Who wants to lose? Nobody - that’s why a win-win resolution is so important. The same applies to the contradicting goals in the service chain. On one hand, every customer is important and we must make sure to handle as many requests as possible. On the other hand – we must not break the cost effectiveness of our operation – handling requests in a costly manner would have serious consequences. So how do we find the “golden path” – how can we have a win-win situation so that both our cost and customer satisfaction are met? In the following clip you can see Michael Scott’s way of finding a win-win-win resolution J http://www.clearspring.com/widgets/4727a250e66f9723?p=48624a3a3ed156a6.
Some may say – find a compromise: don’t handle tasks that are costly (for example). But is a compromise as good as a win-win? Surely it isn’t? A compromise will not give a reasonable solution since it does not make any side ‘happy’. In a compromise, all sides of the equation lose face – the goal is not met as it should be. As opposed to a compromise, a win-win resolution finds the way to reach both sides’ goals, without losing face.
So how is this done? There are several known ways of how to obtain such a situation. You can find a systematic way in here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporating_Cloud . But let’s go back to our service chain. How do we find a win-win solution to the problem of handling cost effectiveness as well as customer satisfaction? Come to think of it, there are many more goals within the service optimization challenge – how can we find this “golden path”? This is what the Optimizer is for. The Optimizer does not look for compromise. Instead it follows all the objectives of the service, making sure that none loses face. Only by rechecking again and again that all of the objectives are satisfied, do we find this hidden path, this win-win situation.
Author: Omer Meshar
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
How can an LCD Screen Increase your Productivity?
One of the major steps toward improving your service delivery process is gaining visibility of the daily field operations.The step after that (the one that makes the financial difference) is being able to smartly act upon this information in real time.
I recently had the privilege to witness the value of VISIBILITY up close, while implementing a hosted solution at a large Utility company in the U.S.
I recently had the privilege to witness the value of VISIBILITY up close, while implementing a hosted solution at a large Utility company in the U.S.
You would not believe what a difference an LCD monitor with live scheduling information can make to a dispatch center. 
During the first morning of implementation, the LCD screen was switched on and people were watching the news and weather updates.
During the first morning of implementation, the LCD screen was switched on and people were watching the news and weather updates.
During the course of the day, the channel was switched and the screen showed the ClickSchedule Client. At first nobody other than the dispatchers understood what they were looking at.
The screen started to attract more attention and supervisors began to ask if they could see his/her team’s current location.
This prompted a chain of events as the supervisors started to pick up the phone and fire out instructions in order to make the day more efficient.
The screen started to attract more attention and supervisors began to ask if they could see his/her team’s current location.
This prompted a chain of events as the supervisors started to pick up the phone and fire out instructions in order to make the day more efficient.
One of the dispatchers said "Hey, this is unbelievable! If I want to know if one of the jobs is in danger of missing the commitment date, all I have to do is look up at that monitor and see if I have a jeopardy alert highlighted in Red".
The crews coming back at the end of the day (15:30) could view how many jobs they had completed and how many were left incomplete. The visibility to the other crews performance prompted a completion rate race to see who would complete more jobs.
How incredible is that benefit for the price of one LCD monitor?
Author: Uri Pintov
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The Coping Zone – Why does utilization affect field engineering performance?
A few years ago, I had the pleasure of managing a UK-wide field service operation with around 100 engineers and some sub-contractors providing IT hardware break-fix services to corporate customers. Typical engineering activities would range from replacing a failed monitor, through to restoring the service of a failed network server or router. The work was all reactive, with response times, fix times, and first-time completion rates being primary success factors.
Daily measurements of the service operation were holistic – not just focusing on engineer utilization but also on productivity (how many jobs completed per day), efficiency (time taken to restore versus the norm), first-time completion, parts per event, and the number of visits per event. This way, monitoring how the performance of one measurement affects the others is transparent.
What was interesting to note was how the engineers’ workloads directly affected the total service quality. It’s easy to imagine that engineers with an excessively high utilization may generate a deterioration – too many jobs, engineers rushing to get through the workload, more parts used than necessary to save time but increasing costs instead of accurate diagnostics – and this is visible through the metrics. For example, high utilization (busy engineers), high productivity (busy engineers), low efficiency (not fixing the fault), increased parts per event (replace everything to get the customer restored instead of diagnosing the cause), reduced first time fix rate (engineers rushing to get through the workload and not resolving the fault correctly), and an associated downturn in customer satisfaction. The engineers are not coping with the high workload.
There’s probably no surprises there so the aim is to try and plan the number of engineers, their availability, and geographic dispersal so that a reliable, regular, and good level of service is delivered.
That’s easier said than done. Now consider this, you have planned for a certain volume of work (remember, it’s all reactive work so forecast accuracy is another challenge that’s thrown in here) but today you have enough work for just half of the engineers. So there’s low utilization, the engineers have time to operate without the pressures of being overloaded. But the same thing happens – service quality suffers because now the engineers can take too much time to resolve a simple fault, there’s no adrenalin to ‘get it done’ and move on to the next job: “I only have one more job today, so what’s the rush”? The engineers are coping too easily with the low workload – are they becoming lazy?
So how do we manage this? Too-high and too-low utilization can both harm service quality – there’s a happy and efficient medium to be found. But where and how? Let’s discuss...
Author: Stewart Hill
Daily measurements of the service operation were holistic – not just focusing on engineer utilization but also on productivity (how many jobs completed per day), efficiency (time taken to restore versus the norm), first-time completion, parts per event, and the number of visits per event. This way, monitoring how the performance of one measurement affects the others is transparent.
What was interesting to note was how the engineers’ workloads directly affected the total service quality. It’s easy to imagine that engineers with an excessively high utilization may generate a deterioration – too many jobs, engineers rushing to get through the workload, more parts used than necessary to save time but increasing costs instead of accurate diagnostics – and this is visible through the metrics. For example, high utilization (busy engineers), high productivity (busy engineers), low efficiency (not fixing the fault), increased parts per event (replace everything to get the customer restored instead of diagnosing the cause), reduced first time fix rate (engineers rushing to get through the workload and not resolving the fault correctly), and an associated downturn in customer satisfaction. The engineers are not coping with the high workload.
There’s probably no surprises there so the aim is to try and plan the number of engineers, their availability, and geographic dispersal so that a reliable, regular, and good level of service is delivered.
That’s easier said than done. Now consider this, you have planned for a certain volume of work (remember, it’s all reactive work so forecast accuracy is another challenge that’s thrown in here) but today you have enough work for just half of the engineers. So there’s low utilization, the engineers have time to operate without the pressures of being overloaded. But the same thing happens – service quality suffers because now the engineers can take too much time to resolve a simple fault, there’s no adrenalin to ‘get it done’ and move on to the next job: “I only have one more job today, so what’s the rush”? The engineers are coping too easily with the low workload – are they becoming lazy?
So how do we manage this? Too-high and too-low utilization can both harm service quality – there’s a happy and efficient medium to be found. But where and how? Let’s discuss...
Author: Stewart Hill
Friday, August 8, 2008
Olympic performance-enhancing technology
The city of Beijing will swell from 15 million residents to 22 million inhabitants during the 2008 Olympics.
Therein lies perhaps the Olympics’ greatest challenge. CNC China, the city’s largest fixed line voice and data communications provider, must ensure seven million Olympics “customers” (athletes, coaches, officials, Olympics staff and spectators), along with more than 10 million existing Beijing customers, have reliable voice, broadband, video transmission and Internet service from Aug. 8 through Aug. 24.
CNC China will deploy and manage around 1,600 field technicians with different installation, maintenance and repair skills and special passes to get into each of nearly 60 venues to address problems quickly and ensure maximum uptime. Think that’s not a logistical challenge? What happens if video transmission stops in the middle of the 100 meter dash final? The Chinese government, which seems to have zero tolerance for event performance issues, would not be happy.
To help solve the scheduling nightmare, CNC China is using ClickSoftware’s automated workforce optimization technology to ensure the right technician with the right skills, parts and venue pass goes to the right job at the right time.
Therein lies perhaps the Olympics’ greatest challenge. CNC China, the city’s largest fixed line voice and data communications provider, must ensure seven million Olympics “customers” (athletes, coaches, officials, Olympics staff and spectators), along with more than 10 million existing Beijing customers, have reliable voice, broadband, video transmission and Internet service from Aug. 8 through Aug. 24.
CNC China will deploy and manage around 1,600 field technicians with different installation, maintenance and repair skills and special passes to get into each of nearly 60 venues to address problems quickly and ensure maximum uptime. Think that’s not a logistical challenge? What happens if video transmission stops in the middle of the 100 meter dash final? The Chinese government, which seems to have zero tolerance for event performance issues, would not be happy.
To help solve the scheduling nightmare, CNC China is using ClickSoftware’s automated workforce optimization technology to ensure the right technician with the right skills, parts and venue pass goes to the right job at the right time.
To learn some more about how mobile workforce management and optimization technology is keeping the Olympic Games running to schedule check out http://www.clicksoftware.com/company/news.asp?display=detail&id=257
Author: Simon Morris
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Does your company have a “service failure point"?
I usually hear the phrase “failure point” (or some variation) in the context of equipment (e.g. government communications); but recently I came across a company that applied it [conceptually] to their business. Like most companies in the private sector, they were hoping for growth – and they were succeeding in strong double-digits, with service leading the way. So what was keeping their executives awake at night? It was their service operation’s single failure point…the field resources.
I’ll try to define the “service failure point” within this context.The time at which a company’s service operation is unable to consistently respond to their customers’ satisfaction for the typical volume of work.
At this time, the backlog starts to grow, which further exacerbates the problem, resulting in even more unsatisfactory response to customers. If this trend continues over time (how much time depends on your customers), then customers will start to leave. Not surprisingly, they may leave in sufficient numbers to bring the workload to levels below the capacity of the workforce – which then results in idle time. And with the lost revenues, now we have to cut back the workforce – again impacting response for even those customers that remain.
And so goes the “spiral of death” for the service organization, and maybe the company. Is it possible to recover? I’m sure, but I imagine it must be difficult and set a company’s strategic growth plan back by years. It makes me wonder if we might find service companies that were once growth leaders, and now are struggling after following this pattern. If so, learning from these examples may enable us to find the right balance and best way to ensure that our company’s growth doesn’t exceed our service organization’s ability to deliver – at least by too much.
By the way, a search on Google for “service failure point” brings up interesting articles describing “service failure” in another different, but very interesting context.
Author: Mike Karlskind
I’ll try to define the “service failure point” within this context.The time at which a company’s service operation is unable to consistently respond to their customers’ satisfaction for the typical volume of work.
At this time, the backlog starts to grow, which further exacerbates the problem, resulting in even more unsatisfactory response to customers. If this trend continues over time (how much time depends on your customers), then customers will start to leave. Not surprisingly, they may leave in sufficient numbers to bring the workload to levels below the capacity of the workforce – which then results in idle time. And with the lost revenues, now we have to cut back the workforce – again impacting response for even those customers that remain.
And so goes the “spiral of death” for the service organization, and maybe the company. Is it possible to recover? I’m sure, but I imagine it must be difficult and set a company’s strategic growth plan back by years. It makes me wonder if we might find service companies that were once growth leaders, and now are struggling after following this pattern. If so, learning from these examples may enable us to find the right balance and best way to ensure that our company’s growth doesn’t exceed our service organization’s ability to deliver – at least by too much.
By the way, a search on Google for “service failure point” brings up interesting articles describing “service failure” in another different, but very interesting context.
Author: Mike Karlskind
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)