CRM for help desks

We're all familiar with CRM systems. (Or perhaps not. They were the "big thing" several years ago, but the infatuation seems to have passed. For those with questions: CRM stands for "Customer Relationship Management" and was the idea that capturing information about interactions with customers would give you knowledge that could lead to sales.)

We're also all familiar with help desks. (Or perhaps not. They are the banks of usually underpaid, underinformed workers on the other end of the call for support.)

A call to a help desk can be a frustrating experience, especially for technically-savvy folks.

Help desks are typically structured with multiple levels. Incoming calls are directed to the "first level" desk with technicians that have prepared scripts for the most common problems. Only after executing the scripts and finding that the problem is not resolved is your call "escalated" to the "second level" help desk, which usually has a second set of technicians with a different set of scripts and prepared solutions. Sometimes there is a third level of technicians who have experience and can work independently (that is, without prepared scripts) to resolve a problem.

This structure is frustrating for techno-geeks, for two reasons. First, the techno-geek has already tried the solutions that the first level help desk will recommend. Some first level help desks insist that the user try the proffered solutions, even though the user has done them. (This is a blind following of the prepared script.)

Second, many help desks have scripts that assume you are running Microsoft Windows. Help desk technicians ask you to click on the "start" menu, when you don't have one. Some help desks go as far as to deny support to anyone with operating systems other than Windows. See the XKCD comic here. Techno-geeks often pretend to click on the non-existent Windows constructs and provide the help desk with fake information from the non-existent information dialogs (usually from memory) to get their call escalated to a more advanced technician.

The design of help desks (multiple levels, prepared scripts for first levels) is easy to comprehend and on the surface looks efficient. The first level tries the "simple" and "standard" solutions which solve the problem most times. Only after dealing with the (cheap to operate) first level and not resolving the problem do you work with the (expensive to operate) higher levels.

The help desk experience is similar to a video game. You start at the first level, and only after proving your worthiness do you advance to the next level.

Which brings us back to CRM systems. While not particularly good at improving sales, they might be good at reducing the cost of help desks.

Here's why: The CRM system can identify the tech-savvy customers and route them to the advanced levels directly, avoiding the first level scripts. This reduces the load on the first level and also reduces the frustration imposed on the customers. Any competent help desk manager should be willing to jump on a solution that reduces the load on the help desk. (Help desks are measured by calls per hour and calls resolved per total calls, and escalated calls fall in the "not resolved" bucket.)

CRM can also give you better insight into customer problems and calling patterns. The typical help desk metrics will report the problems by frequency and often list the top ten (or maybe twenty). With CRM, you can correlate problems with your customer base and identify the problems by customer type. It's nice to know that printing is the most frequent problem, but it's nicer to know that end-of-day operations is the most frequent problem among your top customers. I know which I would consider the more important!