Help Desk Models Research Defining

¶ … Help Desk Models Research

Defining the characteristics of and motivations of companies looking to increase the performance of their Help Desks by expanding beyond simply the areas of a web-based portal to a more multi-channel based approach is the primary objective of this study. There is an abundance of secondary research that shows the benefits of moving beyond simply relying on a Help Desk model to one that encompasses multiple channels of support. These multiple channels include enabling web self-service, intelligent routing and real-time chat. Best practices in Help Desk support, whether staffed with personnel or completely electronic, needs to have a complimentary set of channels including Web self-service, intelligent routing, and real-time chat. Traditionalists argue that only a Help Desk is required yet there is an abundance of research showing the need for offering multiple channels of support, as they are critical for interacting with customers specifically how they want to be served. The user of Help Desk services is quite different than the one needing only intelligent routing through the use of guided solutions. The latter set of customers is becoming more pervasive as the Internet makes quick response to service requests more commonplace. There is also a growing level of recognition that the higher the gross margin generated on a given product or service, the more companies are putting trained and more senior personnel in Help Desk and service roles. In fact AMR Research has found that the more face-time and personal attention to service at the front of a sales cycle, the greater the level of corresponding personalized service during the customers' length of product ownership or service subscription (Columbus, 2001). Correspondingly, with lower-margin products and services, there is the explicit expectation that automated Help Desk and other forms of service will be used (Columbus 2001). What emerges from this research is an elasticity of service demand, with the elasticity being highly elastic in the lower-priced and lower-margin products, which equates to many alternatives being acceptable to consumers, whether they are from the consumer or business sectors. The highly inelastic nature of service at the upper end of the product and margin spectrum is driven by expectations of service aligning with the price paid. This is the area of the market where face-time invested in the beginning of a sales cycle must be kept constant, and at a high level, throughout the products' or services' life. The inelastic nature of service at the higher end of the market is one of the primary market drivers or forces for multi-channel service strategies. Revamping simply a Help Desk Model, or selecting from its many variations in terms of staffing vs. automating one, is a critical decision, yet the expansion into multiple channels of support is even more critical. The architecting, defining, and executing of a multi-channel self-service strategy building on Help Desk is the best strategy for attaining best practices across multiple industries.

As a result, that is an explicit objective of this research; to qualitatively and quantitatively show the performance of a multi-channel-based self-service strategy. This will also contribute to the current state of knowledge as to how companies are aligning their self-service strategies to align with how customers choose to interact with them.

Also in the context of this study, the concept of expanding Help Desk to self-service strategies, specifically those Web-based self-service approaches that rely on a single database or version of the truth for populating and completing all inquiries, tasks and processes.

It is critical to realize that a Help Desk is just one part of a multi-faceted and often highly effective multi-channel approach to delivering service.

The objectives of this study are to specifically focus on the following:

To define and quantify the top reasons companies choose to pursue a more multi-channel based approach to Help Desk and in the broader context, Self-Service strategies.

To validate, quantify and either support or refute the commonly held assumptions regarding the advantages and disadvantages to companies regarding the use of Help Desks, and from a broader perspective, self-service strategies that are implemented across multiple service channels.

To determine both the customer satisfaction and financial implications of a company expanding from a Help Desk model to a Self-Service Model, including the role of synchronizing all relevant information for use in responding to customers' requests.

To measure through primary, quantitative research if Help Desk models and broader self-service strategies they are part of are effective in making consumers more productive. The implicit assumption in many Help Desk strategies and the use of multi-channel-based self-service strategies implicitly make consumers more productive.

Problem definition with research questions/hypotheses

The primary problem definition is one of looking at the productivity pay-off of having more than a single Help Desk strategy for serving customers, and specifically looks to quantify a multi-channel approach to Help Desk and broader self-service models.

The initial level of research focuses on defining the unmet needs of those customers who are using only the Web Portal today. This unmet needs analysis is next used as the basis of a GAP analysis to quantify the development of a multichannel self-service strategy, of which the Help Desk will be a single component. This initial level of research specifically looks at the role of web self-service, email, chat and voice as components of the multi-channel solution.

Technology is on pace with this evolution by enabling web self-service, intelligent routing, real time chat and other similar advances.

As part of the initial problem statement and hypothesis testing the 3 C's (Customer, Competitors and Cost) will be quantified through the use of primary research, specifically focusing on how companies are using call centers and multiple support channels to address customer needs.

Companies have responded to these cost pressures by utilizing fewer agents and having them support multiple channels. This has allowed them to reduce overall expenses associated with the call center. The move to the multi-channel call center agent and a more multi-channel-based Help Desk strategy has allowed the top performing companies relying on this strategy to address the issues that their competitors are also doing it. The multi-channel call center agent has now become a competitive requirement.

Customer Satisfaction and Customer Retention are Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for any call center. They are utilized to measure the current state and any change to the existing processes. The proposed research study will quantify and trend both Customer Satisfaction and Customer Retention as part of the primary research into Help Desk users as a first phase of research, and those companies actively using Help Desk multi-channel strategies on the other.

In addition to the expansion of Help Desks into a multi-channel strategy of service and support, there are the significant technology issues relating to coordinating information across all these channels. Many industry researchers have noted that Help Desk-only strategies fail due to a lack of focus on data integration, with a direct impact on the quality of customer service delivered. This study will specifically look to quantify the predominance of home-grown or in-house systems that many companies use to support Help Desk and broader self-service strategies, and second, will look to quantify the impact of customer satisfaction, customer support costs and agent retention as it relates to having an integrated it strategy. In fact the role of it integration will make or break any integrated approach to self-service, and is the primary reason why stand-alone Help Desk operations often fail. They fail due to a lack of integration at the system level.

Taking into account all these factors as it relates to defining an initial Help Desk selection and a broader multi-channel strategy, the following hypothesis are defined:

There is significantly greater effectiveness and higher KPI performance when a Help Desk is part of a broader multi-channel-based self-service strategy.

Stand-alone Help Desk strategies are anachronistic by definition and fail to deliver the necessary level of customer service and support, and also lead to declining levels of morale and performance by call center agents and service staff.

Multi-channel-based self-service strategies where Help Desk is a component of a broader strategy are more cost effective and save on long-term customer retention costs by minimizing customer churn.

There is a statistically significant difference between those Help Desks that have integrated it platforms and those that do not. The role of data and system integration has a statistically significant effect on customer satisfaction and call closure rates due to accurate and timely data being available.

Literature review/appropriate background with primary and secondary data, theoretical basis for your proposed research project

Throughout the last fifteen years there has been a clear movement from self-service to technology-based self-service (TBSS) (Dabholkar 1994; Meuter and Bitner 1998; Anitsal, Moon, and Anitsal 2002b). In this rapidly emerging, technologically oriented service concept, customers provide the service for themselves by utilizing technology with or without help from an employee of the service provider (Meuter, Ostrom, Roundtree, and Bitner 2000; Reda 2000; Henderson 2001). This includes the use of Help Desks specifically as the first point of contact and the first line of service and support for customers. The Help Desk has grown from being a stand-alone service strategy to one that is leading many organizations to support a multi-channel and in some instances, multi-channel based approach to delivering service.

Examples of TBSS options across different service industries include on-demand service and support through guided solution applications on websites, guided help on telephone systems, (ATMs), electronic kiosks for baggage check in or a boarding pass at airports as well as for room check out at hotels, and service computers with internet connection at airports (Dabholkar 1994, 1996; Kotler 2000; Meuter, Ostrom, Roundtree, and Bitner 2000; Carlin 2002; Harler 2002; Wright 2002).

The transformation of service options from the Help Desk to multi-channel strategies that are technology-based service can be viewed in terms of the relationships between employee, customer and technology components (Figure 1). Note that a single strategy of just using a Help Desk fails to support the triad as shown in this figure. Strategically, that is the reason why Help Desks are becoming just a single strategy in one that is multi-channel based; there are more unmet needs that customers have than just a Help Desk can respond to. The intent of this research proposal is to ascertain and quantify the extent of the gap between unmet needs and the effectiveness of just a Help Desk vs. all components of a multi-channel service strategy including web self-service, intelligent routing, and real time chat.

All interactions between these components are laid out from a customer's perspective, showing what a customer sees as s/he approaches to the service setting. The full-service option (a) includes customer-to-employee interaction, where a service employee waits on the customer. The joint production option (B) includes both the service employee and the customer working together to produce and deliver the service within the service system, as defined by the service provider. The self-service option - reflects a customer responding to a service system in the absence of a service employee. The technology-based full-service option (D) includes a service employee fully serving a customer by utilizing full-service technologies. The technology-based joint production option (E) includes the customer interacting with a service employee and technology. The technology-based self-service option (F) includes customer-to- technology interaction without any contact employee (Dabholkar 1994; Meuter and Bitner 1998; Anitsal, Moon, and Anitsal 2002a, 2002b).

The role of technology in Self-Service

Help Desks implemented purely from a technology perspective nearly always fail. What is required for a successful Help Desk strategy is for first a thorough overview of the processes that are inefficient and broken today, and that need to be re-architected to be of greater value to customers. The pure use of technology for Help Desk redesigns does not work; the underlying processes need to be first changed.

Innovations can be revolutionary (disruptive, pioneering, or breakthrough) or just evolutionary (sustaining, incremental, or spin-off). In the case of Help Desk redesigns and their integration into broader multi-channel initiatives, technology must be used as an enabler of change at the process level.(Bates 1989; (Christensen and Overdorf 2000; Christensen and Tedlow 2000; Columbus 2001). Revolutionary innovations are discontinuous and make consumers 'adopt new behavior patterns' (Schiffman and Kanuk 2000). The use of self-service websites including the segmenting of response to customer needs based on the lifetime value of a specific customer is increasingly being used by organizations to make their service organizations more profitable (McDonald 2002; Dabholkar, Bobbitt, and Lee 2003). Therefore, diffusion of innovations and particularly the adoption process within self-service throughout multiple channels including retailing have become important concerns (Maruca 1999). (This specific literature review for this proposal highlights that best practices in Help Desk redesign needs to include a strong multi-channel orientation and a deliberate strategy of making service channels, and levels of service align with how customers want to be served. The quantitative portion of this proposal will look to measure Help Desk best practices in the following strategic areas where organizations are getting strong performance. These including integrating phone self-service and Web self-service implemented together and aligning them on a single database, having an it architecture built to allow for a high percentage of level-one calls and e-mails, a relatively high level of Internet access among customer base, low product complexity Columbus 2001), and high visibility into customers' requests and trends in them. Additional factors to be measured in the survey include the maturity of knowledge management processes throughout organizations adopting Help Desk strategies, and most critically, a strong focus on interface design making the entire process of using multiple channels more accessible.

Proposed research methodology with rationale

The research methodology will rely on a multi-phased approach to accomplishing the research objectives of this study. Starting first with a thorough literature review this study will complete a comprehensive qualitative analysis of all available data on help desk models and their relative levels of performance and the broader strategic concept of self-service strategies. This qualitative analysis will also specifically focus on the variations in help desk and broader self-service strategies' performance in several key vertical markets including auto sales and service, consumer electronics, retail, travel and hospitality, and the financial services industry. There are significant differences in each of these specific industries as it relates to the effectiveness of help desk and self-service strategies as well, and these differences will be thoroughly analyzed from a qualitative research standpoint.

Literature Review

The first phase of the methodology will be a thorough literature review and analysis of financial and industry analyst, industry trade publications, and the series of companies who comprise the help desk and broader self-service market. Vendors competing in this market arena will also be specifically have their financial statements analyzed and a thorough ratio analysis completed to ascertain their strengths and weaknesses in competing in this market. The objective of this stage of the research is to find insights into the financial performance of these companies as it relates also to the direction their customers, the developers of help desk and self-service applications, are taking them,

Primary Research Strategy

Using a targeted list of Help Desk early adopter companies stratified through multiple industries, the initial primary research effort will send questionnaires to 180 companies who are considered the survey population of Help Desk and Web Self-Service early adopters. As response rates to postal surveys can vary significantly, it is advisable to have multiple phases of the survey to attain a suitable sample size.

While the motivations for this research are for the completion of this academic dissertation, an executive summary will be offered to each respondent as an incentive to participate. The most critical aspect of interest to them will be using the survey results to benchmark their service performance relative to peers.

Primary Research: Phase I in-Person Visits

The intent of this first phase is to accomplish the following tasks. First, the questionnaire will need to be fine-tuned based on how respondents perceive the questions. Completing the survey with a few respondents in person will assist in finding areas where the questionnaire can be improved. Secondly, there are issues and concerns that may not have been covered in the questionnaire, and in this phase, these considerations will be discovered. Finally there is the issue of capturing the nuance and areas of emphasis respondents have on specific projects. Having this face-time with respondents is critical for all these reasons.

Primary Research: Phase 2 Mail and Web-Based Surveys

In phase 2 web-based surveys are sent to the 180 Help Desk early adopter companies. As the initial response rate typically is low, follow-up reminder cards will be sent.

For international companies the e-mail survey circumvents the lengthy postal transfer times across continents. Using automated programs available on the Internet, reminders can also be sent directly to the respondents as well. Further, these programs provide real-time analysis of results.

Data collection methods with rationale, including population, sampling

Using a sample size of 180 Help Desk early adopter companies acquired from InfoUSA or comparable list broker, the data collection method will be in multiple phases. The first phase will be to fine-tune the questionnaire in person with selected respondents as a form of quality checking. The second phase will include e-mail blasts and successive follow-ups via telephone calls to get an acceptable number of responses.

A stratified random sample will be used to define key early adopters of Help Desk strategies across several industry verticals. Chi-Square analysis will be used to find those vertical markets that are statistically significant in terms of their Help Desk best practices.

Following the collection of data, SPSS will be used for completing frequency distributions on all variables included in the study, and cross-tabulations (joint frequency distributions) will be used for analyzing the data further. Correlation analysis including a correlation matrix will be used for finding statistically strong interrelationships between variables in the survey. Finally, a model will be created to predict best practices in Help Desk performance by quantifying the variables that are most illustrative of the many approaches both consumers and businesses want to be served.

Ethical method description

As findings of the paper aim to contribute to the body of knowledge on the topics of Help Desk strategies in the context of broader multi-channel services strategies, the three criteria of a Correspondence Criterion, the Coherence Criterion and the Pragmatic Criterion will be applied. The 'Correspondence Criterion', in which reality supports theory, implies that what corresponds to outcomes of observation is true. The problem here is that there is often disagreement on what facts are and how facts should be interpreted and understood. Nevertheless, this criterion will be used when interpreting both theoretical and empirical findings of the research. This is done in order to see whether the assumptions used are supported during the observation and whether the knowledge created is in accordance with earlier research results or if it questions and falsifies them.

Describe quantitative (statistical) or Qualitative or Mixed methods of analysis with rationale

In creating a research methodology that takes a multi-phased approach to data collection with successively higher levels of incentives, a 50% response rate is targeted. This translates into 90 web-based survey responses.

The design of the customer input section of the survey will be opt-in, meaning the respondents could choose to provide their personal information to receive incentives. The survey will be sent to180 respondents via e-mail, as will be each successive wave respondent mailings.

Phase I: 180 Questionnaires e-mailed to Help Desk early adopters in seven industries globally. Using stratified random sampling to create a sampling frame representative of the broader population of Help Desk early adopters email-based surveys will be mailed in successive waves.

The first wave of questionnaires will be e-mailed to all respondents without any incentive applied. The initial response rate is anticipated to be approximately 5%, or 25 respondents