Successful and rapid fault isolation and repair succeeds when everyone involved has access to up to date accurate service-related information. That means that as an automatic monitoring system generates fault codes it is immediately updated in the correct database and with accurate order repair information including part numbers and order codes as applicable. It means that the best practice of acquiring and documenting system knowledge that associates symptoms, known causes and remedial action needs to be in place and operational. The solution must use an accessible anywhere, anytime methodology. It must use a single repository with an intuitive, advanced search capability. It must have automatic version control, and multiple output formats for PCs, PDAs, SMS, voicemail and email.
In the fast paced world of VoIP and ever evolving products, features, and information, troubleshooting and maintenance procedures must also evolve. Consider what could happen in a children’s hospital with a new internet phone telecommunications installation if critical messages like patient in distress calls can’t reach the emergency room staff. How about large financial institutions who rely on their VoIP system to perform secure multimillion dollar transactions or just the $100 transactions for me and you? Suffice to say that when these large enterprises have problems the service center and the manufacturer need to be on it and have it fixed fast. Lost opportunities know no boundaries when people’s lives and finances are at stake.
When troubleshooting times keep increasing and Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) is escalating, customer satisfaction levels fall. Technologies like VoIP and all the benefits it brings to Enterprises like hospitals and banks far outweigh the cost of ownership and change. It would seem that with all the technology available, we should be able to figure out how to install, upgrade, maintain and troubleshoot quicker and more efficiently.
The challenge, more than likely is inconsistent, inaccessible, confusing, and inaccurate information. Fault isolation information that is outdated to the faults that your technicians are asked to tackle today. VoIP and other technologies change so fast it can be a full time job to maintain fault isolation manuals and scatter diagrams. With customer configurations being different from each other, suppliers of VoIP equipment find it difficult to manage and track the troubleshooting differences between multiple customer installations. Yet technicians rely on this information especially when the technical experience of the customer’s onsite resources is limited.
These challenges will not go away unless great technologies stop advancing and companies stop innovating. This is certainly not an answer!
We can change how we create, store, update and share information about those technologies and how they are implemented. Today information typically exists in a variety of corporate databases or in a technician’s head or on a hard drive on someone’s personal computer. Often, they are not linked! Unfortunate as it is, we all know the results: the job best practices typically are not shared and technicians continue to isolate faults by memory and guess work, not by procedure.
Today, fault isolation manuals and system self monitoring tools are not linked. What can be great troubleshooting aids are sometimes lacking in usability. When a fault code is recorded, the solution found and documented, it needs to be immediately available to everyone who needs the information.
Given the correct available information two technicians facing the same problem should take about the same amount of time to diagnose and repair. The result is that the turnaround time to close a troubleshooting ticket will decrease, and with it the MTTR statistics. Your customer satisfaction index will increase and cost of goods sold will decrease.
Through better integration of information into your products and services you'll improve the training, procedures, and consistency of your customer support personnel and you’ll improve their moral through job satisfaction.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
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