1. The company has a low employee turnover rate
Partnering with a company encompasses more than simply purchasing their solutions at a competitive price. Forming a strong relationship may (and typically does) involve, at minimum, regularly working with their employees to identify cooperative areas of growth, and improve collaboration and communication where needed.
Now, if your level of interaction simply doesn’t go beyond the purchasing phase, that doesn’t mean you’re not presented with opportunities to strengthen the relationship.
For example, you likely have to contact your customer’s technical support department for information regarding solution updates and repairs or for answers about general product installation, implementation and usage. These too are chances to form deeper connections.
Here’s the problem: When your partners have high employee turnover rates, it’s often difficult to maintain a strong relationship. You may have noticed this already.
When you need assistance, you want to work with technical support experts—professionals who are regularly exposed to and therefore know the ins and outs of their company’s solutions. However, this is made difficult when your customers struggle to retain their most experienced technical support employees. Instead of working with experts, you’re tasked with trying to handle a consistently changing pool of new hires desperately trying to learn product specifications and usage points as quickly as possible.
2. The company provides quality, well-rounded technical support
Well-balanced technical support, such as that offered by Boston Managed IT, includes a diverse menu of support channels and a team of specialists who understand how these tools can help customers.
In the case of BMIT, we also invest in our staff and work tirelessly to stay ahead of customer and technical support trends so employees can consistently exceed customer expectations.
The support channels we offer include:
- Call support
- Live chat
- Helpdesk
- FAQ
Companies that offer well-balanced technical support adhere to more holistic, customer-oriented support procedures. This benefits you because you can, in turn, get back to work sooner.
3. The company thinks outside the box
Most solution centers judge the performance of their staff solely on whether they hit certain key metrics, such as average call duration (ACD), first call resolution (FCR), adherence to schedule, abandon rates and average speed of answer.
I agree these are important in determining the center’s operating efficiency. For example, I can’t ignore ACD because it helps:
- Determine proper staffing levels
- Highlight problems with particular products
- Determine agent soft and technical skill levels
- Measure cost per interaction
However, ACD, like other metrics, are a double-edged sword. Technical support managers should investigate long calls, but they can’t assume this type of call indicates something went wrong.
Today’s customers are becoming increasingly self-sufficient when trying to solve technical problems. They’d rather search Google or a company’s FAQ page than take time talking on the phone. As a result, agents are left with more challenging inquiries, and these often require more time and troubleshooting.
Companies that measure employee performance solely on average call duration or other metrics (and many do) are missing the mark. Instead, I suggest partnering with companies that think outside the box when it comes to measuring the performance of their technical support team. In doing so, you’re likely to receive better overall support from beginning to end.
4. The company invests in its future
Companies that make research and development a top priority are more likely to not only introduce more innovative, higher quality products to the market place but also provide more well-rounded technical support as well.
At BMIT, we’re constantly striving to meet these goals because we’re a solution- and customer-oriented company. To do so, we unremittingly research new support tools and processes and try to find creative ways to increase our staff’s skill level.
Employees are less likely to leave their current positions if their companies support their career aspirations with professional growth opportunities. That’s one reason we established what we call “the skills matrix.” Through extensive training and education, our employees can advance to become technical support engineers, senior technical support engineers and technical support specialists.
I can’t understate how significant it is when companies invest in their employees’ careers.
It’s important to continuously evaluate your business partnerships for strengths and weaknesses. The four signs of a quality business relationship I discussed here is a solid starting point to determine whether you’re working with the right partners.
