|
Case Study: Axcell Technologies
Customer Service
 The Challenge: As a provider of out-sourced IT services, match the responsiveness of an in-house staff.
With the emergence of managed services, the efficiency and effectiveness of a help desk operation is central to an IT service provider’s success. Customers require fast response to their issues and clear communication during the entire resolution process.
Axcell Technologies is a provider of outsourced IT services based in the Chicago area. Industries represented in Axcell’s client base of 35 companies include manufacturing, real estate, healthcare, transportation, and finance.
Axcell itself has five employees. With an average of seven companies per Axcell staff member, Axcell President Rick Vines had a very specific requirement for any professional services automation (PSA) solution he would select: He wanted an application that would ensure responsiveness to customer service requests and keep everyone notified via e-mail that the work was being done. Because, as Rick notes, “The people who are doing the work are never in the office.”
Seeing the issue from the client’s perspective, Rick says, “When you have a problem — even if it’s a printer that won’t print — you want to know that a human being is working on that right now, because you need that document right now.” Though immediately working on an issue may be impossible, Rick recognizes that simply acknowledging the service request is important to the customer’s peace of mind.
What Rick found, however, was that the PSA solutions on the market failed to deliver the kind of two-way communication he was seeking.
Then about a year ago, Rick got a call from ConnectWise CEO Arnie Bellini. “What are you trying to accomplish with this idea?” Arnie asked.
The Solution
Rick explained that a major failure of the closed-loop feature of PSA applications was requiring customers to log on to a web-based interface to make service requests. “They’re just not going to do that. They just want to send an e-mail,” Rick said. He wanted two-way communication between Axcell and the company’s customers to take place via e-mail as the service ticket was being tracked by the PSA application. He also wanted other team members copied by e-mail so that there would be across-the-board awareness of what everyone was doing and when.
As he conveyed his thoughts, Rick saw that Arnie was becoming “sort of excited about it.” Rick was asked to take part developing implementation of the new feature, and he accepted the invitation.
Apart from the prospect of finally getting what he wanted most from a PSA application, Rick was also impressed by Arnie’s desire to meet Axcell’s requirements. “For the CEO of a company to be this involved in development at this level is really something. Arnie really keeps his finger on the pulse of the industry.”
The Results
Today ConnectWise — with the closed loop feature as Rick envisioned it — is in place at Axcell. When a service appears on Rick’s Palm® Treo™ he simply responds to the customer that he will take care of the issue and other team members are copied on the message. At the same time, the application records the activity for improved billable hours tracking, reporting and invoicing.
“This is just such a simple way to operate,” Rick says. “We are able to promise our customers that we will respond to every ticket within 30 minutes.” In the vast majority of instances, however, Rick notes that customers are actually notified that they are being taken care of within five minutes — thereby surpassing service level expectations.
Satisfied that the built-in responsiveness of ConnectWise’s closed-loop ticketing has helped strengthen Axcell’s position with his customers, Rick is just beginning to explore the many other features of the PSA application. Looking specifically at such functions as CRM, integration and reporting Rick says, “It’s a very deep program and there’s a lot that can be done with it. ConnectWise helps us keep a handle on the business and a handle on all our clients.”
|