Customer Support Work by Technical Service Managers at Verizon Business

Judy KeeleyApril 22, 2009

Background

Verizon Business

• IP, data, voice & wireless solutions

• Business & government customers

• Services 98% of Fortune 500

Technical Service Manager (TSM)

• Support business customers

• Each customer has dedicated TSM

Verizon Enterprise Center (VEC)

• Repairs (trouble tickets), network health, orders, invoices

• Web portal (VEC) & mobile portal (VEC Mobile)

Goal

Contextual Inquiry of Technical Support Managers’ customer support work at Verizon Business

• Learn about users: how do they do their work?• General• VEC Mobile

• Improve design of systems• Supports work• Easy to use

• Generalize from TSMs to customers• Increase revenues / decrease costs

Methodology

• 1 observation (5 hrs) of TSM working• 7 phone interviews• Casual observation at local office

Challenges

• TSMs extremely busy• Concurrently recruiting for usability testing• Mobile work observation not practical /

appropriate / welcome• Premature to observe VEC Mobile use

Findings: Work Environment

• Noisy office• Interrupt-driven• Multi-tasking• Fighting fires

“We are just so overwhelmed with work

every second of every day.”

Burden on memory → degraded performance

Findings: Computer-based Systems

Ticket management systems:

Internal Customer facing

2 desktop

1 mainframe

1 mobile

1 desktop

1 mobile

• Legacy systems• Redundancy• No integration• Codes for lookup

“I have no idea what the BIC code is. Unbelievable.

See how much trouble it is to do the littlest things?”

Findings: Relationships

Findings: Customer Support Work

Customers have Verizon Enterprise Center.Why do they need assistance from TSMs?

TSMs:• Provide missing information

• Private ticket comments• Access to internal systems

• Translate information into understandable, familiar language• “No Access”

• Liaison between technicians & customers

“A lot of times we’re just a go-between or babysitter.”

Findings: Mobile Support Work

• TSMs provide support 24x7• Home, traveling, customer meetings, vacation, golf

• Use mobile phones for email, voice calls, checking tickets• Some TSMs have old phones; all have Blackberries

Findings: VEC Mobile

• Typing laborious• Doesn’t display internal ticket

comments• Write identifiers on paper to enter

on mobile• Eager to use it – greater freedom;

reduced customer dependence

Design Implications

• TSMs’ stress & memory burden requires systems that are easy to use

• Streamline systems; reduce redundancy

• Ticket comments• TSMs can mark comments public• Auto-generated comments use customer-friendly language• Train technicians to write customer-appropriate comments

Design Implications (cont.)

VEC Mobile

• Internal ticket comments• Who are the users? TSMs vs. customers

• Display items of interest rather than make user search or enter codes• Recently viewed list• Flagged tickets

• Voice interface

Next Steps / Future Directions

• Present findings to team

• Apply design recommendations

• Additional studies• VEC Mobile

• After longer-term use• “Contrived” situations for mobile observation

• Customers