The article tells how in a year with the help of changing the motivation system, own application and blue insulators increased the level of customer satisfaction (CSAT, Customer Satisfaction) to 95.5%. This is a little more than planned.

Mykola Glazunov, director of customer service ispmanager, does not believe in 100% satisfied customers: “There will always be users who ask our guys the question: “Your panel is poor, why don’t you give it to everyone for free?”, “I ordered a washing machine yesterday, why they haven’t brought it yet?”, “Can you buy a TV from us?”. All these are real examples of tickets. Sometimes we even think of partnering with a household appliance retailer…”

Problem: Just close the ticket

Technical support is often a competitive advantage of a product. And when ispmanager became an independent company in 2022 and started developing one main product, we decided to figure out how to increase the level of customer satisfaction.

To begin with, a survey was conducted among those customers who contacted technical support. Approximately 9,000 users were surveyed.

Then I saw that the technical support specialists did not understand why they were doing something. It seemed that their goal was not to help the customer understand the problem, but to remove responsibility from themselves: “We see that you have a problem, but it does not apply to our product.”

Here is an analysis of the results of the early 2023 user survey.

Reasons for customer negativity:

73% – technical support errors. They can be technical, communication, or related to a lack of proactivity — a sincere desire to understand the user’s problem.

14% – “other”. This is when customers ask something like: “Can we buy a TV?” or “Why your product sucks.”

13% – errors in the product and the absence of some features. Information about these errors and requests for new features is forwarded to development.

We set the following task:

Figure out how to motivate technical support engineers to go beyond the prescribed duties and solve the user’s problem. As a rule, it is necessary to find out what is happening on the server, how the services connected with the panel work and what is going wrong.

Solution: we create motivation to solve the user’s problem

At the end of 2022, we set a goal to increase the level of customer satisfaction from 93% to 95%. This is what was done to minimize risks and prevent failures, and not to react to what has already happened.

We have created a base for changes The first thing that comes to mind is to introduce KPIs and pay for their implementation. But the problem is that these indicators are often illogical, and their performance is evaluated subjectively. As long as this is the case, it will not be possible to motivate engineers with money and goals – salary increases, bonuses and strict KPIs.

First of all, people should understand:

• what is our main goal

• what to do

• where to get information

• where to go if something doesn’t go according to plan.

In six months, we created:

• A clear description of business processes and a scheme of actions.

• Employee training programs.

• Established interaction with other departments — where to go in an urgent situation, when the issue is not supported by technical support. For example, if people come with suggestions for product development or want to clarify something with the sales department.

• A convenient tool for support work is a ticket office and a communication system within the department.

Now they could already raise salaries, allocate a premium part and introduce KPIs.

Technical support efficiency indicators were discussed. Indicators are not nailed down – we started with one, tested during the case, changed something, tweaked it. For example, it was immediately obvious that the most important thing for our customers is not an instant response — for example, in the first 5 minutes after the request. Its quality is most important. Although now we give the first response to 67% of tickets within 30 minutes. In 87% – within an hour. 66% of tickets are closed within an hour – from the first request to the final response.

The payment system has been changed. To motivate people to take the necessary actions, we made 30% of the engineers’ salary a bonus part. The bonus is multiplied by the KPI and can be zero or 120%.

Transparent calculation of KPIs was introduced. To solve the problem of transparent KPI calculation, we created our own QA-module tool. We know about twenty similar programs abroad, but they are not very common in Russia.

Ready-made solutions did not suit us – they lacked flexibility. For example, it was not possible to change the rating card or connect other departments to the ticket rating. That’s why they got busy with their own development.

How ispmanager’s QA module is arranged

How does it work? The program pulls tickets, calls and chats from the ispmanager technical support ticket system through the API and passes them on to administrators for evaluation. This is a quality control engineer and employees from other departments of the company – you can connect anyone if necessary. We evaluate tickets according to a list of criteria, and the program considers KPI.

Roles:

1. Administrator – Quality control engineer. Gives tasks an estimate, helps in working with the application and collects monthly statistics.

2. Coach – Evaluates the work of technical support engineers. Trainers can be employees of various departments of any qualification.

   For example, we attract:

   ✓ Top managers. This is how we solved many misunderstandings between departments and were able to adjust the work of technical support as close as possible to the expectations of the business.

   ✓ Developers – they see how people use the panel, what problems they face. This helps them understand how to make ispmanager more useful.

   ✓ Sales managers, they comment on the responses of the first line and help engineers to communicate proactively.

3. Technical support engineer looks at how he was evaluated, happy or sad.

4. Arbitrator — upon request, decides whether the assessment is fair. This happens if the engineer does not agree with how his actions were evaluated and submits a request for arbitration to the team. An arbitrator is appointed and analyzes the disputed situation.

Rating. Score card – a set of pre-formulated questions. The coach receives a message with a “Start assessment” button. It answers questions, and that’s what the Technical Support Engineer’s KPI consists of.

This is what a trainer evaluation ticket looks like.

5 different technical support teams have their own assessment cards – each department has its own tasks and needs different questions for quality assessment:

• first line of technical support,

• second line of technical support,

• calls,

• online chats,

• paid administration services.

In general, the QA module can have as many score cards as you like, and they can be customized for narrow tasks. If you wish, you can even tie it to the tags in the ticket box.

Questions for quality assessment. The questions are formulated as transparently as possible for all parties. Engineers know them in advance – they perform work based on evaluation criteria.

There are answer options for each question:

• “Yes” is the maximum mark.

• “No” is the minimum rating.

• “Not at all” is the average value of the assessment.

• N/A – excludes the weight of the question from the total score and recalculates the points.

The system asks the coach for a comment if the answer is “No” or “Not at all” – and those who evaluate must write what exactly is wrong. Although the module can be configured in other ways.

Evaluation of ten tickets per week takes approximately 20-30 minutes. Coaches with little experience have even less – they write less voluminous comments.

The engineer receives estimates with comments by mail the same day they appear.

The final table shows the calculation of KPIs for technical support engineers. It is convenient that the data is filtered for any period, and employees can see the evaluation of their work at any time.

The questions in the scorecards are prescribed by the administrator — the questions and their weight can be easily changed.

Learn more about the QA module in its documentation →

Result

We send contacts for feedback to each client after the ticket is closed. Usually, up to 15% of customers leave feedback. Our users respond more than 40% of the time. At the end of 2023, we found that the technical support rating increased from 93 to 95.5% over the year.

A year ago, the tickets were not processed due to the fact that service was refused or the reasons for the events were not known. Now we have the causes of negativity connected, so to speak, with human inattention.

The main result was a quick feedback from the work of technical support engineers.

Helped:

• Clear goals to which KPIs are tied.

• The QA-module is a toolkit that provided a transparent assessment of the actions of technical support engineers.

This happened because ispmanager already had a base for changes:

• Business processes and schemes of actions are clearly described.

• Employee training programs.

• Established interaction with other departments – where to go in an urgent situation, when the problem is not on the side of technical support.

• A convenient tool for support work is a ticket office and a communication system within the department.

Without this base, the process would take longer.

How the QA module helped

The app is just the tool that finalized the effort and helped motivate our support engineers to actually want to help customers.

Everything worked because technical support built the system, and then continued to fine-tune it: we selected questions for our goals, corrected them, and analyzed errors. This is not a one-time job, and we continue it.

The QA module provided:

The speed of the reaction to the change of the goal. For example, sooner or later it became clear that the scorecard question “Was a workaround provided” did not reflect the client’s priorities. It was more important for people to get a detailed answer. And we raised the score several times for the question “Was a voluminous first answer to the client given.”

A person sees that his actions will be evaluated according to a certain parameter, and, accordingly, he is attracted, because the implementation of a new process directly affects money. Everything happens much faster than calling every week and explaining new goals in words.

With quick feedback through the QA module, new priorities are learned immediately – if you change the weights of the questions or the questions themselves. In a normal situation, people need several months to adjust.

Transparency. The business knows what, how and why the technical support is doing – before any of the customers come with a negative. Previously, top managers and employees of other divisions were not always aware of what technical support was doing. Now everyone can open the QA module and check.

Exchange of experience. We included top managers, sales department employees, and engineers in the assessment. We got a lot of feedback, resolved a lot of disagreements, and were able to adjust the work of technical support close to the expectations of the business. All this — for minimal labor costs.

Efficiency. Automation has freed up the quality engineer’s time, and he is now improving the training program for his colleagues.

Wanting to help users is good, but not enough. More knowledge is needed to understand what the problem really is. Therefore, another task we solved was how to help engineers grow professionally. For example, to understand what is happening on the server, how services interrelated with the panel work — to help people, even if the problem is not on the side of ispmanager.

Here, the new KPI system and QA module helped only indirectly. If the job criterion is whether the customer is satisfied, the QA module helps to see whether the support engineer really wanted to help.

Technical support engineers were most motivated to learn by the internal grading system and examples of colleagues who grew and achieved their career goals.

We will talk about how the internal system of training and grades is organized in the second part of the article.