Executive Summary:
Management originally focused this assignment on correcting the technical problems exacerbated by a recent release of a bug-ridden product. Roy was able to show them that a thorough systemic overhaul of the entire service structure was the only way to restore customer confidence in the company and its ability to service what it sold.

Overview:
A West Coast turnkey systems vendor was struggling with the transition from proprietary to open systems. The most obvious and blatant sign was the six to ten calls that the President and Executive staff received each week from irate customers complaining about service.

The company had started with a system addressing the needs of the automotive aftermarket and then branched out, through acquisitions, into other market areas. Each of the acquisitions came with its own unique combination of proprietary operating system, application software, and hardware. Each acquisition was allowed to “do it’s own thing” which resulted in an extremely stove piped organization with each division focused only on its own needs and requirements.

When newer open products became available, threatening to make made its proprietary offerings obsolete, the company switched over to a common PC-based Unix platform. Unfortunately, the development groups who shared the stovepipe mindset did not communicate with each other on the details. This lack of communication resulted in systems that, while using the same basic hardware and OS, used different and incompatible configurations and setups.

Three divisions, each with its own call center and support staff, shared a call screening center and a field service organization reporting to the VP of Customer Service. In addition, a central support staff busied itself with creating manuals and documentation for these divisions. A repair depot and logistics organization managed the spares needs of these divisions.

The differences between the main product lines made service rather difficult, especially in smaller or more remote areas. The local field engineers could not retain expertise on any single system, as they did not field a sufficient number of calls to retain the training they had received. Compounding the problem was the fact that identical parts had to be set differently depending on the system. Consequently, the number of parts returned to the repair depot marked “Dead On Arrival” (DOA) was very high.

The company soon realized it was not seeing the benefits expected from the transition to open systems. Customers, unable to get all they expected from their investment, complained severely about the Service organization. As mentioned earlier, the more irate and vocal ones called the President and senior executives. Compounding matters, a recent product release was quite “buggy” and swamped Service resources and added to the irate call volume.

Management realized they needed help in reorganizing Service and Support. This is where Roy Sequeira came in.

Initial findings:
Call center staff had applications training but no hardware training at all. The more dedicated and enterprising staff tried to learn something about the hardware platform their application ran on. However, none were truly proficient in the hardware.

Divisional support staff were generally knowledgeable of their application but not at the detail level. None had any knowledge of how the other divisions’ offerings worked.

HQ support staff focused on creating manuals and parts lists. There was very little appreciation of what the field really needed. For example, one manual, in process for over two years, documented every printer the company had ever supported, complete with detailed specifications, repair and replacement procedures, and parts lists. It was over three inches thick making it extremely cumbersome and unlikely to be included in a field engineer’s tool bag.

Divisional alignment continued into training field staff. Most field engineers received training only on one division’s offerings. They would attempt to field calls on equipment from the other divisions with generally unsatisfactory results.

Even though the company had switched from proprietary hardware and software about five years ago, field engineers received no training in PC systems architecture. Since most had started with the older proprietary systems, they had no knowledge of the newer systems. This contributed to the DOA problems, since their training only included parts swapping.

Actions:
Given the magnitude and scope of the problems, Roy quickly realized he had to work quickly on a number of fronts. His first step was merging all the support staff into one central support group. All support staff offices were co-located around a large central conference table. The phone system was set up to automatically hunt for the first free engineer if the designated one was busy. New processes were set up to ensure appropriate call handling and routing. The engineer picking up the phone was responsible for resolving the issue or systematically transferring to another within the group. To improve morale and spirit de corps, Roy had a large sign reading “THE BUCK STOPS HERE” suspended from the ceiling over the central conference table. While initially the subject of much joking, the sign made a noticeable difference in morale and attitude.

An “Outage” monitored the status of all unresolved calls and recorded activity and progress. It served as a centralized repository of problem-call information for HQ and field management. Roy monitored the outage system and discussed all open issues with local field management to ensure clear direction and satisfaction of all action items. Once logged, a call stayed open until the customer and the local Service manager agreed with Support on satisfactory call resolution.

The Outage systems also recorded and monitored all escalations to Engineering until final resolution. Engineering management had full read access to all outage calls. This ensured the development community knew exactly how their products performed under actual field conditions.

The next step was designing a new training course for all field engineers. The new course emphasized the commonality between all the systems; with differences treated as exceptions. New concise documentation with board settings for each system included in the training handouts was included in each engineer’s kit. This ensured any field engineer could tailor settings on spares to any system.

Roy then worked with the repairs and logistics group to ensure repair and test processes ensured all common parts would indeed work with all systems. Special testing of all DOA returned parts determined why the field engineer could not make them work. Test procedures reflected current information from the analysis of genuine DOAs. Roy also worked with manufacturing final test and assembly to have all systems leave the factory with minimized field set-up labour needs.

Results:
Within six months, these efforts virtually eliminated service and support related calls to the President and other senior executives. While prior record keeping precluded most determining most measures of improvement, there were many ways of knowing things were much better than they were.

Support call volumes decreased. First time fix rates improved. Parts usage dropped by 10%, DOA rates dropped by 42%. The number of systems on outage started falling. The new system test procedures resulted in far fewer failures detected during installation.

Interestingly enough, customers with systems on outage stopped complaining to management. This resulted directly from their knowledge of and involvement with all activity on resolving their problems. Knowing senior management tracked and monitored progress towards resolving their difficulties and problems gave them a sense of security.

There were also a number of longer-term benefits. With fewer support calls, the support engineers spent more time with development staff working on problem resolution. This improved knowledge and expertise on all sides. It also helped improve new products as the engineers had a better understanding and appreciation of how their products actually performed in the field and how customers interacted with them.

Final Analysis & Comment:
Analyzing and viewing the original objective of improving the Support organization in light of the “big picture” of company structure and culture enabled Roy to create a solution that not only met this objective but made significant contributions to improving company performance at the same time.

This made the company a very attractive takeover prospect and it was sold 18 months later.

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