Johannesburg, 03 Feb 2020
Service level agreements (SLAs) have been the measure that many customers and managed services companies have relied on. It’s been done this way for years, but SLAs are becoming outdated and it’s mostly a theoretical measure in that you’re just trying to get through an incident as quickly as possible. SLAs simply measure how fast you can get to a site and repair a machine. As a service provider, you need to convert the SLA into a customer experience.
An SLA is purely a measure you see on paper; the crux is how do you turn it into an ‘experience’. Customers want to experience the benefit of your service and they need to pass on that experience to their end-users. Managed services providers need to think beyond providing a reasonable experience on a piece of equipment or even a software update/patch. The reality is they aren’t just managing the customer who owns that solution, they are also considering the person at the end of the line who uses that piece of equipment. In essence, we have to look after your customer’s customer.
Regardless of whether the repair is of an ATM, a CT scan machine in a hospital, or a printer in a retail outlet, we need to think beyond the equipment and the customer and think of the person being impacted by the equipment, ie, the patient who needs an urgent CT scan, or a person queueing to pay for groceries, or an individual in a queue to withdraw money at an ATM.
The implication is that future contracts or agreements with the customer(s) must be based on the availability of that equipment, as opposed to how quickly you can fix it. The latter implies that the speed of the repair is more important than anything else, whereas focusing on availability means you spend more time on-site and, in partnership with the customer, identify the root cause of why the equipment failed in the first place and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Joe Barbosa, Operations Executive: Operations at Altron Bytes Managed Solutions, shares four pointers for businesses in the services space.
Use the data
Future service provision models will require the sharing of big data between the service provider and the customer. The big data residing in the cloud that belongs to the service provider and the customer can be put to positive use to determine future trends, the failure rates of equipment, causes of the failures, enable the service provider to increase the availability of the equipment and, ultimately, improve the customer experience. Sharing data for the common good of both parties opens avenues to create trust partnerships between the service provider and the customer.
AI is just one of the tools that can be used to extract trends from the data. Managed services providers need to enhance predictive services for their customers if they want to provide increased availability and an improved customer experience. In addition, the data being stored or hoarded by both parties can be used to set specific dates for preventive maintenance, and even support the customer by advising when a piece of equipment needs to be refreshed or replaced. “Much like a vehicle, you can only service equipment so many times before it becomes uneconomical to repair, similarly the data can tell us when it’s time for customers to replace their equipment,” Barbosa says.
Another use for the data is to enable customers to perform certain first line actions on their equipment before they log a call. This means services providers need to enable their customers through training them to carry out their own first level support to increase availability of their equipment and to prevent them having to log a call.
Device as a service
“In today’s pressurised business environment, we need to help our customers to focus on their core business by taking IT concerns away from them.” One of those options is the DaaS (device as a service) model, which goes beyond merely leasing a piece of equipment. Customers should have access to a basket of services that incorporates hardware, software and full end-to-end maintenance into a single service per device.
The benefits to the customer are many, and include consistency in hardware models, total managed solutions, predictive technology refresh, full configuration and asset database management (CMDB) and even remote support that minimises onsite intervention. This reduces the complexity of customers having to purchase equipment from one company and then having to rely on another company to provide maintenance services, and in some cases, needing a third company to manage all their software requirements like virus management and patch updates, etc. Entrusting a service provider with a DaaS model allows the end-user to focus on their business without worrying about their equipment.
Shorter turnaround times
Barbosa says: “We have to be ready for short-notice customer demands. For example, as much as everyone likes two-minute noodles, we’d be really delighted if they brought out one-minute noodles. We want everything to happen quicker.”
The days are gone when customers gave service providers a few months’ notice of new projects. Today, service providers need to be ready to take on urgent projects at very short notice. “It’s no longer enough to be geared for the business that you currently have, you must have a pool of resources and expertise on hand to react to unpredictable short notice projects and new business. If you cannot accommodate your customer – someone else will. It all boils down to agility.”
The inexorable 4IR
Finally, artificial intelligence (AI) is inevitable, it’s here and it’s moving at a fast pace. But unless AI is adding value to your customer as well, then you’re wasting time and money. Barbosa explains: “Although AI adds tremendous value and can reduce mundane or repetitive tasks, it has to be implemented responsibly. There’s a misconception that AI will take away multiple jobs and totally replace human intervention. This isn’t the case – the mundane kills the human ability and capacity to function. Those staff members are then deployed into other career paths and upskilling. However, implementing AI can be expensive as well as resource-intensive. As a responsible business, you need to ensure that AI isn’t costlier than the return on your investment, ultimately it needs to be of benefit to your customers.
A robotic process – or a BOT – can be a simple piece of software or a process that reduces wastage, freeing up human time to focus on other priorities that can add value to customers. In a service environment, BOTS can provide real time support to field technicians, significantly reducing the time it takes to identify and rectify an issue. It’s also possible to use BOTS to enable customers to do first level support using their phones, tablets or laptops before they need to log a call. If customers are able to resolve their own L1 issues through real-time support by a BOT, their availability is increased, which in turn helps their customers by enhancing their service – which is the ultimate goal of improving availability versus chasing service level agreements.
Once all the above have been implemented, it’s also advisable to get customer feedback as soon as possible after the incident has been remediated – and surveying customer service 24 hours after the intervention is too late, says Barbosa. “We measure service as and when it is provided using real-time surveys while the technician is still on-site.
“To remain relevant, we have to meet the customer where they’re at and help them grow.”
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