When you combine high volume and high tech, the last thing you would expect in a client service model is the human touch.  Sometimes the greatest part about joining a new company is seeing new approaches to achieving tremendous success.  That was my experience in joining Evoco as the Director of Services.  Here are a few things I’ve learned in the last year in this high tech environment with an old school feel…

Answer the call

The typical expectation for someone working in a large retail enterprise when calling a help desk is a recorded voice saying “For technical support, please press 1”, followed by another recording with more dialing instructions.  At Evoco, if the phone in the call center rings more than 3 times, there is a notice to the entire team that extra hands on deck are required.  You’re likely at that point to get a friendly voice on the phone who might be the person who developed the software you’re working on, and it might be the president / founder of the company.  We’re all committed to quick turn around and immediate resolution.  When getting user feedback, this differentiator is frequently quoted as a reason for high satisfaction with support and Evoco.

Happiness is Contagious

It’s important to keep an environment of fun in the bullpen where we receive incoming calls. Being professional with clients doesn’t mean you can’t respond to an unprovoked barrage of Nerf darts fired by the Usability Team, or challenging members of the Maintenance Team to foosball. We focus on celebrating our successes and learning from everything in between. Happy helpers make for happy clients.

(Cubicle) Farms are for Cattle

When you first consider our description of the help desk as a bullpen, you might not catch the key difference. Cubicles are great at creating a semi enclosed workspace for an individual. While this may be common it is also far from ideal. We focus on collaborating as a team and the open area of a bullpen with one desk facing another and easy access to colleges, encourages interactions. Someone can offer bits of advice or get directly involved without barriers. 

Within all of this is the never ending drive to improve, which starts and ends in monitoring performance while not forgetting to plan and act in between. Whether it’s Deming’s PDCA , ITIL’s CSI or one of the countless other performance models; the key is understanding performance and how it is affected. At Evoco we focus on seven key performance indicators that are relevant to our business model, measuring performance against ourselves and industry benchmarks. We continue to be excited by our performance, while not forgetting that “At Evoco great customer service is customary, not an unexpected luxury”.