SESSION 403
Thursday, March 26, 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Track: Support Center Optimization
Our Road Trip Down the Self-Service Highway
Kelly Doherty
Director of Customer Services, Gentiva Health Services
kelly.doherty@gentiva.com
Session Description
Struggling to maintain service levels and keep up with calls and emails, Gentiva Health Services overhauled its support
tools and environment, in the end becoming more efficient and cost effective. In this session, Kelly Doherty will share their
successful journey toward self-service, presenting valuable tips for the creation and maintenance of a support portal.
What are the development requirements? How do you ensure your customers and support team are comfortable
throughout the process? This session provides those answers and more! (All Experience Levels)
Speaker Background
Kelly Doherty has been working in the IT industry for more than twenty years. She has extensive experience managing
help desks and developing customer support programs in both startups and established companies. In her current
position, Kelly manages more than fifty help desk and desktop analysts and supports more than 50,000 customers
throughout the United States. She is certified in ITIL and project management (PMP), and she has found that both are
vital in the customer support role.
Kelly Doherty – Road Warrior
My Company
Over 129,000 employees;
60,000 clinical and mobile
users in the field.
Providing home health and
hospice services to over
129,000 patients a day in
680 locations
Internal Help Desk with some
support of outside physician
offices
Company was growing
and changing quickly
• Employees count from
15,000 to 50,000 overnight.
• Supported Applications grew
from 100 to over 250.
• Deployed new technology:
cellular iPads to clinical
staff: 0 to 14,000 in 13
weeks.
Key Challenges
1. Minimize hiring of
additional support staff
2. Reduce routine calls
3. Eliminate call backs for
additional information on
tickets/requests
4. Develop more automated
support processes
Our Road Trip Begins
 Vehicle we have is good
enough… “kick the tires and
head out!”
 No scenic route – quick
implementation.
 No passengers – just a driver
and mechanics along the way.
First leg of journey
First stop:
Implemented a password self-service tool
with automated user registration
Second stop:
Implemented self-service portal: only
function was the ability to enter a ticket
Pot Holes
• Bad Design: 15 days after launch, it was clear
that our tool and design were not effective.
Users were not using the tool and calls to the
Help Desk were increasing
• Confused Users: Directions were not clear or
effective on portal. Too many clicks and pulldowns
• Missing the Human Touch: Users “liked”
speaking with analysts. Anti- technology
culture - calling was easier and faster
Pulling into the Rest Stop
•
•
•
•
Kept password reset tool. Trained users when
they called how to unlock/reset in the tool
(teach to fish)
Evaluated the tools in marketplace and spent
time learning our business
Started an aggressive search for a new tool to
use on our trip.
Implemented new ITSM tool
What is Self-Service 1.0
Kelly’s Definition: “Anything that can reduce workload
of tier 1 - Help Desk”
• Password reset: Users able to unlock/reset passwords
• On-line Knowledge Base with solutions
• Service Portal – “single pane of glass” - users can:
– enter tickets
– track ticket status
• On-line web chat
• Remote Support/co-browsing
Self-Service 2.0 (what’s next?)
• Social collaborations: “peer to peer” support,
blogs
• Store: ability to download software, drivers,
documentation, patches, install printers
• Genius Bar: schedule an appointment
• Quick Self Health Check: diagnosis of
workstation issues
• Enterprise Request Management (ERM)
Why Self-Service?
1. Reduce routine calls to Help Desk, support
non-routine issues faster
2. Cost Savings – personnel is 85% of Help Desk
costs – do more with less
3. “Consumerization” of support– the Amazon
Effect (users are looking for this)
4. Ability to scale support – increase to 7 X 24
availability
Support Channel Costs
Support Channel Costs
$4
Self Service
$8
Auto-logging
$16
Walk ups
$22
Help Desk Calls
$0
$5
$10
$15
$20
$25
Cost metrics based on Gartner and HDI
reports/analysis
Shifting Focus Left
$450
Support Ticket Costs
$400
$350
$250
$120
$150
$62
$50
$5
$22
-$50
 Shift away from higher cost support tiers
 Tools in market today make this feasible and possible
 “Consumerization” is enabling support organizations to
move away from high touch
“Shifting Left” into the fast lane with Self Service 2.0”
article in Support World by John Sundberg (Jan/Feb 2015
issue)
Back on the Road
• Defined Purpose of journey.
• Simplify: Started with most frequent,
routine issues with quick impact.
• Passengers: Selected business support team
members to act as consultants.
• Skilled Driver: Leader to help direct and
push project through.
Navigators
• We involved the business users in
determining where we “could go”
• Asked for Feedback: Performed explorations
on what was possible, “desired” and “must
have” aspects of portal
• Moved in the same direction: Incentive Plan
for users – get users on the trip
Mapping the journey
 Picked the Route: where do we
want to end up?
 Define Key stops: delivery
milestones
 Select Vehicle: the right tools to
get us where we need to go
Along the Journey
Speed limit:
Make sure you understand the business’ “pace” for
self service.
Go on “rides a-longs in the field”, conduct quick
focus group sessions
Route Junctions:
When designing the user interface, provide options.
Business users are visual and need to see and
experience
Build it and they will come?
1. Market the portal. Use internal marketing team to
help
2. Add verbiage to Help Desk email signatures
3. Notification in newsletters and executive
announcements
4. Add link to portal inside applications, web pages etc.
5. Advertise site in IVR
6. Contest/incentives – “gamification”
7. Provide faster SLAs for self-service requests than
other support channels
Our Self-Service 1.0
Self-Service Results
• Developed concept of “Touch-less” tickets
– 1,200 touch-less tickets per month
• Tickets have all information needed to take
action – REDUCE CALL BACKS!
• Tickets auto-routed to business areas (HR,
Payroll and Purchasing)
Savings… 1 year later
• 20-30% of all tickets are submitted via SelfService portal
• 12% of tickets submitted are NEVER touched
by Help Desk team
– Monthly savings of over $26,400 @ $22 per ticket
– Saved 1.5 FTE Help Desk and .5 FTE Purchasing
• Reduce time to resolve by over 3 minutes per
ticket
• Annual Savings of $350,000 and growing
Self-Service discoveries
• Use language your user understands
• Give users choices; some can solve issues
themselves, others prefer to speak to an analyst,
engage in a web chat or enter their own tickets
• Test with a pilot group. Ensure portal design is
customer friendly
• Survey users to determine tool effectiveness
• Incent users
Lessons from the Road
Lesson #1
IT Self-Service is a one time investment.
Reality: IT self service requires constant
care and feeding
Lessons from the Road
Lesson #2
End users will flock to self-service
Reality: End user acceptance varies greatly and
evolves over time
Lessons from the Road
Lesson #3
IT Self-Service is “easy” to implement
Reality: The right tools and processes are a
prerequisite for successful implementation
Lesson from the Road
Lesson #4
IT Self-Service reduces costs
Reality: IT Self-Service will reduce level 1 support
costs …AND provide additional benefits:




improved customer satisfaction
trend analysis
training opportunities
knowledge collection
Are we there yet?
NO!
• Developing Genius Bar – schedule time with
our desktop engineers
• Peer to peer support pages
• Change written knowledge articles to short
how to on-line videos (1-2 minutes)
“All you need is the plan, the road map, and the
courage to press on to your destination.”
Earl Nightingale
“Nobody travels on the road to success without
a puncture or two.”
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Thank you for attending this session.
Don’t forget to complete an
evaluation form!
Self-Service Functional Requirements
Criteria
Self-Service Portal
Ability to customize self-service portal with company logos,
style sheets etc.
Ability to provide a customizable self-service portal with
access to key self service tools such as knowledge base
articles, documentation library, job aides, FAQs.
Ability to enter and submit service requests with form edits,
customizable instructions and transactional pop
ups/cautions and alerts.
Ability to check status of submitted service requests.
Ability to customize data presented such as journal notes,
owning team, key contact for ticket, etc. Ability to reopen
or escalate a ticket.
Customizeable self service interface for ordering services
and other IT related equipment and functions with easy
look and feel. Option to apply cost for certain key services
or products.
Abilty to route tickets entered into self servcie protal for
approval. Ability to alert user on routing path.
Abiity to see all requests awaiting approvals. Ability to
approve requests inside portal. Ability see all details
inside request needing approval
Ability to display knowledgebase with functionality to
perform search using keywords, sentances.
Ability to display and edit a news flash alert/message
Bulletin board functionality alerting on major problems,
planned or unplanned outages and key technical
changes/instructions, Ability to search on alerts. Ability to
set expirations on alerts
Ability to interface portal to key system such as call center
statics (agent availability, number of tickets submitted, hold
time, average resolution rate etc)
Vendor
Response/Rating
Comments/Notes
Rating Scores (1 low, 5 high)
Ability to customize the classification of end users into
specific groups such as lines of business, VIP, mobile,
Sales etc., and to tailor presented content, information and
self-service options according to rule-based "subscriptions"
for roles or groups
Ability to integrate chat into self-service portal
Ability to support multiple languages
Ability to support Web browser clients and Web services
Ability to be client aware for mobile devcies
Direct API access with application integration methods
supported.
Self Service portal is easy to administer
Ability to provide a list of most common FAQs searched,
with automated updates based on FAQ utilization
Ability to support single sign-on
Total Score
# Criteria
Average Self-Service Portal Score
0
17
#DIV/0!
Surveys
Ability to provide dashboard like real time reporting on
survey responses
Ability to compose a survey that scores various aspects of
the service provided
Ability to alert on negative or key responses received from
surveys
Ability to send out an e-mail/link to customer satisfaction
survey to a customer requesting feedback on support
Ability to generate scores received from a survey activity
Ability to track negative survey follow ups and report on
findings.
Ability to determine current survey response rates
Total Score
# Criteria
Average Survey Score
Reporting
Ability to report on self service usage and specific site hits
for transactional analysis
0
7
#DIV/0!
Ability todevelop custom usage reports ie. usage by end
user, geograhpic location, line of business/department etc.
Total Score
# Criteria
Average Self-Service Reporting Score
Scoring
0
2
#DIV/0!
1
2
3
4
5