The quarterly publication of the International Legal Technology Association
Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/271291
WWW.ILTANET.ORG 27 service providers. We recently installed tools that provide visibility into the customer experience with popular tasks on the desktop/laptop. We installed an e-learning product along with tools to create modules. We follow up on long or repeated incidents and focus our work on the worst customer experiences, continually working to raise the bar. "We" are focused on "them" — our customers! OUR CONCIERGE DESK We have had much success making our helpdesk more of a service desk — a concierge concept that delivers the best customer experience. We have found the services we provide continually grow and expectations continue to rise. Recognizing that everything we do impacts the customer experience, we expect to lead rather than react. Our success so far has been because of reorganization and refocus, our team's ability to change our approach from support to service, our implementation of the right technologies, our relationship with true business consultants, assistance from other internal business units and the understanding that superior service requires continuous adjustment and improvement. Like any good concierge, we're looking for great recommendations and experiences. By participating in ILTA discussion forums and attending the conferences, we gain a true perspective that many firms struggle in the same way. Solutions are out there; you just have to seek them out and "peer up." ticketing system to describe the reason for escalations. Then we took a chance on yet another major change to mitigate the many "how to" escalations. We moved our training function out of IT to the HR department (i.e., employee relations). We found that communicating changes, scheduling classes, maintaining content and assembling the right training plan was best managed in HR. This transition took some time and is still a work in progress. It is still IT's responsibility to develop draft documentation on changes that occur and the perceived effect on customers. HR then develops efficient and consistent modules and releases training plans. Smaller audiences, reconstructed learning centers and multiple learning modalities have been game changers. Partnering with HR has enabled us to continue to focus on the customer experience and our customers' concerns — many of which are non-technical and require no engineering support. We are continuing to focus on truly understanding our customers. We created a third team within the Service and Support group that is focused on IT service delivery. They are able to embrace the customer perspective and manage the entire process from the customer's point of view. They are on the floor working with practice areas and business units, and they are responsible for managing metrics and providing feedback to IT on the impact of change on our customers. We have set service-level agreements both internally and with all IT Our next move was to upgrade our desktop systems and move toward a consistent base image for all systems firmwide. This, of course, had amazing returns. The restructure, the KBs, group collaboration and consistent systems immediately elevated our ability to meet the needs of our customers. Frustration levels were reduced. We were focused, working together and finally moving forward. REDUCING ESCALATIONS We started to reach the bar we had just raised, but there was still a nagging sense that our customers expected problems. We'd gotten much better at responding to problems and preventing widespread effects, but more needed to be done. Although an escalation process is required to move a problem to the right resource for resolution, it had a bad reputation at our firm. Each time an escalation occurred, someone became frustrated. We put our escalation process under the microscope and found that many of our helpdesk tickets were more about '"how to" than "please fix." To resolve this, we added data fields in the