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Conference Presentation

Challenging the Tiered Paradigm

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Tiered support is a keystone of standard support operations. It works predictably, but it's inherently flawed.

Why do we follow this paradigm? It's the way everyone works. It regiments the organization so that responsibilities are clearly defined and workforce plans can be aligned around designed and trainable skill-sets. Employees know where their responsibility begins and where it ends. Cost alignment of resources means that the easiest work can be done by the least-expensive person. It's a very convenient management model.

But is it the most-effective support model for customer experience? Service requests are owned and passed from one person to another like products on a conveyor belt. Once the conveyor gets to a person who can solve the issue, it gets solved. But until then, it has to follow its course and time on the belt, which slows down resolution. Customers lose patience being passed from person to person, and inherently, communication is inefficient, people lose context and we make the customer repeat steps and information. And, along the path, everyone can be doing "our job" but the customer doesn't get what they need.

Imagine a support organization without boundaries – where owners drive solutions by taking accountability for the customer experience and bringing resources to collaborate – to swarm on the issue. Then move that model to real-time with live first-engagement models like chat. The customer has continuity, accountability and accesses the best resource for the problem as quickly as possible. Tear down the tiers.

In this session, we'll discuss one company's journey through that organizational change and discuss the challenges and approaches to the transformation.

 

Presented By:

Dan Pratt

Director, Strategy and Business Transformation, Avaya

Linda Hartig

VP of Global Support Services (GSS), Avaya

Publish Date: October 21, 2014

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Peg Rodarmel, SVP, Subscription Services, Infor

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