Customer Care &
Fault Management
UOW IACT418/918 Spring 2001
Bob Brown
Overview
Service success and customer satisfaction comes
from the benefits that the enterprise is constantly
able to provide to its customers, including design
and features of its products and services, quality,
service-courtesy, friendliness, having what the
customer needs when needed – and image.
Value is real, and hard-won: it is not created by
advertising campaigns or hype…
Hilmer (1989)
Customer Needs
Service should be determined by customers’ wants
& needs. Therefore, all enterprises must research
and understand:
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Which products, services and service characteristics are
important to the customer
The relative importance of these customer wants
The level of performance on each product and service
characteristic which will meet customer expectations
Without a clear understanding of these, there will be
a ‘gap’ between customer expectations and the
products/services delivered by the enterprise
Cost of service failure
Costs much more than the loss of just one customer
Technical Assistance Research Program (TARP)
(Clemmer 1992) results indicate that a dissatisfied
customer tells 16 others, whereas a satisfied
customer only tells 8 others!
The original customer who wont return
Potential customers lost because the original customer
told them how dissatisfied they were
Potential customers NOT gained because the original
customer didn’t tell them how satisfied they were
Total customers lost from ONE unhappy customer
Clemmer 1992
1
16
8
25
Customer service gaps
Expected service
Customer
Company
Perceived service
Service delivery
Customer-driven
service designs and standards
Company perceptions of
Customer expectations
Source: Zeithaml (1996)
External
communications
to customers
Gap 1:
Customer & Company expectations of service
Expected service
Customer
Perceived service
Company
Service delivery
Customer-driven
service designs and standards
Company perceptions of
Customer expectations
Source: Zeithaml (1996)
External
communications
to customers
Gap 1:
Customer & Company expectations of service
Inadequate marketing research orientation

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Insufficient market research
Research not focussed on service quality
Inadequate use of market research
Lack of upward communication

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Lack of interaction between management and customers
Insufficient communication between contact employees and
managers
Too many layers between contact employees and upper management
Insufficient relationship focus

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Lack of market segmentation
Focus on transaction rather than relationships
Focus on new customers rather than relationship customers
Gap 2:
Customer & Company standards of service
Expected service
Customer
Perceived service
Company
Service delivery
Customer-driven
service designs and standards
Company perceptions of
Customer expectations
Source: Zeithaml (1996)
External
communications
to customers
Gap 2:
Customer & Company standards of service
Absence of customer-driven standards
 Lack of customer driven service standards
 Absence of process management to focus on customer
requirements
 Absence of formal process for setting service quality goals
Inadequate leadership
 Perception of infeasibility
 Inadequate management commitment
Poor service design
 Unsystematic new service development process
 Vague undefined service designs
 Failure to connect service design to service positioning
Gap 3:
Customer standards & delivered service
Expected service
Customer
Perceived service
Company
Service delivery
Customer-driven
service designs and standards
Company perceptions of
Customer expectations
Source: Zeithaml (1996)
External
communications
to customers
Gap 3:
Customer standards & delivered service
Deficiencies in human resource policies

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Ineffective recruitment
Role ambiguity and role conflict
Poor employee / technology job fit
Inappropriate evaluation and compensation systems
Lack of empowerment, perceived control & teamwork
Failure to match supply and demand
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Failure to smooth peaks and valleys of demand
Inappropriate customer mix
Over-reliance on price to smooth demand
Customers not fulfilling roles

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Customers lacking knowledge of their roles and responsibilities
Customers negatively impacting each other
Gap 4:
Delivered and ‘advertised’ service
Expected service
Customer
Perceived service
Company
Service delivery
Customer-driven
service designs and standards
Company perceptions of
Customer expectations
Source: Zeithaml (1996)
External
communications
to customers
Gap 4:
Delivered and ‘advertised’ service
Ineffective management of customer expectations
 Failure to manage customer expectations through all forms of
communications
 Failure to educate customers adequately
Overpromising
 Overpromising in advertising
 Overpromising in personal selling
 Overpromising through physical evidence cues
Inadequate horizontal communications
 Insufficient communications between sales & operations
 Insufficient communications between advertising & operations
 Differences in policies and procedures across branches or units
Gap 5:
Expected and perceived service
Expected service
Customer
Perceived service
Company
Service delivery
Customer-driven
service designs and standards
Company perceptions of
Customer expectations
Source: Zeithaml (1996)
External
communications
to customers
Gap 5:
Expected and perceived service
The ‘gap’ between the service which the customer
expected and that perceived by the customer to have
been delivered.
This ‘gap’ is directly attributable to, and results
from any and all of the other four ‘gaps’.
Addressing each of the other ‘gaps’ (which the
enterprise can control) will narrow the all-important
“service gap” which is not itself directly within
enterprise control.
Service quality in telecoms
In telecommunications, there are four principal areas
where customer satisfaction can be gained or lost
Technical
Performance
Network response time
Signal to noise ratio
Call completion rate
Fault clearance time
Customer
Interface
Busy signal
Wrong numbers
Timed out before call completed
Service to the
Customer
Call answered promptly
problems dealt with on first contact
Service
Comparison
Range of products
‘Spread’ of network
FAULTS are a large factor in customer satisfaction!
Who are your customers?
What is the product/service of a network?
The Users of your network are your
customers
Sometimes the Users are internal members
of your organisation …
ie: STAFF & EMPLOYEES
Fault Management
Help desk
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Single point of contact with users
Staff trained to contact help-desk for any problems with
communications equipment
Standardised procedures & questions
Trouble ticket
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For large organisations
Allows multiple operators to action the fault
Automated fault tracking systems
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Registers trouble-tickets in a database
Fault details can be made available to managers, help-desk
staff, technicians and even users
Levels of support
Level 1: Operator who takes the call can
quickly resolve 80~85% of faults
Level 2: technicians with higher
skills/training can resolve 10~15% of
faults
Level 3: communications technical
specialists or vendor specialists resolve
the 5% most complex issues
Fault Escalation
Network management plan must include
procedures for escalating the status of a
fault
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How long has the fault remained unsolved?
How critical is the fault?
The more critical the fault,
the faster it is escalated
 Printers can be down for a day or more
 Critical servers shouldn’t be down for more than a
few minutes
Escalation procedures I
Two approaches
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Deploy additional technical resources to
assist in finding resolution
Advise users and management of the actions
being undertaken to resolve the problem
Escalation procedures II
a generic technical approach
1. Level 1 (help-desk)
pass to next level after 15 minutes
2. Level 2 (technician)
after 1 hour, advise supervisor and continue
working
3. Level 3 (appropriate network specialist)
called in after no solution in 4 hours.
Level 2 still “owns’ the fault and monitors
progress keeping user & supervisor updated
every 2 hours
Escalation procedures II
a generic managerial approach
1. After 1 hour level 2 technician advises help desk
supervisor
2. After 2 hours help desk supervisor advises network
operations supervisor
3. After 4 hours network operations supervisor advises
telecomms manager (who contacts manager of the
user’s dept. to discuss any extraordinary actions)
4. After 8 hours telecomms manager advises
appropriate senior manager to discuss longer range
plans & possible involvement of vendor
management
References
Carnegie, R. & Butlin, M. (1993) Managing the
Innovating Enterprise, Business Council of Australia,
Melbourne
Clemmer J. et al (1992) Firing on all Cylinders:
revised edition, Piatkus, London
Hilmer, F.G. (1989) Work in Competitive Industries:
New Games, New Rules, Angus & Robertson, Sydney
Rowe, S.H. (1999) Telecommunications for Managers
4th Ed., Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Zeithaml, V. (1996) Services Marketing, McGrawHill, New York