of service. The goal is to maintain and improve IT service quality in order to meet the customers' business related objectives. We have implemented components of Service Level Management and established key roles within the organization to continue to build on its success. The Account Manager is a pivotal role in educating the customer on the value of IT and negotiates the levels of service and pricing of the service offerings. Also, our Account Managers serve on our Change Advisory Board as non-voting members.

Change Management Questions

How to start a Change Advisory Board?

First you need to determine who needs to attend the CAB meetings. Who are the key stakeholders? Once you determine "who" should attend then you can determine whether or not they need to attend every CAB meeting or only those meetings in which their area of expertise is required. Also, you should ask yourself if the meetings would be open to everyone or only those who are involved in or impacted by the change.

Next, determine how often and when the board will meet. Will it be weekly, monthly, or only as needed? How will change control be maintained if you meet less than weekly? What are the possible consequences of this decision? Regardless of how often you decide to have your CAB meeting, you should have it at the same time and on the same weekday to maintain consistency. Other meetings should not be allowed to book over CAB meetings nor should CAB meetings be cancelled, if possible.

When there are Emergency changes will they go before an Emergency CAB? If so, who are those CAB members? Who determines if an Emergency CAB meeting is or isn't needed? What types of changes are considered emergencies? What needs to be completed to get an emergency approval? What are the procedures for an Emergency change during non-work hours?

Before you plan your first meeting, you will want to determine the meeting format. Will the meetings be in person, via telephone or a combination of the two? If the meetings will be held via telephone, check with your Telecom department to determine if they are any potential issues you may encounter or are unaware of? If you decide to use a combination of these formats, how will you ensure everyone's concerns and votes are registered?

Prior to the first "official" CAB meeting, you will want to bring the CAB members together to go over their roles, responsibilities, and meeting expectations. This will also give the Change Coordinator the opportunity to poll the CAB on policies and procedures. The CAB needs to determine what will constitute a quorum, what types of changes does the board want to approve? What types of changes is the Change Coordinator empowered to approve? Will CAB members have delegates? If so, what are the expectations for delegates? Will there be an Executive CAB? If so, who and when will changes be escalated to them for resolution? The Change Coordinator can also use this time to go over some of the documentation the CAB will be working with: Weekly Change Agenda, Forward Schedule of Changes and the Change Management reports.

Prior to the first CAB meeting the Change Coordinator will need to create and publish the Change Agenda and Forward Schedule of Change. CAB members will use this information to research and discuss changes on the agenda with their staff prior to the CAB meeting. Any issues encountered should be resolved preceding the CAB meeting to allow time for thoughtful discussions during the meeting.

Make sure your CAB meetings start and end on time and that all needed information is available. During the actual CAB meeting, keep the pace steady as you move through each change, this will allow ample time for discussion when needed. Most importantly, ensure you do a "reality check" at least once a month to ensure the meetings are still providing value for the members and see if there are areas for improvement.

The meetings need to have a facilitator, usually the Change Management Coordinator and a scribe to ensure the meeting flows freely and is accurately documented.

Is a Tool Required before we can begin?

As long as there is a consistent, documented, repeatable process you do not need a formalized tool for Change Management process to work. A basic Change Management system could involve Change Implementers filling out a paper form which outlines their change and the implementation plans. The change information could be routed to the Change Coordinator who would then maintain and file the information. All changes would need to be communicated throughout the IT organization and to the customers if they will be impacted; this could be accomplished via email. For smaller organizations, it is possible to implement Change Management with paper forms and email; a centralized access database that would enable everyone to input their change information or a combination of those tools. If you already have or will be implementing Incident Management, Problem Management or Release Management, you will want to ensure there is a way to cross reference the tickets.

Do we need a Change Coordinator?

In order for the Change Management process to be successful, you need a dedicated process owner who is responsible for administrating and monitoring the change process. The Change Coordinator ensures that all changes are recorded, scheduled, and that all parties involved with the change have the information that is needed for the change to progress through the process.

The Change Coordinator Responsibilities include:

· Review and update the Change Management process, as needed.

· Analyze change data and communicate to management potential exposures.

· Review all change requests to ensure completeness, accuracy, and clarity of information.

· Review the request for compliance to Change Management procedures.

· Prepare and distribute meeting information and complete change requests to the Change Advisory Board for business impact, priority and change readiness review.

· Facilitate Change Advisory Board meetings with Change Advisory Board personnel.

· Prevent potential conflict by maintaining a change schedule or calendar.

· Add the request to the schedule for change activity.

· Ensure changes are approved prior to implementation.

· Attempt to resolve change conflicts and escalate to management as necessary.

· Publishing change control meeting notes and helping communicate changes to appropriate technology and user groups.

· Ensure that only authorized changes are implemented, that changes are implemented in an acceptable time frame in accordance with business requirements, that changes are successful, and that no new incidents are created as a result of a change.

· Conduct Post Implementation Reviews.

· Assist departments in the change process.

· Coordinate and distribute Change Management reports and measurements.

· Provide education as needed.

What Metrics should be created?

Change Management provides ample opportunities for capturing metrics that will communicate the benefits and quantify the process for management and customers.

Some of those metrics include:

1. How many Request For Changes have been opened?

2. How many Changes were withdrawn?

3. How many Changes did the CAB deny?

4. How many successful changes were there?

5. How many unsuccessful changes?

6. How many changes were backed out and why?

7. If a change was backed out, what was the impact to the customer?

8. How many incidents have been related to changes?

9. How many post implementation reviews have been completed?

10. How many Emergency changes were there? What is the percentage?

11. How many changes were considered major, medium or minor? What is the percentage?

12. How many changes indicate which configuration item was affected?

13. Which configuration items are continually changing?

14. How many changes are pending other workgroups signoff or approval?

15. How many outstanding RFCs are there? Why are they still pending?

16. Does the RFC contain all relevant and required information? If not, was it approved?

17. How many RFCs is each work group creating? Are they being actively managed?

How do we involve the business customer in the process?

For the Change Management process to be fully successful and reach maturity the customer needs to be involved in the process. Customers can be encouraged to attend the CAB meetings; however, if you have more than one customer, you need to ensure their information is kept confidential. The CAB meetings can be structured to ensure this by blocking out specific times for specific customers to attend the meetings. The customer should receive their companies Weekly Change Agenda and Forward Schedule of Changes prior to the meeting to ensure they have time to go over the changes with their personnel. Also, your customers should be required to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement prior to attending the meeting. Keeping customers involved in the change process will ensure they are informed and aware of your efforts to manage change on their behalf.

How do we initiate a Post-Implementation Review?

The CAB needs to determine the types of questions they would like answered regarding successful and unsuccessful changes and it is not necessary to review every change.

A typical Post Implementation Review form includes the following:

· Description of Business Change

· What was the desired benefit of the change?

· Did the change meet the customer's expectations?

· What part of the change was successful and why?

· If there were problems, what were they and how were they remedied?

· Lessons Learned

Giva® today announced a significant new cloud product release for the industry's first visual reporting tools for customer service and call center organizations. Real-time reports can be generated within seconds even with very high volumes of complex data sets, allowing managers to instantly identify emerging trends and patterns to facilitate better and faster decision-making. Most of the real-time visual reports run in ten seconds or less with visual representation of data and drill-down capability.

"We used to spend over 24 hours per month working with the reports in Salesforce.com® Service Cloud to extract data. With Giva, we spend about 15 minutes per month and the information quality is superior," said Chris Jerry, EDIMS Support Center Manager.

"The new Giva real-time reports make us 30% more productive and have dramatically decreased the amount of time required to generate and distribute quality reports to the executive team," said Chris Jerry, EDIMS Support Center Manager. "We used to spend over 24 hours per month working with the reports in Salesforce.com® Service Cloud to extract data. With Giva, we spend about 15 minutes per month generating customer service reports and the information quality is superior. Giva is the 'Apple Computer' of cloud customer service applications." [Click to download the case study.]

The new product release features full color, high contrast charts and graphs that allow for more graphically driven data presentation to better understand relationships between all the call center data. Metrics, business analytics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are now displayed with more graphs and charts and allow customer service and call center managers to better identify emerging problems, issues, trends and patterns so that systemic changes can be made.

This new product release significantly benefits customer service and call center organizations which like to focus on increasing first contact resolution, increasing customer satisfaction, decreasing call volume with root cause analysis and exceeding service level agreements (SLAs). Giva's visual reporting tools make identifying trends and patterns easier and quicker and with less time building, running, sharing and reviewing reports. Customer service managers can also finally measure differences in performance between individuals and teams with data driven objectivity to know who to reward, who to warn and who to terminate.

"Giva's reports now have significantly more visual aspects and new functionality with this new product release resulting in even faster and higher quality decision-making", said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc. "Our reports and dashboards are extremely easy to use and do not require a company "report guru" as with most competitive products."

Learn more by taking a tour of Giva's customer service/call center reports, charts and graphs or sign up for a 30 day trial of Giva.

About Giva:

Founded in 1999, Giva was among the first to provide a suite of help desk and customer service/call center applications architected for the cloud. Now, with hundreds of customer driven releases, the Giva Service Management™ Suite delivers an intuitive, easy-to-use design that can be deployed in just days and requires only one hour of training. Giva's robust, fast and painless reporting/analytics/KPIs quickly measure team productivity, responsiveness and customer satisfaction resulting in faster and higher quality decision-making. Customization and configuration are all point and click with no programming or consultants required to deliver a substantially lower total cost of ownership. Giva is a private company headquartered in Santa Clara, California serving delighted customers worldwide.

Use these selected questions to set job interview strategy

Our job interview questions fall into these categories:

· Preparation questions test what the candidate knows about your organization or the job you have advertised. Does the candidate meet the job's basic requirements?

· Behavioral questions encourage candidates to discuss at some length how they work, problems they have solved, and how they think.

· Problem-solving questions present candidates with a specific issue they need to resolve.

· Big-picture questions assess how the candidate views his or her role in your organization.

· Off-the-wall questions should be avoided.

Preparation questions

1. Tell me about your current job. What do you like about it? What do you dislike?

2. What operating system do you prefer and why? (The operating system is of minor importance, unless the job requires a thorough knowledge of it. Rather, this question probes general knowledge of operating systems and their relative merits.)

3. I know all these references are going to say nice things about you, or you wouldn't have listed them. Can you give me one that won't say good things about you? (You aren't going to call, but you want to see and hear is how they react.)

4. I would like to set up a second interview with our evening supervisor. Can you come back this evening at 7:00 P.M.? (How flexible is the candidate? How do they handle less-than-ideal situations? This question requires the possibility of a second interview with an evening supervisor.)

5. What do you know about our organization and what we do?

Behavioral questions

1. What's the biggest mistake you've made? How many people were affected by it? How did you find out about it? How did you recover and what did you learn?

2. Tell me about the most difficult IT problem you ever faced and how you handled it. In retrospect, would you handle it the same way now?

3. How do you stay informed about your profession? (This answer should go beyond daily duties. Do they have a test network at home? Do they read publications or visit IT Web sites?)

4. Tell me about your relationship with your current end users? (Is the candidate a people person? How does the candidate interact with others?)

5. Tell me about a time when you were working alone and needed to motivate yourself. What were the circumstances, and how did you do it?

Problem-solving questions

1. What precautions would you take before replacing a keyboard, hard drive, or network card? (This question should be altered to reflect the job description and skills.)

2. Ask the candidate to turn around so he or she can't see you. Then ask them to tell you how to tie your shoelaces using only vocal instructions. (Does the candidate ask if your shoes have shoelaces? Can they describe the process? This kind of question will help you test communications skills needed by help desk candidates who support remote users.)

3. Your network is experiencing periods of slow response, and you are asked to find a solution. What troubleshooting techniques would you use? Hardware or software solutions are okay, and budget is not an issue.

4. In many problem situations, it is tempting to jump to a conclusion in order to quickly build a solution. Describe a time when you resisted this temptation and thoroughly researched the problem before reaching a decision.

5. Write a paragraph explaining how DHCP (LANs, WANs, WEPs, whatever) works. (This question sounds like a technical question, but you will want to see how well the candidate communicates the technical information.)

Big-picture questions

1. What is the single most rewarding thing you have accomplished in your career, and why do you cite this above all your other accomplishments?

2. Describe for me a risk you have taken in your career and the results of the decision to take the risk. Would you do it again?

3. What role do you think computer support analysts should play in the company?

4. What special skills or knowledge can you bring to our organization? Why would this be valuable to us?

5. Within this organization or not, where do you see yourself, and your career, in five years?

Interview questions form:

Use these questions, or others from the accompanying potential interview questions list, to formulate your own
interview of job candidates for a support or help desk position. This form can also be modified to fit other job
categories. Use your version of this form for each candidate to ensure that the interview is fair and equitable.

TODAY'S DATE: ____/____/_____
CANDIDATE NAME: __________________________________________________________________
CONTACT INFORMATION: Address: _____________________________________________________
Telephone: ________________ (work)
________________ (home)
________________ (cell)
E-mail: ______________________________________________________
POSITION DESIRED: ____________________________________
SALARY RANGE DISCUSSED: $___________ to $____________
PROMISED RESPONSE DATE: ____/____/______
NEXT STEP: _________________________________________________________________________

Major qualifications in a nutshell
Use this section to document the candidate's individual qualifications or interesting experiences.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________

The questions
Modify these questions to fit your particular circumstances and requirements. After you have made notes about
the answer to each question, rate the candidate's response from 0 to 5. Then add up the TOTAL: ______
Tell me about your current job. What do you like about it? What do you dislike? 0 1 2 3 4 5
NOTES:__________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Interview questions
What operating system do you prefer and why? 0 1 2 3 4 5
NOTES:__________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________

What precautions would you take before replacing a keyboard, hard drive, or network card?
0 1 2 3 4 5
NOTES:__________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________

What's the biggest mistake you've made? How many were affected by it? How did you find
out about it? How did you recover, and what did you learn? 0 1 2 3 4 5
NOTES:__________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________

What is the single most rewarding thing you have accomplished in your career, and why do
you cite this above all your other accomplishments? 0 1 2 3 4 5
NOTES:__________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Tell me about the most difficult IT problem you have faced and how you handled it. In
retrospect, would you handle it the same way now? 0 1 2 3 4 5
NOTES:__________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Describe for me a risk you have taken in your career and the results of the decision to take
the risk. Would you do it again? 0 1 2 3 4 5
NOTES:__________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________

What role do you think computer support analysts should play in the company? 0 1 2 3 4 5
NOTES:__________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________

I know all these references are going to say nice things about you, or you wouldn't have
listed them. Can you give me one that won't say good things about you? 0 1 2 3 4 5
NOTES:__________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Ask the candidate to turn around so he or she can't see you. Then ask him or her to tell you
how to tie your shoelaces using only vocal instructions. (This question can help you test
communications skills needed by candidates who support remote users by telephone.)
0 1 2 3 4 5
NOTES:__________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Giva® has announced a new webinar series on mistakes to avoid when buying any software or cloud services. Companies interested in purchasing software or cloud services (such as IT help desk or customer service solutions) encounter a myriad of problems and obstacles during the purchase process. Giva's webinar builds a foundation of understanding including all the internal issues to consider and well as the external process of engaging with vendors.

"We listened to many companies struggle with the purchase process and they asked us for our help. This webinar is a distillation of lessons learned over a decade," said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc.

The webinars provide practical "how to" advice to assist in becoming a more informed buyer and enable companies to make a more rigorous and objective comparison of vendors based upon a prioritized list of feature requirements. The webinar also provides education on how to lead the vendor qualification process with expertise and confidence. Effectively coaching a team on how to shortlist the right vendors for a rigorous vetting process is also discussed as well as insights about how to negotiate a better license agreement.

The webinar helps avoid mistakes that even the most experienced professionals make that cost a lot of time and money. Evaluation teams and senior executives making important business decisions can now approach the purchase of any software including IT help desk and customer service cloud services in a much more rigorous and analytical manner.

"Giva has literally worked with thousands of IT and customer service professionals since 1999," said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc. "We listened to many companies struggle with the purchase process and they asked us for our help. This webinar is a distillation of lessons learned over a decade. It provides practical answers and a 'how to' approach to overcoming all the challenges of purchasing any new software or cloud services."

This webinar series also has eight related whitepapers now available for download:

• Do Check Signers Have Significant Pain?
• Are Funds Approved and Set Aside?
• Learn Latest Help Desk and Customer Best Practices
• Determine Problems with the Current Call Tracking System
• Document Feature Needs/Requirements
• Ask Vendors Tough Questions Early and Often
• Compare Total Cost of Ownership of All Vendors
• Key License Agreement Terms

Click on the link to sign up for the IT Help Desk webinar or Customer Service webinar and read quotes from very satisfied attendees.

About Giva:

Founded in 1999, Giva was among the first companies to provide a suite of applications specifically architected for the public cloud. Now, with over a decade of refinements including thousands of enhancements, the Giva Service Management™ Suite is the most customer feedback driven cloud computing suite for the ITIL Help Desk, Customer Service/Call Center and Service Desk. Visual reporting, management dashboards and a radically intuitive service request design, make the Giva Service Management™ Suite highly differentiated from all other solutions. Customizations are all point and click with no programming or consulting necessary so Giva delivers a substantially lower total cost of ownership solution. Giva is a private company headquartered in Santa Clara, California serving delighted customers worldwide.

Overhead Savings Told by the Volume

For every service request entered by a customer you have the potential to save two minutes and forty-nine
seconds! You say, "OK, but how about when a customer does not enter the correct information or is vague and
we have to call them back". This is a significant problem when they leave a voice mail or they send an email
because of the time lag between when they contact you and when you pick up the message or email. However,
with a Web submission there can be great savings in time. We need to assume that your problem management
system immediately and automatically notifies you of a Web submission and that you have good support
processes in place. My experience has been that when you immediately call the customer to thank them they
will still be at their desk. This is a very good practice to introduce this new process to your customers. They will
be surprised at your response and will gladly give you any clarifying information. It is also a great time for one-on-one training on how to submit the perfect service request.

How to Successfully Implement Customer Logging

1. Know your current state. You should first benchmark your current support center workload.
? Numbers of service requests by the various submit methods (by month).
? Length of time that it takes to document a single service request by submit method.
2. Develop a process for providing superior service to Web submissions.
3. Develop a marketing plan to encourage your customers to try out the Web.
4. Dedicate resources to processing Web submissions.
5. Track progress and report at least monthly.

Since we have already discussed methodology for determining current state, we will now discuss the other
requirements.

Develop a process for providing superior service to Web submissions. Ultimately, customers must feel that they are receiving better service when they submit via the web than any other way. I have interviewed hundreds of customers in many companies.

One of the questions that I ask is "what do you want from a support center?" Here are the most frequent
answers in the order of importance:
1. "I want someone to be there when I call."
2. "I want to know that they have heard me and that they understand my request."
3. "I want to be treated with respect."
4. "I want to have a knowledgeable person make sure that my request is resolved."
5. "I want to know when I can expect resolution."
If the support center cannot meet the customers' needs when they submit over the web, then they will not use it and go back to their old ways of wanting to use the phone.

There are two processes that I have witnessed that are critical success factors: (1) program the problem
management system so that it notifies the support center every time a new web submission arrives, (2) who ever takes the request should personally call the customer back immediately. I have seen this become a game for the support center. In the beginning, this is not a great burden. Remember that you are saving almost three minutes per web request. This call back has great success because almost 100% of the time the customer is there.

This addresses the first need the customer has as stated above ("I want someone to be there when I call.").

This will relieve a great fear that they are just submitting into a black hole and that no one will respond. The phone
conversation can go something like: "This is the support center calling and I wanted to thank you for using our
web service. I have your request here. Do you have a moment to go through it with me to make sure that I
understand it?" This addresses the second and third need (I want to be heard and treated with respect.). By
simply asking for clarification the customer is learning how to better document the next time. The support
person then can conclude by stating what is going to be done. On easy requests the customer could be told that
they have already resolved the issue or that they were working on it and it would be done in a few minutes. The
customer still gets a feeling of being taken care of (the need for a knowledgeable person to resolve it) when the
support center says that they have already sent the request off to the appropriate group and that they should
expect it to be resolved in a certain amount of time.

Market your new service to your customers

Your customers do not like to be surprised. When you make any changes in the way that you provide support,
let your customers know well in advance of the change. Three months is an adequate amount of lead time. A
well written email explaining the service and benefits to the customer is all that is required. Send it out three
months before, then two months before and then once a week before the launch date.
When marketing your new web service, make sure you stress that all your old services are still in effect. Make
sure that your customers know that they can still call you any time. In fact, you
want them to call you for all emergency (Severity 1 and 2) issues.

If you don't get this point across, then your customers may feel that this is another way that you are trying to
avoid talking to them. The point to stress is that you are adding a service (another way to submit a service
request) and not taking away a service.

Dedicate resources to web service

When you turn on the new web service, you need to be certain that you are ready for it. Web service requests
must be given priority. After phone calls, make sure that the web requests are quickly addressed. That might
mean that you don't answer your emails as fast. Make sure that the web service is covered throughout your
normal support hours. Several successful implementations have taken their staff that were on phones and
assigned them to handle the web requests when they came in. Since volume at the beginning was not great, this was an easy change. Later when the volume increased, they assigned staff to the web the same way that they assigned to the phones. One company found that they could only have a person on the web service for an hour at a time because of the stress in handling so many requests. Just be ready to dedicate resources in an organized manner.

Track web submission trends

It is important to know where you are spending your time. That is why I suggested that you start with a
benchmark from which to measure. You will probably find that initially those customers that usually sent
emails will switch to the web. Those that use to phone will eventually switch to the Web. Knowing the change
will help you adjust your scheduling of resources. Below is an actual chart of the initial phases of a web
implementation. Note that for the first six months there was a one-to-one correlation between the number of
web submissions and emails. After six months customers began shifting from phoning the support center to
submitting over the web.

Conclusion

The benefits to both the support center and to customers are significant when customers favor web submissions
over other forms of submitting service requests. In order to successfully convince customers to switch the
support center must have strong processes in place. The support center must also market the benefits to their
customers and be dedicated to providing superior service to those customers who submit web requests.

See http://www.givainc.com/wp/customer-web-self-service-logging-service-requests.htm to download whitepaper

Why should customers log their service requests?

How can you prepare an economic analysis of the benefits?

There are many myths about letting customers into your problem management system. I often hear support
managers say that their customers won't take the time. "Our customers would rather call us than enter their
own calls." I also hear them say that their customers are not capable of entering the correct information and
support would just have to call the customer anyway." It is my experience from working with many companies,
that the perceptions do not fit reality. What I will try to do in this paper is to present the advantages to customer logging and tips to make it successful.

What is Customer Logging?

Only a few service event management systems available today have a customer interface into the system.
Usually these take the form of a web application. Whether client or web-based, the customer interface is
usually a much simpler version than the full-blown application. In all cases, the customer documents what their
problem or request is and submits their request receiving a confirmation and service event tracking number.
Some applications also allow the customer to enter their own severity level, pick the Nature of Request
category, attach an asset, and/or attached a document.

Advantages

24x7 Coverage for Customers
Most support organizations have limited coverage. A typical day may be 10 hours a day five days a week.
Who covers after hours and on the weekend? Often there is a duty person that has a pager for emergencies.
Without anyone manning the phones, your customers working late, or on weekends or from home cannot make
non-emergency requests. When you allow your customers to log their own requests, it is like having a 24x7
support desk without the expense.

Support Cost Savings
Support Front Line Logging Overhead
When I work with various companies, one measurement that I always ask for is the length of time that it takes
for the support front line to log the basic information into the problem management system. Most managers do
not know how long this takes so I take my stop watch and observe a number of entries. I find that on average it
takes about three minutes and nineteen seconds. This is only the basic information. This does not include any
diagnosis or resolution.

I timed phone call logging, voice mail logging, email logging, Fax and Web. Voice mail is by far the most
inefficient because the support agent usually has to replay the message several times to make sure that it is
recorded correctly. Emails usually can simply be cut and pasted. There have been a few support organizations
that take Fax requests. These are all manual and take the longest.
For the various submit methods I have also tried to measure how many times and the length of time customers
are called back because the information they provided is not sufficient. I have not been able to accurately
document this aspect, but the amount of time and effort is very significant once the game of phone tag begins.

Web-based Customer Logging Overhead

When the customer submits their own service request, there is still some overhead required by the support
center. They have to (1) verify customer name and location information, (2) read and understand the service
request documentation, (3) reclassify the Nature of Request, (4) verify the severity level, and (5) assign it to the
correct service group. My observation is that this overhead time takes less than thirty seconds and that includes
calling the customer to verify information or to just say thanks.

Giva has a strong focus on hospitals and healthcare organizations.

The American Hospital Association conducts an annual survey of hospitals in the United States. The definitive source for aggregate hospital data and trend analysis, AHA Hospital Statistics includes current and historical data on utilization, personnel, revenue, expenses, managed care contracts, community health indicators, physician models, and much more.

AHA Hospital Statistics is published annually by Health Forum, an affiliate of the American Hospital Association. Additional details on AHA Hospital Statistics and other Health Forum data products are available at www.healthforum.com or click on www.ahaonlinestore.com

Total Number of All U.S. Registered * Hospitals
5,708
Number of U.S. Community ** Hospitals
4,897
Number of Nongovernment Not-for-Profit Community Hospitals
2,913
Number of Investor-Owned (For-Profit) Community Hospitals
873
Number of State and Local Government Community Hospitals
1,111
Number of Federal Government Hospitals
213
Number of Nonfederal Psychiatric Hospitals
444
Number of Nonfederal Long Term Care Hospitals
136
Number of Hospital Units of Institutions
(Prison Hospitals, College Infirmaries, Etc.)
18
Total Staffed Beds in All U.S. Registered* Hospitals
945,199
Staffed Beds in Community** Hospitals
800,892
Total Admissions in All U.S. Registered* Hospitals
37,120,387
Admissions in Community** Hospitals
35,345,986
Total Expenses for All U.S. Registered* Hospitals
$641,123,636,000
Expenses for Community** Hospitals
$583,252,288,000
Number of Rural Community** Hospitals
1,997
Number of Urban Community** Hospitals
2,900
Number of Community Hospitals in a System ***
2,730
Number of Community Hospitals in a Network ****

Giva® has announced a series of white papers designed to reduce the complexity of the software or cloud buying process by providing forty penetrating questions to ask vendors to become a more informed buyer. Customers interested in purchasing any software or cloud services (for example, IT help desk or customer service) encounter a myriad of problems and obstacles during the purchase process. This white paper series teaches customers how to more quickly qualify and evaluate any software vendor.

"Penetrating questions are the most powerful way to uncover the truth. Those that can lead the questioning will have more influence in the relationship and set the tone," said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc.

These white papers provide practical "how to" advice to assist in becoming a more informed buyer. With the tools provided, companies can make a more rigorous and objective comparison of vendors. The white papers help avoid mistakes that even the most experienced professionals make that cost a lot of time and money. Evaluation teams and senior executives making important business decisions can now approach the purchase of any software (including IT help desk or customer service) or cloud services in a much more rigorous and analytical manner.

Some topics covered include:

• What if my company is dissatisfied?
• What if my company finds better technology?
• Deployment "out-of-box" vs. time and cost of customization/configuration
• Preparing and comparing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of all alternatives
• Most overlooked critical fine print in software maintenance agreements
• Vendor product roadmaps and commitment
• What are the costs for post-implementation customization/configuration?

• What qualifies as routine technical support vs. professional services fees?
• Using uptime and support service level agreements to manage our relationship
• How to qualify the reliability and security of a data center; SSAE 16 (formally SAS 70), Trustwave PCI Certification and SysTrust Compliance
• Access to your data and rights in the cloud
• Source code escrow rights and responsibilities
• Termination clauses, contract term commitments, discounts and hidden fees
• What happens if we have a disagreement? Mediation/arbitration or litigation?

• What are the costs of additional modules and licenses purchased in the future?
• What are license options for part-time usage?
• Are customer case studies with business results achieved available?
• Are your customer references compensated in any way?
• How will our future feature requirements be obtained?
• Will we have an Account Manager (i.e. one neck to squeeze)?
• Are thirty-day supported production trials available without obligation?
• How many new releases are provided per year?

This white paper series is now available for download:

• Part 1 - Ten Tough Questions to Better Qualify Any Software or Cloud Vendor
• Part 2 - Twenty Tough Questions to Better Qualify Any Cloud Vendor
• Part 3 - Ten More Tough Questions to Better Qualify Any Software or Cloud Vendor

"We listened to many companies struggle with the purchase process and they asked us for our help," said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc. "Penetrating questions are the most powerful way to uncover the truth. Those that can lead the questioning will have more influence in the relationship and set the tone. During the buying process, Giva has been asked these questions. We know that they are powerful and reveal the true character of a vendor."

About Giva:

Founded in 1999, Giva was among the first companies to provide a suite of applications specifically architected for the public cloud. Now, with over a decade of refinements including thousands of enhancements, the Giva Service Management™ Suite is the most customer feedback driven cloud computing suite for the ITIL Help Desk, Customer Service/Call Center and Service Desk. Visual reporting, management dashboards and a radically intuitive service request design, make the Giva Service Management™ Suite highly differentiated from all other solutions. Customizations are all point and click with no programming or consulting necessary so Giva delivers a substantially lower total cost of ownership solution. Giva is a private company headquartered in Santa Clara, California serving delighted customers worldwide.

PR contact:

Email: pr@givainc.com
Phone: 408.260.9000

Change Management

Change Management ensures that the IT organization uses standardized methods and techniques for efficient and prompt handling of all changes in order to prevent change-related Incidents.

The Giva change management software allows users to raise Requests for Change (RFCs) to Change Management with the information of Known Errors so that the Change and Release processes can correct the errors, improve the infrastructure, and eliminate further Incidents.

Based on industry best practices, Giva eChangeManager provides control and management of the complete lifecycle of RFCs, including:

• Acceptance
• Classification
• Approval and Planning
• Coordination
• Evaluation

Changes in the IT infrastructure may arise reactively in response to Problems or externally imposed requirements. Changes may also arise from the desire to improve IT efficiency and effectiveness. In addition, Changes can arise from new business initiatives or from programs, projects, or service improvement initiatives.

Giva eChangeManager can help you:

• Ensure standardized methods, processes and procedures are used for all changes
• Facilitate efficient and prompt handling of all changes
• Maintain the proper balance between the need for change and the potential detrimental impact of changes

The Giva change management software assists the Change Management team to approve and control changes to all Configuration Items (CIs) in the live environment. Giva eChangeManager assists the Change Management team to:

• Accept and classify RFCs
• Assess the impact, cost, benefit, and risk of proposed changes
• Develop business justification and obtain approval
• Manage and coordinate change implementation
• Monitor and report on the implementation
• Review and close RFCs

Giva® reduces the complexity of the software purchase process with its new series of complimentary vendor-independent white papers. These white papers inform and educate professionals such as CFOs, CIOs, VPs and Directors of Customer Service and Information Technology.

"These white papers are a distillation of lessons learned over a decade. They provide practical answers and a 'how to' approach to overcoming all the challenges of purchasing new software," said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc.

Customers interested in purchasing IT help desk or customer service cloud software encounter a myriad of problems and obstacles during the purchase process. Giva's white papers build a foundation of understanding including all the internal issues to consider and well as the external process of engaging with vendors.

These white papers provide practical "how to" advice to assist in becoming a more informed buyer. With the tools provided, companies can make a more rigorous and objective comparison of vendors based upon a prioritized list of feature requirements. The white papers also provide education on how to lead the vendor qualification process with expertise and confidence. Effectively coaching a team on how to shortlist the right vendors for a rigorous vetting process is also discussed as well as insights about how to negotiate a better license agreement. The white papers help avoid mistakes that even the most experienced professionals make that cost a lot of time and money. Evaluation teams and senior executives making important business decisions can now approach the purchase of IT help desk and customer service cloud software in a much more rigorous and analytical manner.

This white paper series is now available for download:

• Do Check Signers Have Significant Pain?
• Are Funds Approved and Set Aside?
• Learn Latest Help Desk and Customer Best Practices
• Determine Problems with the Current Call Tracking System
• Document Feature Needs/Requirements
• Ask Vendors Tough Questions Early and Often
• Compare Total Cost of Ownership of All Vendors
• Key License Agreement Terms

This white paper series is now available for download:

• Part 1 - Ten Tough Questions to Better Qualify Any Software or Cloud Vendor
• Part 2 - Twenty Tough Questions to Better Qualify Any Cloud Vendor
• Part 3 - Ten More Tough Questions to Better Qualify Any Software or Cloud Vendor

"Giva has literally worked with thousands of IT and customer service professionals since 1999", said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc. "We listened to many companies struggle with the purchase process and they asked us for our help. These white papers are a distillation of lessons learned over a decade. They provide practical answers and a 'how to' approach to overcoming all the challenges of purchasing new software."

About Giva:

Founded in 1999, Giva was among the first companies to provide a suite of applications specifically architected for the public cloud. Now, with over a decade of refinements including thousands of enhancements, the Giva Service Management™ Suite is the most customer feedback driven cloud computing suite for the ITIL Help Desk, Customer Service/Call Center and Service Desk. Visual reporting, management dashboards and a radically intuitive service request design, make the Giva Service Management™ Suite highly differentiated from all other solutions. Customizations are all point and click with no programming or consulting necessary so Giva delivers a substantially lower total cost of ownership solution. Giva is a private company headquartered in Santa Clara, California serving delighted customers worldwide.

PR contact:

Email: pr@givainc.com
Phone: 408.260.9000

ITIL

The IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL®) encompasses the following six areas:

• Problem Management
• Incident Management
• Change Management
• Configuration Management
• Service Level Management
• Release Management

To gain a further understanding of ITIL, download a Giva ITIL whitepaper.

Problem Management

Problem Management helps ensure the stability of IT infrastructure and IT services.

By creating a Problem Record for any new kind of Incident and linking all Incidents to a Problem Record, the Giva IT help desk solution allows you to manage, control, and obtain information about the three major elements of Problem Management: problem control, error control, and proactive problem management. With the Giva IT help desk software, you can link multiple Incidents to the same Problem Record. The ultimate objective is that all Problems are linked to a Known Error.

Proactive Problem Management has two aspects. The first aspect is identifying potential Problems before they manifest as Incidents and making this information available to Incident Management. The second aspect is a continuation of the first. In this case, Problem Management identifies the Known Error and takes steps to correct it before customers call to report it.

With more than 70 pre-defined, configurable reports and root-cause analysis, Giva eHelpDesk assists IT in identifying and documenting potential Problems so they can be resolved by Problem Management.

Incident Management

Incident Management provides continuity to customers by restoring services as quickly as possible, provides accessibility of the Service Desk for all users, and ensures acceptability of its services. The focus of Incident Management is on continuity and thereby allowing customers to resume business as quickly as possible.

By providing rich text formatting of requests, with the ability to attach screen shots and files to Incident requests, Giva eHelpDesk is your one solution for tracking Incidents, responses, and resolutions. In addition, to ensure that no Incident falls through the cracks, it has an automatic escalation rules engine. Also, to ensure each Incident is handled with consistency, it has an automatic reminder of questions to ask, scripts, and standard operating procedures.

Service Level Management

Service Level Management (SLM) establishes a closely monitored agreement about the optimal level of IT service between provider and customer.

Giva eHelpDesk provides tools to assist with implementing the ITIL Service Level Management (SLM) process, which entails negotiating, defining, contracting, monitoring, and reviewing the levels of customer service. The Giva IT help desk solution also provides a business rules engine for escalation notifications to help ensure Problems and Incidents are addressed within service level agreements (SLAs). With extensive reports, Giva eHelpDesk also helps you monitor and review the actual service levels achieved against their SLA targets.

Innovative Ideas to Achieve IT Help Desk Success

Get outstanding results from your IT help desk organization with new ideas and best practice approaches.

Featured Whitepapers

Click to Download IT Whitepapers

Giva® today announced a significant milestone in surpassing BMC® Track-It!™ by Numara Software head-to-head in the competitive IT service desk market. Giva benefits organizations with a strong focus on increasing first contact resolution, improving customer satisfaction, decreasing call volume with root cause analysis and exceeding service level agreements (SLAs). Giva's visual reporting tools make identifying trends and patterns easier and quicker and with less time building, running, sharing and reviewing reports. Based on comparisons from customers that have utilized both service management packages, Giva's cloud computing SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solution has moved to a leadership role for IT service management for law firms, healthcare institutions and other high visibility professional firms.

"There are many significant reasons why Giva was selected over other vendors, but the biggest differentiator is that the Giva user interface is uncomplicated, uncluttered, clean and extremely easy to use," said Floyd Withrow, Chief Information Officer.

For example, Gordon & Rees, which provides IT technical support to 1200 employees in 27 offices, used BMC Track-It! for 6 years before switching to Giva. Their reported results included an 80% increase in capturing after hours calls, a 70% increase in support issue management productivity, and a 60% increase in meeting service level agreements (SLAs), among other significant improvements.

"There are many significant reasons why Giva was selected over other vendors, but the biggest differentiator is that the Giva user interface is uncomplicated, uncluttered, clean and extremely easy to use," said Floyd Withrow, Chief Information Officer, Gordon & Rees. "My team has had a 70% increase in support issue management productivity from using the Giva dashboard, easy service request input and real-time reports. We have increased meeting our service level agreements by over 60%. Our Level 1 agents have increased their daily service request management productivity over 50% by using Giva as compared to BMC Track-It! As CIO, Giva has been an enormous help to my user support managers, training coordinators and myself. Giva allows me to deploy and justify my staffing and resource plans with metrics, trends and reports." [Click to download the case study.]

"Our real-time reports and dashboards are a significant Giva differentiator and an area in which Giva will continue to provide radical innovation," said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc. "We've built a highly differentiated cloud-based product that provides an extraordinary and easy to use experience. Giva's real-time reports and dashboards can be built without any effort, and our products can be customized without any consultants."

About Giva:

Founded in 1999, Giva was among the first companies to provide a suite of applications specifically architected for the public cloud. Now, with over a decade of refinements including thousands of enhancements, the Giva Service Management™ Suite is the most customer feedback driven cloud computing suite for the ITIL Help Desk, Customer Service/Call Center and Service Desk. Visual reporting, management dashboards and a radically intuitive service request design, make the Giva Service Management™ Suite highly differentiated from all other solutions. Customizations are all point and click with no programming or consulting necessary so Giva delivers a substantially lower total cost of ownership solution. Giva is a private company headquartered in Santa Clara, California serving delighted customers worldwide.

PR contact:

Email: pr@givainc.com
Phone: 408.260.9000

Giva eHelpDeskT is a 100 percent cloud based, ITIL-compliant IT help desk solution that features:

• Service level agreements
• Automatic escalation rules engine
• Customizable fields, screen, and options
• Rich text formatting of requests, with the ability to attach screen shots and files to service requests
• Automatic reminder of questions to ask, scripts, and standard operating procedures
• Natural language, keyword, and Boolean search engine
• Automated email-to-ticket creation
• Parent/child service requests for high volume incidents
• Reports can easily be configured, run, saved, shared, exported or emailed on-the-fly
• More than 70 pre-defined, customizable reports
• Customer satisfaction surveys
• Self-service Web portal
• Multiple independent service desks for use by other departments
• Seamless integration with Active Directory or an HR database with REST based API
• Seamless integration with Giva eKnowledgeManager™, Giva eChangeManager™, Giva eServiceDesk™, Giva eCustomerService™, Giva eAssetManager™, Giva eSoftwareManager™, and Giva eAutoDiscovery™
• ITIL-compliant
  
  Click to VIEW IT HELP DESK VIDEOS

Here are some screen shots of opening a service request in Giva eHelpDesk:

Select a Root Cause:

Root Cause selected:

Select a Status of Closed:

Select an Assignee:

Click to VIEW IT HELP DESK VIDEOS

Benefits

Giva eHelpDesk is a 100 percent cloud based, ITIL-compliant IT help desk solution that:

• Increases first-call resolution by building a knowledge base that captures lessons learned
• Reduces call length by auto completing, streamlining routine tasks, providing trouble-shooting tools on a single screen, and maintaining parent/child requests for high call volume incidents
• Increases customer satisfaction by speeding problem resolution and providing consistent, fast answers
• Boosts SLA compliance by automating SLA breach notifications based on escalation business rules
• Decreases request resolution times by providing tools that help quickly diagnose the cause of problems and rapidly route requests
• Minimizes the number of escalated requests by tracking problem response and resolution status verses established standards
• Decreases call volume and identifies opportunities for business process improvement with root cause analysis
• Increases efficiency by defining and enforcing standard service management business processes
• Increases agent productivity by providing automated workflow and escalation
• Speeds business decisions by delivering accurate, real-time reports
• Optimizes staffing levels by providing trend reports
• Helps ensure Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and reduces business risk by providing complete audit trails

Click to VIEW IT HELP DESK VIDEOS

Here are some screen shots of opening a service request in Giva eHelpDesk:

Click to VIEW IT HELP DESK VIDEOS

Saint Elizabeth Health Care has increased the productivity of its IT service desk team by approximately 40% by implementing the Giva Service Desk Management Suite. Productivity improvements come from automation that eliminates many manual steps, providing instant visibility to hot spots and critical issues and better measurement of service desk team productivity.

Saint Elizabeth's team of 6,500 health care professionals work out of the company's 25 offices located across Canada or remotely from their homes. The IT service desk team is busy nearly 24X7 ensuring the security, performance and application availability of the company's suite of private cloud applications. Saint Elizabeth made a long term partnership commitment to the Giva Service Management Suite including Service Desk, Knowledge Base, Hardware and Software Asset Management, Asset Auto Discovery and Change Management modules.

"The Giva Home Page Dashboard saves each service desk team member 2.5 hours per day by providing constant visibility to hot spots and highlighting critical issues with charts, metrics and analytics." David Burne, IT Leader, Saint Elizabeth Health Care

"We selected Giva because it provides a competitively price bundle of services with better features and functions to meet our requirements," said David Burne, IT Leader for Saint Elizabeth Health Care. "Our IT team was able to configure and fully customize the Giva cloud without consultants in only 10% of the time it would take to configure and install a similar customized software suite. Giva provides a well-thought out selection of meaningful reports and provides the ability to highly customize them or build and share new reports with little effort." [Click to download the case study.]

Saint Elizabeth went live using Giva after only a week of internal work. The company estimates that it will realize a 50% lower total cost of ownership (TCO) over a three year period considering initial and lifetime cost such as hardware, software, maintenance, training, administration, upgrades, support, integrations, future customizations, etc.

"Giva has significantly improved our workflow through automation that eliminates many manual steps," Burne said. "The service desk's Home Page Dashboard saves each service desk team member 2.5 hours per day by providing constant visibility to hot spots and highlighting critical issues with charts, metrics and analytics."

Additional IT service desk productivity improvements come from the fact that issues are more quickly assigned to an owner and employees can see responses to questions instantly and take immediate follow-up action. Hot issues are now instantly visible to the IT service desk team. "As IT leader, my own productivity has increased over 40% because Giva saves time monitoring the IT service desk," Burne said.

About Giva:

Giva is an award-winning provider of cloud computing SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) for the ITIL Help Desk,  and the Service Desk. Visual reporting, management dashboards and an intuitive design, make the Giva Service Management™ Suite very powerful and at the same time very easy to use. Customizations are all point and click (i.e., no programming necessary) so the result is a dramatically lower total cost of ownership when compared to other products that require programmers and trained consultants. Giva is a private company headquartered in Santa Clara, California serving delighted customers worldwide.

PR contact:

Email: pr@givainc.com
Phone: 408.260.9000

Giva® today announced a significant milestone in surpassing BMC® FootPrints ITSM™ by Numara Software head-to-head in the competitive IT service desk market.

Santa Clara, CA (PRWEB) November 29, 2012 - Giva® today announced a significant milestone in surpassing BMC® FootPrints ITSM™ by Numara Software head-to-head in the competitive IT service desk market. Giva benefits organizations with a strong focus on increasing first contact resolution, improving customer satisfaction, decreasing call volume with root cause analysis and exceeding service level agreements (SLAs). Giva's visual reporting tools make identifying trends and patterns easier and quicker and with less time building, running, sharing and reviewing reports. Based on word of mouth comparisons from customers that have utilized both service management packages, Giva's cloud computing SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solution has moved to a leadership role for IT service management for law firms, healthcare institutions and other high visibility professional firms.

"With Giva, we have increased the customer satisfaction of our attorneys and staff by over 60% and they are happier than they have ever been with IT during my 16-year tenure as CIO," said Ken Adams, Chief Information Officer, Miles & Stockbridge P.C.

For example, Miles & Stockbridge P.C., which provides IT technical support to 500 attorneys and staff in 8 geographically dispersed offices, used BMC FootPrints ITSM for over 10 years before switching to Giva. Their reported results included a 70% increase in IT productivity, a 65% increase in first call resolution, and a 60% increase in customer satisfaction, among other significant improvements.

"We have increased the customer satisfaction of our attorneys and staff by over 60% and they are happier than they have ever been with IT during my 16-year tenure as CIO," said Ken Adams, Chief Information Officer, Miles & Stockbridge P.C. "My team has had a 70% increase in IT productivity by using the Giva dashboards and real-time reports. Our first contact resolution has increased by 65%, which has also been assisted by Giva's helpful knowledgebase solution. Giva has implemented their workflows, grids, charts and other monitoring tools in an intuitive, slick and simple way, similar to the Apple Computer iPhone and iPad user interface design." [Click to download the case study.]

"Our real-time reports and dashboards are a significant Giva differentiator and an area in which Giva will continue to provide radical innovation," said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc. "We've built a highly differentiated cloud-based product that provides an extraordinary and easy to use experience. Giva's real-time reports and dashboards can be built without any effort, and our products can be customized without any consultants."

About Giva:

Giva is an award-winning provider of cloud computing SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) for the ITIL Help Desk, Customer Service/Call Center and the Service Desk. Visual reporting, management dashboards and an intuitive design, make the Giva Service Management™ Suite very powerful and at the same time very easy to use. Customizations are all point and click (i.e., no programming necessary) so the result is a dramatically lower total cost of ownership when compared to other products that require programmers and trained consultants. Giva is a private company headquartered in Santa Clara, California serving delighted customers worldwide.

PR contact:

Email: pr@givainc.com
Phone: 408.260.9000

Whitepaper Series on Software/Cloud Buying Process

These white papers help avoid mistakes that even the most experienced professionals make that cost a lot of time and money. Now, learn to approach the buying process in a much more rigorous and analytical manner.

Featured Whitepapers

Avoid 8 Major Mistakes When Buying Any Software or Cloud Service

These whitepapers are part of a series.

Do Check Signers Have Significant Pain?

Are Funds Approved and Set Aside?

Learn Latest Help Desk and Customer Service Best Practices

Determine Problems with the Current Call Tracking System

Document Feature Needs & Requirements

Ask Vendors Tough Questions Early and Often

Compare the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of All Vendors

Important License Agreement Terms

Click to Download Whitepapers

Watch this video! Click on the button to play or visit Cloud Help Desk & Customer Service Video

Segment A: Opening a Quick Ticket service request in Giva

Here is the scrip to the video…just in case you want to preview before watching:

"With Giva, service requests can be created extremely fast.

After typing in the name, I just press enter.

Jim says the network printer is jammed. I'll quickly create a service request using a Quick Ticket for common recurring problems.

All fields are automatically completed.

All fields are all automatically entered with preconfigured defaults which can be changed on-the-fly. I'll raise the severity level to "Business Impacted" since Jim said many people cannot use this printer.

The Desktop service group members will automatically be notified and they can access the notification from their smart phones.

It's that easy and fast to create a service request.

Segment B: Opening an ordinary service request in Giva

I'll open another service request.

Dave's a senior partner and marked a VIP and there's also more customization to his profile. With the "View Recent Tickets" I can quickly determine if this is a new issue or one already logged.

The nature of request is a customizable category menu allowing unlimited categories and subcategories. I can use my mouse or type and tab to select.

An article with a problem and solution is presented. This solves Dave's problem so I give it good ratings and make it my resolution.

I'll quickly finish the call by completing a few fields.

Now, I'll also select a root cause, change status to closed, assign the ticket to myself.

In this section all the important information is well summarized, easy to view or edit and always right in front of me!

Finally, I'll click create and be brought back to the home page.

I'll open another service request.

Mary has a question about creating a table of authorities in WORD. I'll select the correct nature of request.

A form with some tips is presented. Unfortunately, this does not help me, but I'll answer the 3 questions and save this to the ticket.

I'll search the more extensive knowledgebase for an answer.

This knowledge article looks like the right solution. I'll email this to Mary.

I'll copy this article as the resolution to this ticket.

I'll finish up by rating the article.

And, if I had any feedback on the article I could post it in this section.

The 2 documents from the knowledge article have been saved.

Since Mary is very busy, I'll send an email to her and copy her assistant, Jane Wells, just to make sure that Many received the important documents from the knowledge article.

I'll quickly close the ticket with just a few more steps.

There is much more to lean about Giva so look at our other videos and customer success stories on the web site."

Santa Clara, CA (PRWEB) October 16, 2012

Giva® today announced a significant milestone in surpassing FrontRange Solutions HEAT® head-to-head in the competitive IT service desk market. Giva benefits organizations with a strong focus on increasing first contact resolution, improving customer satisfaction, decreasing call volume with root cause analysis and exceeding service level agreements (SLAs). Giva's visual reporting tools make identifying trends and patterns easier and quicker and with less time building, running, sharing and reviewing reports. Based on word of mouth comparisons from customers that have utilized both service management packages, Giva's cloud computing SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solution has moved to a leadership role for IT service management for law firms, healthcare institutions and other high visibility professional firms.

For example, Sante Health System, which provides IT technical support to physicians and staff across 16 geographically dispersed sites used FrontRange HEAT for many years before switching to Giva. Their reported results included a 40% increase in the productivity of IT personnel traveling between sites, a 45% increase in the number of calls logged, and a 50% increase in productivity using custom forms, among other significant improvements.

"The Giva dashboard has made me 80% more productive as compared to when I was using FrontRange HEAT," said Juan Carlo Muro, IT Director, Sante Health System. "The Giva reporting module is more comprehensive and an order of magnitude easier to use when compared with FrontRange HEAT reporting. As a result of productivity increases, we have also experienced a 60% increase in meeting our internal resolve-time service level agreements." [Click to download the case study.]

"Our real-time reports and dashboards are a significant Giva differentiator and an area in which Giva will continue to provide radical innovation," said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc. "We've built a highly differentiated cloud-based product that provides an extraordinary and easy to use experience. Giva's real-time reports and dashboards can be built without any effort, and our products can be customized without any consultants."

About Giva:
Giva is an award-winning provider of cloud computing SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) for the ITIL Help Desk, Customer Service/Call Center and the Service Desk. Visual reporting, management dashboards and an intuitive design, make the Giva Service Management™ Suite very powerful and at the same time very easy to use. Customizations are all point and click (i.e., no programming necessary) so the result is a dramatically lower total cost of ownership when compared to other products that require programmers and trained consultants. Giva is a private company headquartered in Santa Clara, California serving delighted customers worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.givainc.com.

PR contact:
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Santa Clara, California (PRWEB) October 16, 2012

Giva® today announced a significant milestone in surpassing Salesforce.com Service Cloud® head-to-head in the competitive service cloud market. Giva benefits organizations with a strong focus on increasing first contact resolution, improving customer satisfaction, decreasing call volume with root cause analysis and exceeding service level agreements (SLAs). Giva's visual reporting tools make identifying trends and patterns easier and quicker and with less time building, running, sharing and reviewing reports. Based on word of mouth comparisons from customers that have utilized both service management packages, Giva's cloud computing SaaS (software-as-a-Service) solution has moved to a leadership role for IT service management for law firms, healthcare institutions and other high visibility professional firms.

For example, EDIMS, which provides 24x7 customer service to over 2,000 physicians and staff used Salesforce.com Service Cloud for three years before switching to Giva. Their reported results included a 45% increase in productivity, a 50% decrease in time required to open cases, and an 80% decrease in time to generate and approve knowledge articles, among other significant improvements.

"With Giva, it now takes 50% less time to open a case, so our agent productivity is effectively doubled when the call queue is full and the phones are busy ringing," said Chris Jerry, EDIMS Support Center Manager. "We used to spend over 24 hours per month working with the reports to extract data. Now, we spend about 15 minutes per month generating reports and the information quality is superior. Giva is the "Apple Computer" of cloud customer service applications." [Click to download the case study.]

"Unparalleled ease of use is a significant Giva differentiator and an area in which Giva will continue to provide radical innovation," said Ron Avignone, founder of Giva, Inc. "Giva can be deployed in just days and agents can learn to be fluent in just one hour. By providing a more streamlined customer service tool, we are confident that we will continue to win over the service cloud."

About Giva:
Giva is an award-winning provider of cloud computing SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) for the ITIL Help Desk, Customer Service/Call Center and the Service Desk. Visual reporting, management dashboards and an intuitive design, make the Giva Service Management™ Suite very powerful and at the same time very easy to use. Customizations are all point and click (i.e., no programming necessary) so the result is a dramatically lower total cost of ownership when compared to other products that require programmers and trained consultants. Giva is a private company headquartered in Santa Clara, California serving delighted customers worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.givainc.com.

PR contact:
Email: pr(at)givainc(dot)com
Phone: 408.260.9000

Case Study to Reduce Costs and Complexity of Salesforce.com Service Cloud

Is poor design, limited functionality, slowness and the high cost of Salesforce.com® Service Cloud impacting your customer service team?

Read this business case that compares Giva to Salesforce.com Service Cloud:

EDIMS

For over 20 years, EDIMS has delivered evidence-based best practices to hospital emergency rooms through its information systems. Its flagship electronic health record (EHR) solutions are used at hospitals and long-term care facilities nationwide by over 2,000 physicians and staff to fully document emergency department patient encounters. The Giva Service Management Suite™ including Giva® eCustomerService™ and eKnowledgeManager™ was deployed in the cloud as the EDIMS customer service solution.

When compared with Salesforce.com Service Cloud, the Giva Service Management Suite resulted in a:

• 30% increase in productivity by using Giva dashboards and reports
• Eliminated 24 hours/month of work to prepare reports
• 50% decrease in time required to open cases
• 50% easier to navigate and search Giva
• 100% faster application response/speed
• 85% easier to get up and running on Giva
• 50% less time to maintain Giva on an ongoing basis
• 80% decrease in time to generate and approve knowledge articles
• 75% reduction in time to add new company/contact

Customer Quotes

"With Giva, we have reduced the amount of time that it takes to open a case by about 50%."

"The Giva application is over 100% more responsive and faster as compared to Salesforce.com."

"The entire process of generating and approving knowledge is 80% easier in Giva."

"With Salesforce.com, it required over two and a half minutes to add a new company and/or contact. With Giva, the time has been reduced by over 75%."

"The Giva reports make us 30% more productive and have dramatically decreased the amount of time required to generate and distribute quality reports…"

"We had to spend over 24 hours per month working with the reports to extract data. With Giva, we spend about 15 minutes per month generating reports and the information quality is superior."

"Giva requires 50% less time to maintain on an ongoing basis than Salesforce.com even though they are both cloud applications."

"We were able to get up and running on Giva over 85% faster."

"The support from Giva is outstanding. It is night and day as compare to Salesforce.com."

Chris Jerry, Support Center Manager, EDIMS
Steve Kazimir, Project Manager/Customer Support, EDIMS

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Case Study to Reduce Maintenance, Upgrades and Consulting Costs

Is the high cost of FrontRange HEAT® consulting, upgrades and software maintenance not in your IT budget?

Read this business case that compares Giva to FrontRange HEAT:

Santé Health Systems

Santé Health Systems is a large healthcare management services organization providing IT and technical support across 16 geographically dispersed sites in California. The Giva Service Management Suite™ including Giva® eHelpDesk™, eKnowledgeManager™, eChangeManager™ and eAssetManager™ was deployed in the cloud as the internal IT service desk.

After using FrontRange Solutions HEAT for many years they found extraordinary success with Giva.

When compared with FrontRange HEAT, the Giva Service Management Suite resulted in a:

• 80% increase in productivity by using Giva's dashboards and reports
• 60% increase in meeting service level agreements
• 50% increase in productivity by using Giva's integrated custom forms
• 45% increase in the number of the calls logged due to Giva's intuitiveness and ease of use
• 40% increase in productivity of IT personnel traveling between 16 sites

Customer Quotes

"We experienced a 45% increase in the number of the calls logged using Giva as compared to FrontRange HEAT due to Giva's intuitiveness and ease of use."

"The Giva reporting module is more comprehensive and an order of magnitude easier to use when compared with FrontRange HEAT reporting."

"As a result of productivity increases, we have also experienced a 60% increase in meeting our internal resolve-time service level agreements."

"We experienced a 50% increase in productivity by using Giva's custom forms that are integrated with service requests."

"The Giva dashboard has made me 80% more productive as compared to when I was using FrontRange HEAT."

"The Giva Tsunami Service Request has increased our productivity by over 50%."

Juan Carlo Muro, IT Director, Santé Health Systems

Read Full Case Study

This report will help you determine the workload across all your agents whether they are Level 1, 2 or 3.

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This report will help you understand the timing and volume of calls so that you can properly plan to have the right amount of resources available.

In this report, you can also see how many different kinds of submit methods (Phone, Email, Web, etc.) are used for any date range and the time of day selected. You can also see the length of time it takes to process and resolve calls. This is a valuable report because the workload of the customer service organization is not adequately represented via your ACD reports since the time to process and resolve calls is not captured.

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This report provides a more detailed picture of category usage. The trend line may give you insight into problems that need further investigation.

For optimal use, you can select a single category for detailed analysis and run the report for a year with all categories.

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This help you understand what customers are calling about.

It is inefficient to have service request categories that are not used. First, it slows down the processing of new service requests. Second, it leads to improper categorization. This help desk report displays a list of all categories with the frequency of use. At least once a quarter this report should be run to view the category use distribution. You can then disable categories used infrequently. Frequently used categories can be used in conjunction with a Root Cause report for performance improvement initiatives.

This report helps you pinpoint potential problems. For example, you might want to select a location or region and want to see the service request volume from the top twenty-five customers. This would allow your service department at that location to review all the cases from the most frequently calling customers and create a strategy for reducing the number of contacts. By running this report on a regular basis, you can obtain the information and apply it to an on-going improvement program.

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This report allows you to determine if, as you add knowledge base records, there is an increase in the First Contact Resolution. There should be a strong link, if you knowledge articles are valuable.

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This report will also show you the search strings that were used in searches so you can make sure that your database of knowledge articles is meeting the need of searches.

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This report will help you understand the flow of knowledge articles and who is the most productive in your organization.

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This is specifically for each knowledge article. There is also a report to tell you when articles were created, last modified and last used.

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This report will tell you which knowledge article categories are most helpful and highly rated. This will help you monitor and keep the knowledge base relevant to user/customer needs.

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This report is the holy grail to obtain the appropriate KPIs/metrics for an incentive program to reward people for submitting high quality knowledge on an ongoing basis. It is easy to run and very objective.

When an article is used, the problem solving score is incremented by 1. This happens when the article is copied to a resolution in a ticket or emailed to a customer.

Articles are rated by agents as they are using the articles and by customers as they are using the self help portal.

Problem Solving Score- Knowledge Base Record

When a knowledge base record is used, a "Problem Solving Score" is incremented. The search engine utilizes these ratings to prioritize subsequent knowledge base search results. Reports use the "Problem Solving Score" to indicate which knowledge base records have the highest value and which may need improvement.

User Rating Score-Knowledge Base Record

An Agent can rate knowledge base records each time they are used. The search engine utilizes these user ratings to improve subsequent knowledge base search results. Reports use knowledge base record ratings to indicate which records have the highest value and which may need improvement.  

A knowledge base system should learn and get "smarter" over time.

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In ten seconds or less, can you determine which Agents are generating knowledge records and at a very granular level can you determine if this knowledge is solving problems?

Does your firm provide valuable incentives to reward Agents for building and maintaining a high quality knowledge base?

In ten seconds or less, can you determine what categories of knowledge customers need?

In ten seconds or less, can you determine the quality of knowledge by user ratings and how often knowledge records were used to solve problems?

In ten seconds or less, can you determine if an increase in knowledge records is causing an associated increase in First Contact Resolution?

Knowledge Base Records by Creator

This report helps you to understand which knowledge creators are creating high value knowledge. This report displays all the status of knowledge records by each user. It also displays the numbers and percents of all the different status of knowledge base records at a given time. The report tracks:

The number of knowledge base records each user has proposed.

The number knowledge base records each user has had rejected.

The number of knowledge base records approved. For knowledge base records approved, the report will display the problem solving score and the user rating, if you drill down.

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General process for performing and documenting an RCA-based Corrective Action

Notice that RCA (in steps 3, 4 and 5) forms the most critical part of successful corrective action, because it directs the corrective action at the true root cause of the problem. The root cause is secondary to the goal of prevention, but without knowing the root cause, we cannot determine what an effective corrective action for the defined problem will be.

1. Define the problem or describe the event factually. Include the qualitative and quantitative attributes (properties) of the harmful outcomes. This usually includes specifying the natures, the magnitudes, the locations, and the timings.
2. Gather data and evidence, classifying that along a timeline of events to the final failure or crisis. For every behavior, condition, action, and inaction specify in the "timeline" what should have been when it differs from the actual.
3. Ask "why" and identify the causes associated with each step in the sequence towards the defined problem or event. "Why" is taken to mean "What were the factors that directly resulted in the effect?"
4. Classify causes into causal factors that relate to an event in the sequence, and root causes, that if eliminated can be agreed to have interrupted that step of the sequence chain.
5. If there are multiple root causes, which is often the case, reveal those clearly for later optimum selection. Identify all other harmful factors that have equal or better claim to be called "root causes."
6. Identify corrective action(s) that will with certainty prevent recurrence of each harmful effect, including outcomes and factors. Check that each corrective action would, if pre-implemented before the event, have reduced or prevented specific harmful effects.
7. Identify solutions that, when effective, prevent recurrence with reasonable certainty with consensus agreement of the group, are within your control, meet your goals and objectives and do not cause or introduce other new, unforeseen problems.
8. Implement the recommended root cause correction(s).
9. Ensure effectiveness by observing the implemented recommendation solutions.
10. Other methodologies for problem solving and problem avoidance may be useful.
11. Identify and address the other instances of each harmful outcome and harmful factor.

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Evaluating root cause analysis

Root Cause Analysis Reports, like other 'deliverables' can vary in quality. Each stakeholder can have their own qualitative and quantitative acceptance criteria. There are some general possibilities for evaluating root cause analysis outputs.

First: Is it readable? If it is readable it will be grammatically correct, the sentences will make sense, it will be free of internal inconsistencies, terms will be defined, it will contain appropriate graphics, and the like.

Second: Does it contain a complete set of all of the causal relationships? If it did contain a "complete set of all of the causal relationships" one could (at least): 1. Trace the causal relationships from the harmful outcomes to the deepest conditions, behaviors, actions, and inactions. 2. Show that the important attributes of the harmful outcomes were completely explained by the deepest conditions, behaviors, actions, and inactions.

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Root cause analysis is so important because it will help you lower call volume. Lower call volume will dramatically increase customer satisfaction and lower your costs. This is a report for a IT help Desk.

When you have defined Root Cause codes and applied these to each closed service request, then the Root Cause customer service report can show you what is causing your customers to contact the Customer Service. When used as part of a cost containment/case reduction strategy, this customer service report will show you what problem to address first. After the systemic process corrections have been made, this customer service report will show how effective your corrective actions have been.

Customer Service Best Practice: Perform Root Cause Analysis everyday and determine with religious zeal why problems occur.

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

In one second and with one click, can every Agent select a mandatory Root Cause field from a list of highly relevant Root Cause categories before a Service request is closed?

In ten seconds or less, can every Agent enter a required problem resolution before a service request is closed?

In ten seconds or less, can you determine which Agents are not consistently documenting service requests with meaningful problem resolutions?

In ten seconds or less, can you perform Root Cause Analysis at the end of each day? In ten seconds or less, can you send this Root Cause Analysis to three other people?

Can you identify at least three actions that you can take tomorrow to help reduce call volume? Bonus points if you can find nine actions to help reduce call volume the next day and delegate three actions to two other people who will take ownership.

In thirty seconds or less, can every Agent tell you the difference between a Root Cause and the associated problem description, problem category and problem resolution?

General principles of root cause analysis

1. The primary aim of RCA is to identify the factors that resulted in the nature, the magnitude, the location, and the timing of the harmful outcomes (consequences) of one or more past events in order to identify what behaviors, actions, inactions, or conditions need to be changed to prevent recurrence of similar harmful outcomes and to identify the lessons to be learned to promote the achievement of better consequences. ("Success" is defined as the near-certain prevention of recurrence.)
2. To be effective, RCA must be performed systematically, usually as part of an investigation, with conclusions and root causes identified backed up by documented evidence. Usually a team effort is required.
3. There may be more than one root cause for an event or a problem, the difficult part is demonstrating the persistence and sustaining the effort required to develop them.
4. The purpose of identifying all solutions to a problem is to prevent recurrence at lowest cost in the simplest way. If there are alternatives that are equally effective, then the simplest or lowest cost approach is preferred.
5. Root causes identified depend on the way in which the problem or event is defined. Effective problem statements and event descriptions (as failures, for example) are helpful, or even required.
6. To be effective, the analysis should establish a sequence of events or timeline to understand the relationships between contributory (causal) factors, root cause(s) and the defined problem or event to prevent in the future.
7. Root cause analysis can help to transform a reactive culture (that reacts to problems) into a forward-looking culture that solves problems before they occur or escalate. More importantly, it reduces the frequency of problems occurring over time within the environment where the RCA process is used.
8. RCA is a threat to many cultures and environments. Threats to cultures often meet with resistance. There may be other forms of management support required to achieve RCA effectiveness and success.

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Study the FCR by category to help give you insight to whether new knowledge articles could be useful on specific topics. This will also point you to agent training issues.

Ultimately, customers are more concerned with issue resolution than contact resolution—the call is just the means to the end, hopefully. Recognizing this, customer surveying should be geared to the type of issue that was reported. For instance, if it was a billing concern, it makes the most sense to contact the customer for resolution feedback after they have received the next bill rather than 2 days after they called the contact center. They may think their issue has been resolved but don't really know for sure until they see the correction on the next bill. An after-contact follow-up surveying approach that is geared to check back with the customer after a milestone has been accomplished probably makes the most sense for issues that take some time to resolve. Post-call surveys can easily be deployed to tackle one-and-done calls, to ensure that your agents are handling them effectively and to the satisfaction of callers.

A multi-source FCR measurement approach is best. Because it can be challenging and costly to measure first contact resolution, a multi-measure approach is more flexible. For instance, customer satisfaction surveys can be used to determine overall FCR performance, by contact type, while call quality monitoring results and post-call surveys can deliver agent-level FCR performance and at the same time, point out developmental improvement opportunities. Internal call statistics can be used to calculate overall center-level repeat-call performance, and if your system permits, agent and team level repeat-call performance. Try a set of measures to gather as much information as possible about your customer service response.

Once you have a good idea of your FCR performance, you can drill down to identify the call types that are not being resolved consistently in one contact. Then decide if it's even possible or desirable to resolve these types of calls or contacts in one call. If so, root cause analysis and process streamlining, automation, or more self-service options will boost your first call resolution performance, reduce repeat calls and rework, and ultimately reduce operating costs.

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This is a trend customer service report showing the percentage of total service requests resolved by the Customer Service team over time. With this trend report, you are able to see your progress toward your goals.

Customer feedback surveys also have the potential to find out whether issues are ultimately resolved to the customers' satisfaction. Internal measurement can only assume, by the lack of a repeat contact, that the issue was resolved. You really don't know for sure if it was resolved or if the customer just gave up, unless you ask the customer. And the timing of when you do ask the customer is important too—has everything happened that needed to happen to resolve the problem?

Internal FCR metrics are necessary for root cause analysis and process streamlining. Call quality FCR determinations and FCR call stats are great for identifying training and coaching needs, and process improvement opportunities. Most CRM systems facilitate the tracking of customer contact. That is after all the goal of a customer relationship management system—to know everything possible about customers and their interaction with the company. Other customer support systems may not be structured to so easily track and measure contacts and resolution.

Agent logging can also gather FCR performance by contact type, however it's really not appropriate for measuring individual agent performance due to the built in bias of agents determining whether the contacts they handled were resolved or not. If you do use agent-driven measurement, audit the results periodically and/or use it in combination with other measures, such as a customer satisfaction measure of FCR and a call quality monitoring measure of FCR.

Repeat-call calculations, agent logging and tick sheets, and call quality-monitoring determinations are all approximations of customer experience. Most companies have found that internal first contact resolution measures are overstated—the customer's view of first contact resolution is usually lower than an internal measurement. In other words, don't get too comfortable with your measurement of your performance, ask your customers too. If you're primarily relying on internal measures, use customer feedback periodically to calibrate your performance.

Keep in mind that internal metrics are more prone to manipulation and may be more self-serving, depending upon how the data is collected, the scope, the qualifying window, repeat-call calculation definition, and subjectivity of the determination. Internal metrics are also subject to data integrity issues due to the difficulty of collecting and manually categorizing the data.

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How many of your customers' issues are resolved on the first contact? It sounds like it should be easy to measure, however many companies have found it difficult to define first contact resolution, much less measure it consistently. Tactics to measure first contact resolution vary greatly from company to company. Our survey confirms this. While some companies are measuring first contact resolution, many are not and would like to.

Customers expect to bring a problem or question to your attention and have it resolved in a timely manner. Not all inquiries can be resolved immediately or on the first contact. However, advances in technology, increasing employee empowerment, and scrutinizing evaluation will increase the number that can.

80% first contact resolution performance sounds good. Yet with an 80 percent first contact resolution, 20 percent of customers require multiple contacts with your company to achieve resolution. An 80 percent first contact resolution means your customers average 1.2 contacts to resolve a question or issue. The 20 percent repeat contacts represent increased call volume and field visits, inflated operating expenses, and most importantly, dissatisfied customers. Dissatisfied customers are more likely to defect and more likely to tell others about their experiences.

First Contact Resolution (FCR) is a critical determinant of customer satisfaction, making FCR one of the more powerful customer care metrics. Improvement in FCR brings the best of both worlds—improvement in efficiency and effectiveness. You don't have to worry that you are sacrificing quality because you are reducing costs, or vice versa. When you improve FCR you're improving quality, reducing costs, and improving customer satisfaction, all at the same time.

Measuring First Contact Resolution is the first step towards improvement. Due to the nature of what is being measured—an outcome—it can be challenging. Our research identified four primary measures—three of which are internal approximations of First Contact Resolution, the fourth provides true customer feedback and perception. While each approach has its application, customer perception is king—the customer's evaluation is what matters most.

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Escalations occur when a case is not handled within the times you set for response or resolution according to your Service Level Agreements. The goal is to minimize escalations. This is particularly important for high severity level service requests. This customer service report allows you to monitor individuals, service groups, or customer locations for escalation performance. This report can also help you to monitor all situations and intervene proactively to minimize escalations.

Escalations do occur for various reasons, but it is the trend over time that is more important to measure because it reflects underlying problems.

If the request requires advanced-level technical assistance, or technical assistance from another group to resolve the issue, the Help Desk Analyst will escalate the ticket to the Help Desk Supervisor or an advanced-level support team member. Help Desk Team Members are responsible for notifying the requestor when an issue has been escalated.

The Help Desk Supervisor or advanced-level support team member will determine if a resolution can be reached, or whether the ticket needs to be further escalated. If the issue can be resolved without further escalation, the Help Desk Supervisor will assign the ticket to a member of their team, noting the assignment (change of ownership) in the ticket. The Assignee will update the customer according to the response-time commitment grid until resolution can be achieved, resolve the matter, document the resolution, close the ticket, and notify the requestor of the resolution. If the issue cannot be resolved, the Help Desk Supervisor or an advanced-level support team member will update the tracking system with relevant comments, escalate the ticket to the proper support team, and notify the end-user that the issue has been escalated. The advanced-level support team will update the customer according to the response-time commitment grid until resolution can be achieved, resolve the matter, document the resolution, close the ticket, and notify the requestor of the resolution.

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These are some examples of Service level Agreements:

• Customer-based SLA: An agreement with an individual customer group, covering all the services they use. For example, an SLA between a supplier (IT service provider) and the finance department of a large organization for the services such as finance system, payroll system, billing system, procurement/purchase system, etc.
• Service-based SLA: An agreement for all customers using the services being delivered by the service provider. For example:
  • A car service station offers a routine service to all the customers and offers certain maintenance as a part of offer with the universal charging.
  • A mobile service provider offers a routine service to all the customers and offers certain maintenance as a part of offer with the universal charging
  • An email system for the entire organization. There are chances of difficulties arising in this type of SLA as level of the services being offered may vary for different customers (for example, head office staff may use high-speed LAN connections while local offices may have to use a lower speed leased line).
• Multilevel SLA: The SLA is split into the different levels, each addressing different set of customers for the same services, in the same SLA.
• Corporate-level SLA: Covering all the generic service level management (often abbreviated as SLM) issues appropriate to every customer throughout the organization. These issues are likely to be less volatile and so updates (SLA reviews) are less frequently required.
• Customer-level SLA: covering all SLM issues relevant to the particular customer group, regardless of the services being used.
• Service-level SLA: covering all SLM issue relevant to the specific services, in relation to this specific customer group.

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This customer service report shows SLA compliance over a period of time. Managing trends toward a higher goal can dramatically increase customer satisfaction.

Service level agreements can contain numerous service performance metrics with corresponding service level objectives. A common case in IT service management is a call center or service desk. Metrics commonly agreed to in these cases include:

• ABA (Abandonment Rate): Percentage of calls abandoned while waiting to be answered.
• ASA (Average Speed to Answer): Average time (usually in seconds) it takes for a call to be answered by the service desk.
• TSF (Time Service Factor): Percentage of calls answered within a definite timeframe, e.g., 80% in 20 seconds.
• FCR (First-Call Resolution): Percentage of incoming calls that can be resolved without the use of a callback or without having the caller call back the helpdesk to finish resolving the case.
• TAT (Turn-Around Time): Time taken to complete a certain task.

Uptime is also a common metric, often used for data services such as shared hosting, virtual private servers and dedicated servers. Common agreements include percentage of network uptime, power uptime, number of scheduled maintenance windows, etc.

Many SLAs track to the Information Technology Infrastructure Library specifications when applied to IT services.

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Drill down on the 239 tickets outside of the SLA.

Now review the detail to determine why these tickets are out of SLA. You can sort all headings to get see patterns and export to a PDF or CSV file and send to others as appropriate. Perhaps you can see if there is a common problems with a group of categories which is the "nature of request". On the right column, you can see the business days over/under SLA.

An important best practice is to never stop the SLA clock from ticking so that problems are not hidden. Giva has the ability to put a ticket on "hold" which is a type of designation whereby the amount of time the ticket was on "hold" is automatically calculated and booked into the ticket history as a note when the ticket is taken off "hold". So, if a tickets is out of SLA you can easily trace this back to a specific reason. Also, Administrators have the ability to back date the close of a ticket and a reason is required. There is also a report that shows tickets where the close was backdated.

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This is a great report to help you focus on the focus on the tickets that are out of SLA.  You can see that Average Close Time in business hours and the percent within SLA.

Download the webinar slides:  Metrics For IT Help Desk & Customer Service Organizations

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Similar to the Customer Satisfaction Report. You want to be able to slice and dice an SLA compliance report.

This customer service report provides the ability to see SLA compliance from the perspective of Service Groups, Departments, Locations, Regions, Creators, Assignees and Customers. For example, a particularly challenging customer may complain that the Customer Service organization is not providing an adequate level of service. This report will show you exactly how the Customer Service organization performed over time with any specific customer. This report can also help you evaluate the contribution that Assignees and Creators are making to customer satisfaction.

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How will you prioritize the blizzard of requests from employees or customers? Do your best to prioritize requests based upon their impact to revenue generation.

Respond and resolve times will properly set expectations. See Giva whitepaper on SLAs:

http://www.givainc.com/wp/implementing-service-level-agreements-slas-writing.htm

This whitepaper teaches you how to prepare your customers for SLAs, how to write an SLA and how to get buy-in from customers/employees. An SLA is really an agreement between the support organization and your customers.

Respond and resolve times should be associated with each severity level.

Downtime from major outages or product failures, also need to measure the impact in terms of # of customers and quantify the # of hours of customers not productive. Giva Tsunami ticket report will show the number of hours and how many people affected.

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Good to look at raw data, but also need to see data in a trend line. See where you are going? What happened and why significant changes over time?

This report shows the results of the customer satisfaction surveys in the form of a trend report. This is very useful when used in conjunction with the SLA Compliance to demonstrate the level of service provided and the level of customer satisfaction your team is delivering to customers.

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This is another set of survey results. It is from a simple 1 question survey from the prior slide. Rate us and provide written feedback. Drilling down on the bottom is from Col 4. Clicking on the 480 shows more detail with a graphic.

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This is a custom survey with 6 questions. The survey results are displayed one question at a time. Click on any link to get aggregated data. Click further to go the ticket level.

> Customer Satisfaction Rating Alerts

This provides for setting minimum levels of customer satisfaction ratings that trigger alert notifications if levels are not achieved. This allows quick remediation. With Giva , you can receive an email or text message alert if specific event triggers are met such as low ratings so that action can be quickly taken. An important part of utilizing metrics is actually obtain the metric at just the appropriate time so that you can take quick action.

> Customer Satisfaction Survey Alerts- "Please call me"

This provides a "check box" that the customer can check if they would like a help desk manager to call them. When checked, a manager is immediately notified giving them a "heads-up" that a customer wants to speak with them. This allows for a written record and an opportunity to more closely communicate and meet the needs of your customers.

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The survey results are displayed one question at a time. Click on any link to get aggregated data. Click further to go the ticket level.

Download the webinar slides:  Metrics For IT Help Desk & Customer Service Organizations

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A copy of the customer satisfaction survey is also included in the ticket on a "feedback" tab so you can review the survey questions and answers.

Download the webinar slides:  Metrics For IT Help Desk & Customer Service Organizations

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This is a custom survey with 6 questions for demonstration purposes. It is too many questions. Best surveys are 1-2 questions.

When you have to write evaluations or provide weekly/monthly feedback, you can run some reports to get objective data to share. It will take you 10 seconds to run this report. You can schedule a report to run automatically and deliver data every day. You can slice and dice by assignees and creators. If creators have a high first contact resolution (FCR), this good work should be reflected positively in surveys. The converse is also true.

In this report, there are 10 dimensions to slice and dice the data (without counting time period).

In ten seconds or less, can you measure overall customer satisfaction as follows? In ten seconds or less, can you also review survey comments made by customers? By Service Group, Analyst, Call Category and Root Cause.

Further by time: This morning, Yesterday, Last Week, Last month

Further by: Region, Office, Location, Department, Customer

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Source: HDI Practices Customer Satisfaction Survey

Customers will always let you know when they are completely dissatisfied with your service. However, daily customer satisfaction surveys provides valuable information from a broad sampling of employees/customers. A continuous customer satisfaction survey process and improvement philosophy will drive customer satisfaction and loyalty and build a self-perpetuating virtuous cycle.

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An industry "best practice" is to get feedback on every incident. Perhaps send a survey for every Y incidents but no more than X times in the previous Z time increment so you do not over survey. If necessary, exclude big honchos/senior people/touchy customers who don't want surveys.

We sometimes hear, "We don't want to waste our people's time filling out surveys…they should be doing "real work." A 1 question survey takes 10 seconds to fill out and it will make people feel like an important service provider is listening and that is part of building a self-perpetuating virtuous cycle for outstanding customer service.

The winner of the best law firm IT help desk in NYC from 2006 to 2010 surveys every incident. The very act of asking attorneys if the help desk has delivered great service makes the attorneys feel like the IT dept is willing to listen and improve. The willingness to listen and act is critical to improving customer satisfaction. Schulte Roth & Zabel is among the top 100 law firms in the world. The firm was awarded #1 Law Firm Help Desk in the USA in 2009 and 2008 from an independent survey performed by AmLaw Tech. From 2006 through 2010, SR&Z was ranked the #1 Law Firm Help Desk in New York City.

Whitepaper: "Learn How to Build a Virtuous Cycle for IT Technical Support"

http://www.givainc.com/wp/law-firm-technical-support-best-practices.htm

Case Study:  http://www.givainc.com/case-study/law-firm-help-desk-schulte-roth.htm

We recommend that an external customer service organization perform surveys using the "Net Promoter" concept which is used by companies such as General Electric. This approach is to ask 1 or 2 questions with the theme, "Would you recommend our product or service to a close friend?"

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Do a search on the Internet on "Help Desk metrics"…..4.4 million results. 2.2 million results for customer service metrics. Giva has assimilated the expertise of many industry experts and overlaid that on top of a decade of experience helping customers improve their help desk and customer service operations. We are a thought leader in this area.

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These are the 5 core KPIs/metrics. If you measure and monitor with the "zeal of a zealot", it will transform your company and reputation. Even if you've never been measuring anything except how many or what kind of calls you receive, these are excellent metrics to start measuring to establish a base line for your organization.

Metric "discipline" is needed. Initially you or your organization may look "bad". It is often that way at the beginning. Sooner or later someone will ask for metrics. Some smart senior leader will ask for these KPIs/metrics. You are better off to identified these KPIs/metrics now so you can begin making progress and improve your numbers and trend lines.

If you do not have service level agreements today, there is a great whitepaper on the Giva web site about how to develop them and slowly introduce service level management to your organization. See http://www.givainc.com/wp/implementing-service-level-agreements-slas-writing.htm

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Getting the right metrics/KPIs via reports easily and quickly is the #1 challenge of almost all IT help desk and external customer service organization.

We will discuss the important metrics to focus on, but you may never been able to generate these metrics with your current call tracking system and you will walk away saying…"Great, I now know what I need, but I just can't get it or it takes me too long to get".

When discussing the important metrics, I am going to show you samples of Giva Reports.

Giva is an award winning provider of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) Web-based ITIL Help Desk, Customer Service/Call Center and Service Desk cloud based computing services.

Visual reporting, management dashboards and an intuitive design, make the Giva Service Management™ Suite very powerful and at the same time very easy to use. Customizations are all point and click (i.e no programming necessary) so the result is a dramatically lower total cost of ownership when compared to other products that require programmers and trained consultants.

Download the webinar slides:  Metrics For IT Help Desk & Customer Service Organizations

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You have a very busy day. You don't have the time to figure out all the right metrics/KPIs for your organization and then specify and code reports in your call tracking system or wade through the 100's of canned reports searching for the right metrics/KPIs. You also do not have time to "kick" your call tracking system to get this information on a hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly basis. You need to have the right metrics/KPIs sent to you and your term at the scheduled intervals that you deem appropriate for each leader, supervisor or agent. You need real-time information sent to you at exactly the time that you need it.

You will always need the ability to quickly generate ad hoc reports with little effort.

It is easy to measure the performance of a Wall Street stock trader with profit/loss as measured in dollars. Revenue is the most "pure" metric possible. But, for those of us not trading stocks all day, it is harder to tie performance to revenue generation/impact, but a close as link as possible.

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"Rock Stars"…we all love these producers. The company gets great value from these people. They are the work horses. They're smart, competent and confident and your customers love them. You want to keep them. In a poor economy, you want to keep your rock starts and attract more rock stars from your competition.

"Stars in Training"….offer them training and mentoring to get them to realize their potential. They are typically younger and have a desire to grow and excel.

"Solid Citizens"…dependable, competent, maybe don't have all the skills or don't push themselves like the "Rock Stars"…ok with being a "Solid Citizen"…nothing wrong with that.

"Problem Children"…all leader have experience with these folks. It's some times difficult to terminate poor performers… Giva worked with a customer that was a major international law firm that would not terminate poor performing IT support people. They did not have any objective data. Only anecdotes of information. They feared an age discrimination lawsuit. They had no hard data to support the poor performance. After 6 months of using Giva reports, they terminated three people in IT. The IT management provided the Human Resources dept. with objective data from Giva reports. The conservative firm felt confident they had objective data to support the terminations. This significantly lifted morale in the IT groups. Terminating poor performers always lifts morale. On an emotional level, people never like to see terminations, but when others are unfairly carrying the workload of a poor performer, etc., morale is always lifted and motivation is increased. Moreover, team morale is killed when competent people are terminated because of politics, personality, favoritism, and other subjective measures.

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Metrics For IT Help Desk & Customer Service Organizations

Outstanding leaders focus on "high leverage points" where they can make changes and exert influence. High leverage points provide a disproportionately higher payback for every unit of effort/time invested vs. low leverage or no leverage points. Said another way..they want a big bang for buck for effort/attention so they look for high leverage activities where they can have a big impact.

High Leverage Points: A law firm or hospital internal IT help desk will have significant influence on the productivity of attorneys and health care professionals which are revenue producers for their respective entities.…it's a high leverage point. Another example is a customer service organization since it has significant influence on customer decisions to purchase more products/services. Customer facing personnel are in a very influential/critical position. Sales people generate revenue, but excellent customer service people keep customers coming back with their checkbooks…or not coming back.

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Metrics For IT Help Desk & Customer Service Organizations

Why are metrics important?

-Performance- what to be able to draw distinctions between people and groups for incentive programs. Linking incentive programs to subjective criteria will kill morale of any organization. Without objective measures, favoritism and personality "rule" instead of performance. Circulate the name(s) of winners along with a copy of the report(s)/metric(s) documenting why the they won and how everybody else performed. Can't improve if can't measure! Increase individual and group morale with metrics.

-Benchmarking - Industry and competitors for continuous improvement. Easy to get industry data, but need to collect data about your company with your call tracking system to compare with industry data.

-Financial…for resource allocation plans, workload balance, add/subtract headcount, business cases for capital and operating expenses. Tie your team's performance to revenue as much as possible. How many revenue producers did the support organization kept productive? How happy are out customers so they keep on buying?

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Metrics For IT Help Desk & Customer Service Organizations

Continuing from yesterday, here are 10 more groups of penetrating questions to ask SaaS Customer Service and IT Help Desk vendors to determine their true character.

11. Are there maintenance windows of downtime for routine server administration? When are they? Will the service always be unavailable during these windows or just some times? Will I get notifications when the service will be down during a maintenance window? How much advance notice?

12. What contract lengths do you offer, and what are the discounts that apply? Is there any flexibility in payment terms? What are renewal terms?

13. How quickly can we be up and running on your product? Does it work "out of the box"? Will it take a week, a month, a quarter or six months or longer to deploy? Will you provide an implementation plan in writing and commit to it? Who will initially pay for set-up, customization and configuration costs? Who will pay these costs on an ongoing basis? Do we need to learn a programming language to administer and customize your product? If so, what is the approximate size of the developer community; and what is the average hourly rate?

14. What is exactly included in annual software maintenance? Will we receive major releases or just bug fixes and minor enhancements? Can you please show us exactly where this is documented in your SaaS License Agreement?

15. Of course, we hope that we do not have to do this, but my company may want to cut costs in the future by not paying your annual software maintenance. Our CFO is concerned about commitments for ongoing fees. Can we stop paying software maintenance any time we want, but continue to use the software licenses? Do we need a license key from you each year? What happens if we stop paying annual software maintenance, and then we want to start paying again to obtain support? Do we have to "back pay" all the fees for software maintenance we did not previously pay?

16. What is your roadmap for future product development? What product enhancements are you planning to make over the next 12 months? How can my company be assured that you will deliver on this roadmap? What are our options if you do not deliver?

17. If we have a support issue that requires some reconfiguration, does your company charge professional services fees for this work, or is it covered under routine support?

18. We will probably learn a lot about your product after using it for the first six months or even a year. If we want to do additional customization and configuration work after the initial deployment is completed, does your company charge professional service fees for this work ,or is it covered under routine support?

19. Is a source code escrow service available? (This requires that the vendor place their source code in escrow, so that it is available if they are no longer in business.) Is there a fee for this?

20. Does the vendor ask you about your pain points? Are they interested in understanding your requirements, and will they prepare a demonstration of their capabilities based on these requirements at no cost or obligation?

Download white paper at:

http://www.givainc.com/wp/qualify-questions-saas-customer-service-software-IT-help-desk-vendors.htm

How can you more quickly qualify and evaluate SaaS customer service and IT help desk software vendors?

This white paper discusses twenty groups of penetrating questions to ask SaaS Customer Service and IT Help Desk software vendors to determine their true character. A SaaS vendor is like a spouse. While "Dating" it is better to understand what life may be like after the "Honeymoon" is over. Ask these questions early in your qualification process to focus on the vendors that will be there for you long after they have your company's money. Use these questions to poke and prod at your list of vendors and then listen very carefully when they speak. What you learn will save you a great deal of time and money. Make sure to get their responses in writing!

Here are 10 groups of penetrating questions to ask SaaS Customer Service and IT Help Desk vendors to determine their true character. Tomorrow, look for 10 more.

Ask these questions early in your qualification process to focus on the vendors that will be there for you long after they have your company's money.

Use these questions to poke and prod at your long list of vendors, and then listen very carefully when they speak. What you learn will save you a great deal of time and money. Make sure to get their responses in writing!

1. Do you offer a Service level Agreement (SLA) for uptime? What is it? Is it included in the cost, or is there an additional charge for providing an SLA for uptime? Is there a financial penalty for downtime? How do we apply for credits? What is your history of uptime? Can I obtain a copy of the uptime Service Level Agreement to review?

2. Does your company provide Respond and Resolve Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for support service requests that your company is committed by contract to meet? If so, how can we measure if your company is meeting or exceeding these SLAs? Can we terminate our contract if your company does not meet these support SLAs? Is there a clause in your contract to allow termination for material breach of support SLAs? How do I get support? Do I have to send an email, open a web request, or can I call your company and speak with a live person? What are your standard support hours? Do you offer extended support hours for evenings, weekends, and non-USA regions? Is there a fee for this?

3. Do you measure and monitor application responsiveness on an ongoing basis? Your service may not be down, but how do I know if it will be responsive and usable? Do you provide a Service Level Agreement for application responsiveness? If so, what is it?

4. Is your product architected as a Web-native application? Is it really a client/server application retrofitted with a Web interface?

5. What if better technology comes along after we purchase your SaaS product? Perhaps your company is not keeping up with evolving industry standard enhancements. Are we stuck with your SaaS product? Can we terminate our contract? Are fees required for termination? What is your frequency of launching new product releases for the last three years? Can we review the release notes?

6. Do you host your product at a commercial data center, or do you host on your own servers? If at a data center, is it SAS-70 certified? Does the data center provide a managed service, or does your company rent a "collocation cage" with power and network access, but your company maintains all the server infrastructure? Does your data center use a third-party security assessment firm to determine whether the data center meets Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI) and security requirements related to the protection of private and confidential data? Does your data center use a third-party security assessment firm for intrusion penetration testing and monitoring?

With respect to your data center:

• How often do they perform back-ups? Is there a daily incremental back-up? Is there a full back-up at end of the week?
• Is the back-up automated to assure that it happens without fail?
• Is the back-up to tape or disk?
• How long of a back-up history is maintained? 30 days of data on site and 60 days off site for safe keeping? Can the database be restored to a specific day and time? Are back-ups stored on site or off site at secured locations?
• Is transportation to off-site locations secured?
• What is the data center disaster recovery plan?
• What happens if the data center power is knocked out? How many days can it stay powered on generator failover without refueling?
• Is the data center physically guarded 24 x 7 x 365?
• How is physical access to the data center protected?
• How is virtual access to the data center protected?
• Is there a hardware-based firewall that protects your data from the Internet?
• Are there Microsoft and Cisco Certified Network Engineers on site 24 x 7 x 365?
• How long would it take to recover from a complete server failure?
• Are there ample spare parts on site?
• What level of data center redundancy is built-in?
• What level of Internet access redundancy is built-in?
• Does your data center have strategic partnerships with Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco to be among the first to receive important security information and updates? How fast are security patches applied?
• Is there virus protection on the server farms?

7. After my company pays for your product, what if we become dissatisfied for any reason? Perhaps the product does not work as demonstrated or promised. What will you do?

8. Please prepare an estimated Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of your product over four years. Consider all the acquisition and lifetime costs of ownership. Document all your assumptions; and we will provide you with our assumptions for the analysis, as needed.

How does your product TCO compare with the other companies we are evaluating? Are training, set-up, customization, configuration, support, integration and any usage fees all included in this TCO? See Giva's White Papers and Tools to help calculate the TCO of SaaS and software licenses.

9. As my company grows or experiences spikes in business, can additional licenses and disk storage space be quickly provided on-demand as necessary for peak times such as the holiday season, special promotions or major IT infrastructure upgrades at my company?

10. Can I get a copy of my company's data file at any time in an industry standard format, so it can be imported into another application? Is there a charge? Is it explicit in your contract that my company's data is owned by my company? How will our data be protected from a privacy and disaster recovery perspective?

Download white paper at:

http://www.givainc.com/wp/qualify-questions-saas-customer-service-software-IT-help-desk-vendors.htm

What questions should you ask vendors to determine their true character?

Here are 10 groups of penetrating questions to ask Customer Service and IT Help Desk vendors to determine their true character.

Ask these questions early in your qualification process to focus on the vendors that will be there for you long after they have your company's money.

Use these questions to poke and prod at your long list of vendors, and then listen very carefully when they speak. What you learn will save you a great deal of time and money. Make sure to get their responses in writing!

1. After my company pays for your software licenses, what if we become dissatisfied for any reason? Perhaps the product does not work as demonstrated or promised. What will you do?

2. What if better technology comes along after we purchase your software licenses? Perhaps your company is not keeping up with evolving industry standard enhancements. Are we stuck with your software licenses? Can we trade in your software licenses and receive a pro rata cash refund to purchase a product that meets our evolving needs?

3. How quickly can we be up and running on your product? Does it work "out of the box"?
   Will it take a week, a month, a quarter or six months or longer to deploy? Will you provide an implementation plan in writing and commit to it? Who will initially pay for set-up, customization and configuration costs? Who will pay these costs on an ongoing basis? Do we need to learn a programming language to administer and customize your product? If so, what is the approximate size of the developer community, and what is the average hourly rate?
   
4. Please prepare an estimated Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of your product over four years. Consider all the acquisition and lifetime costs of ownership. Document all your assumptions; and we will provide you with our assumptions for the analysis, as needed. How does your product TCO compare with the other companies we are evaluating? Are training, set-up, customization, configuration, support, integration and any usage fees all included in this TCO?
   
5. What exactly is included in annual software maintenance? Will we receive major releases or just bug fixes and minor enhancements? Can you please show us exactly where this is documented in your Software License Agreement?
   
6. Of course, we hope that we do not have to do this, but my company may want to cut costs in the future by not paying your annual software maintenance. Our CFO is concerned about commitments for ongoing fees. Can we stop paying software maintenance any time we want, but continue to use the software licenses? Do we need a license key from you each year? What happens if we stop paying annual software maintenance, and then we want to start paying again to obtain support? Do we have to "back pay" all the fees for software maintenance we did not previously pay?
   
7. What is your roadmap for future product development? How can my company be assured that you will deliver on this roadmap? What are our options if you do not deliver?
   
8. If we have a support issue that requires some reconfiguration, does your company charge professional services fees for this work, or is it covered under routine support?

9. We will probably learn a lot about your product after using it for the first six months or even a year. If we want to do additional customization and configuration work after the initial deployment is completed, does your company charge professional service fees for this work, or is it covered under routine support?
   
10. Does your company provide Respond and Resolve Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for support service requests that your company is committed by contract to meet? If so, how can we measure if your company is meeting or exceeding these SLAs? Can we terminate our contract if your company does not meet these support SLAs? Is there a clause in your contract to allow termination for material breach of support SLAs? How do I get support? Do I have to send an email, open a web request, or can I call your company and speak with a live person? What are your standard support hours? Do you offer extended support hours for evenings, weekends, and non-USA regions? Is there a fee for this?

Download White Paper:

http://www.givainc.com/wp/qualify-questions-customer-service-software-IT-help-desk-vendors.htm

Replace Numara Track-It! help desk software with Giva Cloud Computing

Has your organization outgrown Track-It!? We know that you need to measure the IT help desk performance with metrics, charts and graphs to reward stakeholders and take action when necessary. Our visual tools allow you to analyze data and proactively highlight trends and patterns early on.

Each report features our Giva Easy Three-Click Reporting™ engine that allows you to quickly build standard and completely customizable Report queries.

• Intuitive human friendly Report user interface
• Export Reports to Adobe® PDF (with color output) and CSV file
• Email Reports on-the-fly
• Schedule Reports for automatic email delivery
• WYSIWYG browser printing

Watch 3 Videos About Giva

View IT Help Desk Reports, KPIs & Metrics examples

Replace BMC Service Desk Express with Giva Cloud Computing

Is the very high cost of BMC Service Desk Express consulting, upgrades and software maintenance not in your IT budget?

With Giva, BMC Service Desk Express customers on average experienced a:

• 60% decrease in TCO
• 90% decrease in implementation time and cost
• Eliminated servers, software and upgrade costs
• Decreased headcount required to maintain service desk application

Get a quote from your BMC Service Desk Express consultant and then contact Giva.

Watch 3 Videos About Giva

View IT Help Desk Reports, KPIs & Metrics examples

Replace FrontRange HEAT with Giva Cloud Computing

Is the very high cost of FrontRange HEAT consulting, upgrades and software maintenance not in your IT budget?

With Giva, FrontRange HEAT customers on average experienced a:

• 60% decrease in annual TCO
• 90% decrease in implementation time and cost
• Eliminated servers, software and upgrade costs
• Decreased headcount required to maintain service desk application

Download this business case that compares Giva to FrontRange:

Business Case to Replace FrontRange with Giva Cloud Computing

Replace FrontRange ITSM with Giva Cloud Computing

Is the very high cost of FrontRange ITSM consulting, upgrades and software maintenance not in your IT budget?

With Giva, FrontRange ITSM customers on average experienced a:

• 60% decrease in TCO
• 90% decrease in implementation time and cost
• Eliminated servers, software and upgrade costs
• Decreased headcount required to maintain service desk application

Download this business case that compares Giva to FrontRange:

Business Case to Replace FrontRange with Giva Cloud Computing

Click to download a White Paper on Knowledge Base ROI

Plan to have dedicated resources such as knowledge experts to build and maintain the knowledge. Regular and timely maintenance of the knowledgebase is critical to success. Be sure to build in a mechanism that identifies gaps in content (information sought but not found), and a process for filling those gaps. If people repeatedly fail to find what they are looking for they will stop using the system.

KM requires cultural change

You will need buy-in at all levels, and this may require cultural change. The people that are going to use the tools have to be part of the design. Do not make this management decision in a vacuum. Include some people from the various groups that will directly or indirectly use the system.

Sometimes staffs have a fear that management will use the knowledge management process to replace people. If your staff thinks that is what you are trying to do, then you really need to address that head-on. Once you convince your team that current head count reduction is not the goal, you need to look for and plan the motivation for each party. After all, you are asking people to shift from a system where being a tower of knowledge is rewarded to a system where they share their expertise with everybody. Each party will have a unique motivation to embrace knowledge management. For example, your frontline tech will have a different motivational schema than your third level technician. The frontline tech is not going to have to ask the second line tech as many questions, and can resolve more problems faster. The second level tech is not going to get as many of the common questions. Level 3 researchers will not have to start at ground zero when handed a problem by level two, because they know Level 1 and 2 have covered all the intermediate steps. Therefore, as you look across the company everybody has a different interest and you have to protect all of them. Failing to see how knowledge management is going to fit in to the rest of the organization is really a mistake. You must invest the time and energy to understand the culture, identify motivations and ensure change happens where needed.

Champions are important

To be successful, your knowledge initiative must have several champions within the organization. These individuals believe in the initiative, enthusiastically advocate it and have the influence to "make things happen." Initiatives that have no champion generally do not get off the ground. Those with one champion are at serious risk. Losing your champion can spell disaster for you project.

This is a real problem for knowledge management initiatives, due to their typically long duration. If the initiative champion transfers, retires or leaves the company, initiative often loses its momentum and the initiative may falter as someone else takes it over. What knowledge experts like to see is a dual sponsorship: one at the operational level and one at the executive level. Therefore, if an operations manager decides the company really needs knowledge management, that manager should find somebody on the executive staff that will agree to support the vision. By having that dual track of vision, the initiative is less likely to derail.

Click to download a White Paper on Knowledge Base ROI

Click to download a White Paper on Knowledge Base ROI

Many people think knowledge management is just software but it is much more than that; knowledge management is a discipline.

Knowledge Management is a discipline that takes a comprehensive, systematic approach to the information assets of an organization by identifying, capturing, collecting, organizing, indexing, storing, integrating, retrieving and sharing them. Such assets include (a) the explicit knowledge such as databases, documents, environmental knowledge, policies, procedures and organizational culture; and (b) the tacit knowledge of its employees, their expertise and their practical work experience. It strives to make the collective knowledge information and experience of the organization available to individual employees for their use and to motivate them to contribute their knowledge to the collective assets.

Create a process change management plan

You will need a process-change management plan because you are asking people to do their jobs differently. The plan specifies how you will gain acceptance of knowledge management within the organization. Let us say you are a service desk manager and you measure your employees by call handling time and number of cases closed. Now you are going to be asking them to use knowledgebase on every call they take, every e-mail they answer, and so you are asking them to change the way they earn their living on a day-to-day basis. You are going to also ask them to share their knowledge through creating knowledge articles. If you do not also make changes to their performance reviews and compensation, then there will be friction because you're asking them to do one thing but you are judging them by another set of rules. As part of the overall plan you need to update job descriptions, feedback sessions and performance reviews to reflect the new workflow. Neglecting to make these changes is likely to create friction.

Where and how to start

We advise that you pick one area that needs real improvement or has limited resources, and then build a robust knowledgebase for that subject matter. A good place to start is to look at past incident history. What are the most common types of incidents? Which incidents take the longest time to resolve? Which ones would be easiest for customers to solve themselves if they had answers that they could understand? Use that experience to learn about implementing knowledge in your organization; do one topic or one product group and learn from there. It is much better to be comprehensive for a narrow topic than fail to get enough depth. Sometimes an enterprise initiative is needed right away, and it can be done successfully, but it is a bigger resource commitment to do a bigger project all at once.

Click to download a White Paper on Knowledge Base ROI

Here are the Top Ten Reasons You Should Purchase a Cloud Based SaaS Change Management Application vs. Build In-house:

Change management demo:

http://www.givainc.com/demos/eCM/01-hosted-it-change-management-software-tracking-itil-rfc.htm

Reason Ten: The product already exists and you won't have to spend time, money and political capital negotiating with a development executive to liberate already scarce resources.

Reason Nine: The vendor you choose has an understanding of how Change Management works and best practice requirements. Developers don't always have this understanding and explaining it to them can take time, and time is money.

Reason Eight: Almost all commercial Change Management applications can be purchased in modules. You can add and delete modules based upon your business needs and budget.

Reason Seven: Commercial Change Management applications can be easily customized to meet your operation's unique needs. You won't get this capability in an in-house product without a great deal of extra work and time.

Reason Six: The product you purchase will have voluminous documentation that is both technical and end-user oriented. It may even have remote video learning and will certainly have on-site as well as off-site training programs available to train your staff. An in-house product will rarely have such documentation.

Reason Five: The documentation and training will be at least three times better with a purchased product than it will be with an in-house product. You will not have to compete with the internal documentation and training staff that get paid to serve paying customers.

Reason Four: You will have access to patches, updates, user groups, updated documentation, and technical support when the product is released and when you need it.

Reason Three: No matter how good the training, and no matter how great the documentation, sooner or later you will need to call the vendor's technical support. This need usually arises at the worst possible time and inevitably involves a customer. Developers are busy people and you have to ask yourself if the in-house developers will be available when you need them. Most vendors have support open 24/7 and are literally waiting for your call.

Reason Two: Updates. A purchased product is continually updated, debugged and readied for your immediate use. With an in-house product your staff will usually be debugging the update after it is installed. This is not fair to your staff, your customers, or your boss.

Reason One: You can purchase, train on and implement a purchased product in a fraction of the time it takes to design, code, document, train on and implement an in-house product.

A software development project can easily take on a life of its own and by developing an in-house product you are competing with paying customers. Unless you work for one of those unique companies mentioned earlier and unless your IT team can command the resources it needs, when it needs them, the chances are that in-house development will be prohibitively costly, time consuming, frustrating to train on and difficult to implement.

See IT help desk & customer service dashboards:

http://www.givainc.com/help-desk-dashboard-charts.htm 

Dashboards

A dashboard is an extraordinary tool, one that provides a single,

easy-to-understand view of critical business and operational data. But going

far beyond data, a dashboard helps managers focus on the things that matter,

giving them the information they need to effectively monitor their company's

performance - and take action.

Do you know how your organization is performing right now?

Can your managers and employees link their day-to-day work and job

performance to your company's key objectives?

Dashboards make these things possible. And today's advanced

dashboard-building tools make it easy to deliver dashboards across your

enterprise. The benefits are extraordinary:

* Dashboards highlight business metrics that are critical to your

organization's strategy. Improved visibility helps managers focus on key

initiatives. And better insight into business information makes it possible

to make smarter decisions and, ultimately, improve organizational

performance.

* Dashboards give you the ability to closely monitor key performance

indicators (KPIs). Critical business data is presented in easy-to-understand

speedometers, dynamic graphs and tables. Stoplights and alerts tell you when

performance is above, on or below target. And because information is

presented against time (instead of a snapshot), trends are more visible.

* Dashboards are the key to performance management. No matter what

performance management methodology your company uses, a dashboard can be

built to support it. Strategy-focused dashboards can be deployed throughout

the organization, improving performance by putting powerful analytic

functionality in the hands of business users.

See IT help desk & customer service dashboards:

http://www.givainc.com/help-desk-dashboard-charts.htm

IT Help Desk Cloud Computing– 4 Sources of Check Signer Pain

Giva can help you build a business case to present to your CIO, VP Customer Service or Executive Director/Technology Committee to authorize a purchase of help desk or customer service software. We have some valuable tools to do this; and we have the expertise to help you build a business case that will justify a purchase, if really needed. Sometimes a purchase is not needed. Folks think that they need a new application when what they really need is just some new processes and procedures. Giva can help guide your company in this decision.

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about how to determine if Check Signers have significant pain.

> Large Fees are Painful

Check signers are sensitive to large recurring annual support and maintenance fees and upgrade fees that nobody thinks about when buying a product. They also know that after four or five years upgrade fees are required to migrate the company to a new major release. Moreover, an entirely new implementation is usually necessary to accompany an upgrade to a major new release.

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about how to determine if Check Signers have significant pain.

Four Sources of Check Signer Pain -  SaaS Hosted IT Help Desk & Customer Service Cloud Computing

> Labor Intensiveness is Painful

Check signers do not want to spend money on people to manage and maintain software applications. Instead, they prefer automation, simplicity and easy to use administration for configuration and customization. They are interested in getting their KPIs/metrics without having to train people to use report writers and sending staff away on expensive business trips to "Report Guru" school.

Check signers also know that often project teams overlook the true total cost of ownership of owning software. They know this by just looking at all the money the company spends for consultants to configure, customize and otherwise maintain software applications. Software is often built to be almost infinitely flexible, but it comes with a significant price tag of complexity, requiring custom coding or specialized consulting skills.

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about how to determine if Check Signers have significant pain.

Four Sources of Check Signer Pain  SaaS IT Help Desk & Customer Service Cloud Computing

> "Who Should I Reward, Warn or Terminate?"

What do check signers secretly think about every night before going to sleep? They want to know who should they reward, warn or terminate. The best and brightest leaders are fair and decent people; and they want to reward, warn and terminate using objective data (i.e. KPIs/metrics). However, they often cannot obtain this information at all; or they cannot obtain it very easily from most call tracking systems.

Check signers want their companies to be well oiled machines with the most exceptional talent. Check signers need to know how to objectively measure performance so that they can understand which employees are the most valuable and the least valuable. Check signers want to know:

> Who is providing the highest levels of customer satisfaction?

> Who is the most responsive to customers?

> Who is consistently meeting or exceeding service level agreements (SLAs)?

> Who is contributing the most highly rated knowledge articles over time?

> Who is resolving the most difficult customer problems?

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about how to determine if Check Signers have significant pain.

Four Sources of Check Signer Pain  SaaS IT Help Desk & Customer Service Cloud Computing

Check signers want the following basic KPIs/metrics and trends from any call tracking system:

> Can you measure First Call Resolution (FCR)? If so, what was it for last

month? What does the trend line look like?

> Can you measure customer satisfaction? If so what was your overall rating last month? What does the trend line look like?

> Are you using Service Level Agreements (SLAs)? If so, can you measure SLA compliance? What was your SLA compliance on Severity Level 1 and 2s for last month? What do the trend lines look like?

> Can you perform Root Cause Analysis? If so, what systemic changes have you made in the last 30 days to lower call volume?

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about how to determine if Check Signers have significant pain.

Four Sources of Check Signer Pain  SaaS IT Help Desk & Customer Service Cloud Computing

There are generally four main sources of pain points for check signers:

> Lack of Granular KPIs/Metrics/Reporting

This impacts the ability to increase customer satisfaction and revenue and lower company costs. Check signers are very sensitive to the needs of customers. If your company is a law firm, the check signers are probably very sensitive to the productivity of revenue-producing attorneys who bill their time. If your company sells widgets, then check writers are probably very concerned about whether customers are happy with your company's widgets. If customers are not happy, then they will not buy more widgets. Examples of some basic KPIs/metrics are first contact resolution, customer satisfaction trends, SLA compliance trends and root cause analysis. Most of these KPIs/metrics will help increase customer satisfaction and increase revenue. Root cause analysis will help decrease call volume and lower costs. The lack of these KPIs/metrics is a significant pain point for many check signers.

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about how to determine if Check Signers have significant pain.

Indicate a very strong and genuine interest in learning about check signer pain points. Stop talking about your pain and instead seek to understand and their pain. Check signers will be impressed with this approach. It shows that you have transcended your own department needs, and that you can see the company problems more globally and holistically. Don't be surprised to hear, "Wow, that's a great analytical approach. You mean you're interested in my pain? Schedule a time to meet with me!" Your approach will speak volumes about your strong business sense.

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about how to determine if Check Signers have significant pain.

IT Help Desk & Customer Service Cloud Computing

The project leader or champion is responsible for identifying all the pain of check signers. Yes, you may know your own pain; but you must identify the pain of check signers, if any actually exists. Often, this pain can be latent. Perhaps it has existed for so long that senior leaders no longer realize that they really have this pain. For example, a senior level leader may not be receiving the kinds of reports they desire. As a result, they may not be monitoring important KPIs/metrics and are thus making decisions without the benefit of very important information.

If you find that the project approval keeps on getting delayed, this is a good indicator that there is not enough pain in your organization, or the pain points have not been properly highlighted. The check signer may not be feeling significant pain. The project leader has not identified/highlighted significant check signer pain. Also, no compelling enough economic analysis has been made to justify the purchase. Any new purchase must be at a lower TCO and have more functionality than what the company is currently paying today.

Further, engage with the other key approvers/supporters above you and below the check signer and document their pain as well. You must build a business case and economic argument that supports going to a new solution that will save the company money, eliminate pain points, and at the same time improve functionality.

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about how to determine if Check Signers have significant pain.

Cloud Computing for IT Help Desk & Customer Service/Support

Important License Agreement Terms

The #8 Key Point we discuss in the "Winning Strategies for Purchasing IT Help Desk and Customer Service Software or Cloud Computing" webinar is important license agreement terms.

The following are important questions to ask and some key contract terms to negotiate into your software license agreement:

• What happens if we have a disagreement? Will we have to litigate?
• Uptime service level agreements
• Support service level agreements to manage the relationship
• Post implementation customization/configuration
• Routine support vs. professional service fees
• Most overlooked critical details about software maintenance
• Termination clauses, contract lengths, discounts, hidden fees

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about important license agreement terms.

Cloud Computing for IT Help Desk & Customer Service/Support

Compare Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of All Vendors

The #7 Key Point we discuss in the "Winning Strategies for Purchasing IT Help Desk and Customer Service Software or Cloud Computing" webinar is to compare the total cost of ownership of all vendors.

It is generally very easy to determine the acquisition costs of purchasing a call tracking system. However, it is more difficult to determine the ongoing lifetime costs. For example, there are enormous amounts of labor required to generate reports with many tools. Also, your company may need one or two people for routine maintenance, report generation and ongoing configuration/customization.

Ask each vendor on your short list to prepare an estimated Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) over four years, so you can study their assumptions. Ask them to consider all the acquisition and lifetime costs of ownership. This will help you better compare vendors "apples to apples" and understand the true lifetime TCO of a new call tacking system.

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about how to compare the total cost of ownership of all vendors.

Cloud Computing for IT Help Desk & Customer Service/Support

Ask Vendors Tough Questions Early and Often

The #6 Key Point we discuss in the "Winning Strategies for Purchasing IT Help Desk and Customer Service Software or Cloud Computing" webinar is to ask vendors tough questions early and often.

Once you have documented your product requirements, share them with a small list of vendors. Share the most complex "must have" requirements first. This will help you eliminate vendors and save time. Saving time and narrowing your list is your top priority. Engaging with vendors is very time consuming; and the more vendors you engage with, the more your daily productivity will decrease. Put the "must haves," which are your "deal killers," on the table and carefully listen to vendor responses. If any vendor cannot meet your "must haves," quickly cross them off your list. It is important to be efficient and disciplined as this approach will keep morale high. Remember that engaging with vendors takes significant effort and is very time consuming. It takes your people away from their every-day responsibilities, which they are expected to perform.

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about how to ask vendors tough questions early and often.

Cloud Computing for IT Help Desk & Customer Service/Support

Document Feature Needs & Requirements

The #5 Key Point we discuss in the "Winning Strategies for Purchasing IT Help Desk and Customer Service Software or Cloud Computing" webinar is to document your feature needs and requirements.

Documenting feature needs and requirements is the most important step in the process of purchasing a new call tracking system. It is also the most difficult step. It is important to solicit feedback on requirements from all the people that will be using the system. Using this approach, all the stakeholders will be part of the purchase process and feel ownership for the new system. They will be much more inclined to fully embrace and use the new system. There is often organizational inertia that has to be overcome with a new call tracking system. Getting people to do things differently is sometimes hard to change.

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about how to document your feature needs and requirements.

Determine Problems With Current Call Tracking System

The #4 Key Point we discuss in the "Winning Strategies for Purchasing IT Help Desk and Customer Service Software or Cloud Computing" webinar is to determine the problems with your current call tracking system.

Before you begin documenting feature needs and requirements for a new call tracking system, it is important to thoroughly understand why the current system is not working well. We suggest that you play the role of an outside consultant with no agenda. Do not begin with the premise that all your problems will be solved with a new call tracking system. It is more important to understand exactly what is wrong with the current system and determine if it can be fixed.

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about how to determine the problems with your current call tracking system.

Cloud Computing for IT Help Desk & Customer Service/Support

Learn Latest Help Desk & Customer Service Best Practices

The #3 Key Point we discuss in the "Winning Strategies for Purchasing IT Help Desk and Customer Service Software or Cloud Computing" webinar is to learn the latest help desk and customer service best practices.

Before engaging with software vendors, read up on help desk and customer service "best practices" as appropriate, so that that you can ask pointed and direct questions with confidence. For example, you want to be able to speak about First Call Resolution, Service Level Agreement Compliance, Root Cause Analysis and Customer Satisfaction Surveys with authority and competence to prod and poke at vendors. It is important to show vendors that you understand the latest best practices and industry trends, so you can make sure that they have evolved their products.

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about help desk and customer service best practices.

Are Funds Approved and Set Aside?

The #2 Key Point we discuss in the "Winning Strategies for Purchasing IT Help Desk and Customer Service Software or Cloud Computing" webinar is encouraging people to quickly determine if funds are approved and set aside.

It is important before spending a lot of time on the project to meet with your CFO and ask a lot of questions about project funding approval. The only activity you should be doing before discussing funding approval is determining if check signers have any pain points.

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about how to determine if funds are approved and set aside.

Cloud Computing for IT Help Desk & Customer Service/Support

The #1 Key Point we discuss in the "Winning Strategies for Purchasing IT Help Desk and Customer Service Software or Cloud Computing" webinar is to determine if check signers have significant pain.

Initially, your most important responsibility is to determine the pain level throughout your organization that is caused by not having an appropriate IT help desk or customer service call tracking application. Perhaps your company does not have an application, or the application you are using is not providing all the benefits that you desire.

It is critical to understand the pain points from the perspective of senior leaders such the CIO/ IT Director or VP/Director of Customer Service.

There are generally the four main sources of pain points for check signers:

• Lack of granular KPIs/metrics/reporting
• Check signers need to know, "Who Should I Reward, Warn or Terminate?"
• Labor intensiveness is painful
• Large annual support and maintenance fees are painful

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about how to determine if Check Signers have significant pain.

Business Case to Replace FrontRange HEAT

A top 100 law firm was looking to significantly lower costs and increase attorney satisfaction with the IT help desk. Giva assisted the firm in highlighting pain points that check signers were living with because they did not know of a superior solution at a lower cost. Giva assisted this law firm in building a business case to replace FrontRange HEAT. After Giva helped highlight check signer pain, a 30-day production pilot was approved, and thereafter, the firm purchased the cloud-based Giva Service Management Suite™ to replace FrontRange HEAT.

It is critical to understand the pain points from the perspective of check signers such as the Executive Director/COO/ CIO/ IT Director. In over a decade of experience engaging with customers, Giva has found that there must be strong, deep and very significant pain that check signers feel in order to motivate them to sign a check for a new IT help desk application purchase.

Summary of Business Results with Giva

• Check signers can now access to real-time KPIs/Metrics/Reports, Dashboards and "Broadcasts" with an easy-to-use interface
• "Report Guru" is no longer required. Any IT person can access the reports they need.
• Annual cost for Giva is significantly less than FrontRange HEAT
• Eliminated a production server, a test environment, and expensive database licenses
• Significantly reduced ongoing hard dollar and soft labor costs for "care and feeding" of FrontRange HEAT
• Knowledge base and FAQ increased first call resolution and was also exposed to the attorneys/staff for self-help
• Giva access anytime, anywhere in the world with just a web browser. No client software required.
• IT infrastructure changes are now funneled through a formal approval cycle
• IT infrastructure changes are now highly visibility across IT departments
• Attorneys/staff can view "Broadcasts" of major outages
• Outside service vendors are tracked with respond and resolve service level agreements (SLAs)
• Single call tracking system with independent service desks for each service departments: IT, Library, Conflicts, Facilities, Copy Center, etc.
• After 9 months, a knowledge base increased first call resolution from 60% to 82%
• After 12 months, attorney satisfaction increase from 3.1 to 4.3, or approximately a 38% increase.
• After 6 months, since IT change requests now required approval, coordination and documentation, infrastructure outages decreased by 29% without purchasing any new hardware or software

Click "Download White Paper" to read more about how a Top 100 Law Firm replaced FrontRange HEAT with Giva Cloud Computing.

Do Check Signer Have Significant Pain?

Initially, your most important responsibility is to determine the pain level throughout your organization that is caused by not having an appropriate IT help desk or customer service call tracking application. Perhaps your company does not have an application, or the application you are using is not providing all the benefits that you desire.

It is critical to understand the pain points from the perspective of senior leaders such the CIO/ IT Director or VP/Director of Customer Service. In over a decade of experience engaging with customers, Giva has found that there must be strong, deep and very significant pain that senior leaders feel in order to motivate them to sign a check for a new help desk or customer service application purchase. This has always been the case, even before the late 2008 economic crisis. However, even as the economy is turning around, this is still the case. There is a "new normal" in business that dictates careful analysis and justification when spending money for software purchases.

Your best chance of getting your project approved is with the following approach. Document the pain points of the check signers. Share these pain points with vendors and make sure that they can solve the pain and not cause other pain. For example, your reporting problems may be solved, but the price point of the new call tracking solution may not be affordable.

Giva's data centers are SAS 70 certified. Is your SaaS IT help desk or customer service vendor?

SAS 70 (the Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70) defines the standards an auditor must employ in order to assess the contracted internal controls of a service organization. Service organizations, such as hosted data centers, insurance claims processors and credit processing companies, provide outsourcing services that affect the operation of the contracting enterprise. The SAS 70 was developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) as a simplification of a set of criteria for auditing standards originally defined in 1988.

Under SAS 70, auditor reports are classified as either Type I or Type II. In a Type I report, the auditor evaluates the efforts of a service organization at the time of audit to prevent accounting inconsistencies, errors and misrepresentation. The auditor also evaluates the likelihood that those efforts will produce the desired future results. A Type II report includes the same information as that contained in a Type I report; in addition, the auditor attempts to determine the effectiveness of agreed-on controls since their implementation. Type II reports also incorporate data compiled during a specific time period, usually a minimum of six months.

SAS 70 reports are commissioned at the request of either a service organization (the company) or the user organization (customers). It is in the service organization's best interests to provide consistent service auditor's reports. Positive independent reports build a customer's trust and confidence in the service organization and satisfy any concerns. Furthermore, Type II reports identify any operational areas that need improvement. A lack of current reports, on the other hand, may generate multiple audit requests from the user organization and these audits can be costly for the service organization.

Click for more information on Giva's SAS 70 certified data centers

We are talking about how to start your organization down the path of creating a knowledge base for

You will need a knowledge base process-change management plan because you are asking people to do their jobs differently. The plan specifies how you will gain acceptance of knowledge management within the organization. Let us say you are a service desk manager and you measure your employees by call handling time and number of cases closed. Now you are going to be asking them to use knowledgebase on every call they take, every e-mail they answer, and so you are asking them to change the way they earn their living on a day-to-day basis. You are going to also ask them to share their knowledge through creating knowledge records. If you do not also make changes to their performance reviews and compensation, then there will be friction because you're asking them to do one thing but you are judging them by another set of rules. As part of the overall plan you need to update job descriptions, feedback sessions and performance reviews to reflect the new workflow. Neglecting to make these changes is likely to create friction.

See http://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software.htm for Screen shots and Report examples.

See http://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software.htm for a White Paper on Knowledge Base ROI.

Knowledge Management is a discipline

Many people think knowledge management is just software but it is much more than that; knowledge management is a discipline.

Knowledge Management is a discipline that takes a comprehensive, systematic approach to the information assets of an organization by identifying, capturing, collecting, organizing, indexing, storing, integrating, retrieving and sharing them. Such assets include (a) the explicit knowledge such as databases, documents, environmental knowledge, policies, procedures and organizational culture; and (b) the tacit knowledge of its employees, their expertise and their practical work experience. It strives to make the collective knowledge information and experience of the organization available to individual employees for their use and to motivate them to contribute their knowledge to the collective assets.

See http://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software.htm for Screen shots and Report examples.

See http://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software.htm for a White Paper on Knowledge Base ROI.

What are the Challenges of Knowledge base?

• Getting employees on board
• Not allowing technology to dictate KM
• Having a specific business goal
• Realizing that KM is not static and constantly needs care
• Knowing that not all information is knowledge

Knowledge Management is not a technology. It is a methodology.

See http://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software.htm for Screen shots and Report examples.

See http://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software.htm for a White Paper on Knowledge Base ROI.

Unfortunately, there is no universal definition of knowledge management (KM), just as there is no agreement as to what constitutes knowledge in the first place. For this reason, it is best to think of KM in the broadest context. KM is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Most often, generating value from such assets involves sharing them among employees, departments and even with other companies in an effort to create best practices. KM is not technology. It is a process. IT often facilitates KM.

What benefits can companies expect from KM?

Some benefits of KM correlate directly to bottom-line savings, while others are more difficult to quantify. In today's information-driven economy, companies uncover the most opportunities — and ultimately derive the most value — from intellectual rather than physical assets. To get the most value from a company's intellectual assets, KM practitioners maintain that knowledge must be shared and serve as the foundation for collaboration. Yet, better collaboration is not an end in itself. Consequently, an effective KM program should help a company do one or more of the following:

+ Foster innovation by encouraging the free flow of ideas

+ Improve customer service by streamlining response time

+ Boost revenues by getting products and services to market faster

+ Enhance employee retention rates by recognizing the value of employees' knowledge and rewarding them for it

+ Streamline operations and reduce costs by eliminating redundant or unnecessary processes

These are just some relevant examples. A creative approach to KM can result in improved efficiency, higher productivity and increased revenues in practically any business function.

See http://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software.htm for Screen shots and Report examples.

See http://www.givainc.com/knowledge-base-software.htm for a White Paper on Knowledge Base ROI.

Who should I reward, who should I warn and who should I terminate?

C level executives focus on leverage points to make changes or influence that have a high payback for every unit of effort and time. Said another way..they want a big bang for buck of their efforts so they look for high leverage activities that have a big impact.

If you run an internal IT help desk….for example, a law firm or a hospital or other technology driven entity..…you have significant influence on the productivity of other internal people that the company pays a lot of money to show up every day and produce and generate revenue.…that's a leverage point.

If you run a customer service operation ….you have a lot of influence whether customers will buy more products/services…it's a leverage point. Anybody your company lets talk to customers is the face of the company and in a very influential position. Sure sales people generate revenue but customer service folks keep the customers coming back with their checkbooks….or not coming back.

C levels want well-oiled machines…and they know that the only way to achieve this is to have the absolute most talented employees.  The best and brightest leaders are fair and decent people. They want to reward, warn and terminate using objective data (i.e. metrics), but they rarely get it because it's often too hard to get this kind of information quickly from call tracking systems.

See examples of the kind of information that you can use to reward, warn and terminate:

IT Help Desk Reports with Metrics, Business Analytics & Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

or

Customer Service/Call Center Reports with Metrics, Business Analytics & Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)