ERP046 - Perfecting Service with Alona Bolotnikova

Welcome to Evolve Radio where we explore the evolution of business and technology. Most MSPs are great at solving technical problems, but being a great MSP is more about how you make the client feel more than what you do. On the podcast today is Alona Bova of perfecting service. She helps MSPs with the soft skills and service coaching to ensure their support teams are providing the best possible service experience for your clients. We talk about common client complaints, best practices for updating clients on tickets and some top tips for helping your text improve their service skills. Enjoy my conversation with Alonia about creating a great service culture. If you enjoyed the show, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast from. Also, be sure to check out the webpage evolvedt.com/podcast for show notes, links to my guests and check out previous episodes. Now, let's get started. Joining me on the podcast today is Alona Bova, chief perfectionist with perfecting service. Thanks for joining me, Alona. Thank you for having me, Todd. It's my pleasure to be here. So, we met at uh Datacon, I believe, and uh I was really interested in uh chatting a bit more about the service that you're offering, because I believe it's something that uh is not as um not as well served as it probably could be. Most uh IT companies, I describe as service companies, they just happen to do IT as their service. And they uh spend a lot of work getting the service right. Um, but one of the areas that they're not uh great at, they don't spend a lot of time on is the actual service element. Like how you actually speak to people, how you engage them, uh and really the more the technical less technical elements and the more service-based elements of the work that they do. So, really interested in in sort of the the work that you're doing to help uh MSPs focus on developing their service uh stack and uh really training people about what it takes to create great service. Exactly. So, we found that technicians are, you know, super comfortable with the computer and technology side of their jobs, but often don't have a customer service background or any sort of soft skill training. And so we really work to bridge that gap and increase client satisfaction, and it also makes technicians happier when everyone is on the same page and has the same expectations of what they should be doing. Yeah, it's a really sort of the missing element, I I feel in a a lot of service-based organizations. Um, maybe to start, you could tell us uh, you know, uh how you got into this as sort of the work that you do. It's it's a very particular portion of of the industry. Uh so you must have some uh passion for customer service and those soft skill elements. Give us a bit of the history on that. So, I've really been in customer service now most of my life. And um in speaking with some MSP owners, um this really sort of developed and I sort of ran with it. Uh so on the one side, one thought we're awesome, but how can we be even more awesome? And also thought, you know, we're not really getting many complaints, but we also don't really know what's going on behind the scenes and would like to sort of figure things out there. And then on the other hand, the other owner was getting tons of complaints, his good technicians were leaving, his clients were leaving. Um and so thought, oh my gosh, I need to do something about this. And so both of these companies had started doing internal auditing. So they had managers take turns auditing tickets, um and it worked for a little while, it worked okay, uh but then managers had to be sort of police to get it done. Of course, they had a ton of other things that they had to do. Um and of course, there was always a question of uh, you know, bias either knowingly or unknowingly, you know, towards certain technicians. And so they were looking for a solution um as an external QA service and didn't find one. And uh gave me this idea. So I started doing auditing for them. And um kind of took it one step further and uh started giving feedback to the technicians, so they would get daily feedback on soft skills, so it was sort of like on the job training for them as well. And uh word sort of spread and now we have clients all over the US, uh Canada and Australia. That's awesome. Yeah, QA service, I guess that that was the the description that I was I was looking for earlier. And and I agree, it's it's uh I the MSP that I ran, I had uh the service manager had a deeper history around uh call centers, and was very steeped in QA, so took that portion of the business very, very seriously and you definitely saw the benefit of that in the client interactions. But you're right, it's it's often something that isn't uh something that people make time for, uh and it's uh it's fairly laborious. Uh to to sort of work through if you have a high volume of calls, you know, you're monitoring those calls on uh as they come through and being able to review all of those tickets, uh it often gets, you know, delegated to the floor as it were. So it's uh I think it's a unique service and and very cool. Um, you're doing both call QA as well as the email QA as well, right? Yes, correct. So we actually listen to phone calls as well, and uh go in and A, make sure a ticket was actually created, um very important there, if a client calls back a week later, issue reoccurred and there's no record of it, it doesn't look very good. Uh so that's sort of foremost there, um and you know, look at the quality of the ticket notes there. And then of course, look at um is the technician being polite, are they being friendly or are they being curt, uh using too much technical jargon? Are they keeping the client on hold forever without checking in with them, um and, you know, just providing good customer service and leaving that interaction on a positive note. Yeah. So, being that you're you're focused on service and always improving service, I'm curious because I I find this with myself coming from a service industry, I become hyper aware of all the service around me, and all the interactions that I have, especially if you're calling into a call center somewhere, then you become very acutely aware of that. But even in retail uh settings and things like that, I'm always sort of keen and watching around me what's going on. Is that is that something you fall victim to as well, always analyzing the service around you? Oh, yes, absolutely. I think like most people, I would always know whether that interaction was a positive one or a negative one. But now I find myself in my head using our scoring categories, like if I'm booking a hotel room, for example, um I'll find myself saying like expectations, one out of three, polite, two out of three. So I'm kind of notating in my head what I would score them if I was scoring them. That's actually maybe a good point of reference as well. You mind sharing those those categories of of the scoring system, so people maybe have a bit of a framework of what the elements are. Sure, absolutely. Uh so we have nine different categories that we look for. Um so we look for any uh reoccurring issues, we uh make sure to flag those. It might be a question of um client uh education or technician education or maybe it just needs to get escalated. Uh so of course, it's frustrating for clients to have the same thing pop up over and over again, so we make sure to flag any reoccurring tickets. Um and then we look for uh passwords being revealed. Uh so of course, that can be a security concern, so whenever they're revealed either by the client or technician, we make sure to flag that. Um, next we look for closing, uh was the ticket closed appropriately, uh was there confirmation before uh closing the ticket? Is everyone on the same page about what was done? Um and then we look for the technicians to send over a closing email that sort of leaves it on a positive note, um and let's the client know what the root causes were, uh something like, you know, the root cause is that your laptop wasn't restarted in three weeks. Uh so then maybe next time the client might restart their laptop, um before they call in and, you know, reduce ticket volume. So another category that we look for are expectations, uh so making sure that expectations are set and reset if needed. Appointments are kept, the client is on the same page about how long things are going to take. Another category that we look for is polite, you know, please and thank you, very important in customer service. So we look for where we can improve uh the level of politeness in their interaction. And lastly, um email versus phone, uh we have found that technicians are often reliant on email communication, uh instead of picking up the phone, they'll send a million emails back and forth, uh so we look for instances of that as well. Yeah, those last two I find are are super critical. Um the uh the timeliness and the the cadence of communication and just setting and resetting expectations. I a quote that I like is uh um uh setting expectations buys you a lot of grace, like you can buy yourself a lot of time by just saying, hey, I haven't got this quite done yet, can I get back to you? Just that simple ask, as long as you don't abuse it, gives you a lot more opportunity to spend time on something rather than just, you know, that support ticket disappearing into a black hole and someone gets rightfully frustrated with that that uh disappearing. And then the other one, you nailed it, like technical people tend to hide behind email and a lot a lot can be solved by just picking up the phone and and uh chasing someone down. Uh that can really speed the close and in a lot of cases, people will prefer to to uh chat on on the phone as well. So, yeah, the great great ones there. Um that kind of leads to, you know, maybe a bit of discussion on on maybe some of the top complaints that you tend to see from uh the MSP clients, so the end users consuming these services. Uh do you do any interviews with with the clients themselves? Or is it more just sort of based on what you see in the interactions with the MSPs themselves? We do not speak to our client clients. Um, the only sort of interaction that we might have with them uh are through incident reports. Uh so whenever a client does complain, um we fill out an incident report and that has a summary of everything that happened. It has our scoring on it, uh it has a place where the technicians to sort of sign off on. And sometimes that's used just internally as a training tool and sometimes that incident report is then given to the client. Uh but we are not speaking to the clients or anything like that. So that you still you see those complaints, so you'll you'll you definitely have a gauge of where those frustrations bubble up from the client base, right? Oh, yes, absolutely. So, um the biggest complaints that we really see are um in not closing the ticket uh properly. So, the technician will sort of just work on something in the background and close the ticket and the client will then call in or email in and and say, why did you close this? This wasn't resolved or it wasn't resolved to what I thought you were doing. Um so sort of a loss of communication there. Um and then the other complaint is with expectations and like you said, it just, you know, setting, resetting expectations can save you so much grief. Um we often see when we first start working with clients that technicians will actually be doing work on a ticket, they'll, you know, be getting things done, but it'll just be an internal note. And the client will then be calling or emailing in asking for status updates, so, you know, just keeping the client updated, uh making sure that everyone is on the same page will really get you far. For sure. That's um maybe a point you can validate my thinking. Um because on ticket notes, a lot of the the the ticket systems will have um a setup where if someone enter note enters notes on that ticket, it automatically sends those notes to to the end user. Um the typical setup is that any interactions with the ticket end up going to the client. Um and I take a different view of this, my preference is that you have to be a bit more thoughtful about what information you send to the client. Because if you just have every single update and most of it being technical, people tend to fatigue with ticket updates and they start to ignore them or delete them and then they don't end up seeing the information where you actually need their input on. What's your preference on sort of the the amount of of information, the amount of communication that you have on those those ticket updates? So I completely agree with you that we do not want to fatigue uh the clients with, you know, bullet points of technical jargon that they might not understand and probably don't care about. Um because then of course, they will start ignoring those emails where you actually do need something from them. And they'll probably start ignoring your surveys that you might be sending out as well, so we definitely don't want to overwhelm them with too many emails. But of course, having actual emails that are to the client, um telling them that something is being worked on, giving them a timeline, those are very important. Yeah, excellent. Um, do you find that technical people are a little more difficult or resistant to some of the the coaching that you have to provide versus other industries, they may have more experience around coaching soft skills and and customer service? Um, not necessarily. Um, you know, technicians are often very intelligent people, um they like to problem solve. Um, you know, they like to improve on things and so once they're given the tools and given the training, then, you know, they're able to pick it up. Mhm. Okay. Um, that's different from what I would have expected because, you know, they are highly intelligent, you know, they they may think that I I know this stuff, like this doesn't seem uh practical or useful for me. So I I maybe expected that they would be a bit more resistant to to to that coaching. But yeah, that's good to know. Maybe it's it's more about the approach than it is about uh the the specifics or the content that they're being provided as well. Um, any any advice for interactions with those people on how you provide feedback so that it's accepted and not resisted? Well, um, of course, sometimes there are, you know, those outliers. Uh we have our cumulative um monthly reports where we tally up all the scores and sometimes see, you know, some technicians are maybe one or two in the company might be trailing uh behind the rest of the team in their scores. Um, so at that point, we would just concentrate on them a little bit more and if they still don't want to improve, they still don't want to follow the best practices, then we would, you know, have that conversation of maybe um this isn't the right role for them, uh maybe they should be moved to a more background role where they're not having client interaction. Or um maybe they're not a good company culture fit, you know, if everyone else cares about customer service in the way that they're interacting and this individual does not, then might not be a good fit. Yeah. No, I like that approach as well. So you you've mentioned some some data points that you use, I I love uh being in the data and seeing what the data tells you. It's uh doesn't necessarily give you a prescription, but it certainly helps you ask better questions. Um I know you've mentioned customer satisfaction surveys, that's a hugely important component to that. Uh any other data points that you feel are are really valid, things that you kind of mark or measure uh to to see how the individuals or the company as a whole are doing? Sure, so absolutely surveys, uh CSAT. Um we also uh look at um initial response time is very important. Uh we sometimes see complaints about that, of course, if it takes too long to get an initial response. Um and that's not necessarily that someone started working on the ticket right away, but that a human actually touched it and assigned it and it told the client that we'll get to this soon. Um, something else that we look for too are um we have uh internal engagement surveys too. So that speaks to company culture, making sure that um employees are engaged, so that's another important metric that we look at too. Yeah. Okay, great. And along with our scores of course. Yeah, right. Uh and um I guess what would you say are sort of the top three suggestions for uh companies uh looking to improve their customer service or help their staff to develop their soft skills? Uh any uh uh top three tips that you would uh pass on? Absolutely. Um the first one I would say is uh setting what the standards should be, what those best practices should be. Make sure everyone is on the same page. Um, you know, no one likes getting complaints or getting yelled at when they're at work, um and especially no one likes that if it's something that they didn't even do. So, um if everyone's not held to the same standard, then we found that your good technicians will leave. Um, so just making sure everyone's on the same page and um, you know, it's uh we also think that having a never-ending cycle of enforcement is also crucial as well. You know, you can give someone the standards, but if no one's making sure that they're actually following them, it doesn't get you very far. Um, and if you're not sure what the standards should be, of course, we've done that work for you, um looked at hundreds and thousands of tickets by now, um so if anyone's interested, please contact me. Um, the second thing, um I would say is incentivizing employees, um publicly, hopefully. Um, you know, rewarding them for a job well done. Um, we do something with perfecting service called the 100% club, so in the daily emails that we send out, if any technicians got all 100% scores for the day, we do recognize them and point them out. Um, and lastly, uh of course, IT companies were built to solve technical problems and often forget that it's a customer service world. And um, you know, they're wanting to keep their clients productive, um of course, and solve their problems. But clients often won't care or remember um how their IT issue was solved, but they will absolutely remember how they felt during that interaction. Um so just making sure to remember that. Yeah, yeah, really important stuff. Great. Um, well, interesting chat, I appreciate your insights on developing soft skills and creating a a great service culture. Uh if anyone wants additional info or wants to reach out to you, uh any suggestions on where they can find you or follow you? Absolutely. Um, our website, perfectingservice.com. Um or my email, Alona, A L O N A at perfectingservice.com and I'm also on LinkedIn. Okay, great. Appreciate your time today, Alona, and uh thanks for coming on. Thank you so much for having me, Todd. It was fun.