11.2. Service Delivery Tools

Service delivery tools are intended to help the service center deliver support to customers. The tools help you to keep track of customers' requests and allow you to measure your service delivery performance. There are tools available to help you increase the speed, accuracy, and consistency at which you provide solutions to your customers.

There are many important delivery tools to consider. The PMS, or help desk system, is the core service center system that documents and tracks all customer contacts, tickets, solutions, and so on. There are many ways to extend the functionality of this core system. By implementing one or more knowledge base s with your core management system, you can leverage the collective knowledge of your staff and experts outside of your company to quickly deliver consistent solutions to customers. Through the integration and use of an asset management system, technicians have immediate access to the customer's hardware and software profiles and configuration information, which can greatly improve the ability to resolve customer problems. Remote control tools allow agents to resolve problems without having to visit the customer's desktop, increasing your efficiency. Remote control tools also allow you to show customers how to perform certain tasks, such as mapping to a network drive, without your having to visit the site. Workforce management tools allow you to optimize the utilization of your resources, which is usually the single largest expense in a service center, to meet customer demands. Computer telephony integration allows you to save time in gathering customer information and delivering solutions to customers. Integration with defect-tracking software allows you to pass defects to a development group, keep track of status, and keep track of known bugs so that your agents don't waste time re-troubleshooting them. Integration with change management systems allows your service center to keep track of planned changes that could potentially generate calls to the service center.