Customer support provision for the IT professional (7540-030)
Assignment set up:
This assignment is made up of five tasks
• Task A – obtain support information.
• Task B – assess customer feed back.
• Task C – interpret trends.
• Task D – provide remote technical support and coaching. • Task E – provide written user instructions for non-technical customers and to recommend suitable training courses and coaching sessions.
Scenario
You are employed by a company that provides a range of ICT support services. Customer requests for support are received at a customer call Centre, based in a different geographic location to the customers that it supports.
Recently you have made site visits to customers and are concerned to hear that they are not satisfied with the service that they receive from your company.
You have been asked to review specific sections of the process for delivering support to your customers.
You should carry out the tasks as instructed. Forms should be completed and screen prints produced as indicated in the tasks. Questions should be answered on the answer sheet provided. Some tasks require you to produce your own documentation.
TASK A – Obtain support information
1 Explain, in approximately 200 words, the reasons why customer service should be prompt and professional. Include three effects on the customer if it is not and three effects on the support organisation if it is not.
2 Describe three different ways of providing technical support, including at least one remote method (other than technical helpdesk).
3 Obtain a software update or patch as directed by your assessor. Save it onto a storage medium as instructed by your assessor. Rename the patch file to reflect what it is and what its use is.
4 Locate a hardware driver for a device as specified by your Assessor. Save it to disk.
5 Download an operator manual as directed by your Assessor. Save the document to a local drive or network location and check that you have the correct software to view the contents. Produce a screen print as evidence of the download.
6 On the ICT contact sheet, prepare a list of five telephone numbers for the customer support centres of major ICT support companies. Include one printer manufacturer, one software supplier, one ICT hardware supplier, one hardware maintenance company and one electronic component supplier.
7 You have been asked to investigate a technical problem. This fault has already been referred to your senior support specialist and you have to collect full information for them to evaluate.
Design a template that could be used to collect the information. The template should be divided into sections and headings to show that you have considered all types of relevant information. It must provide the support specialist with enough information to make a remote diagnosis.
Assume that the specialist will have no other information about the problem except that contained in the template.
TASK B – Assess customer feedback
1 Support companies frequently survey their customers to establish their
level of satisfaction. A popular method is a telephone survey.
There is a particular problem with the service being delivered by technical couriers in your company. Their role is to provide basic installation services for the replacement of peripherals.
Write ten questions that could be asked in a telephone survey of your customers. The survey will be undertaken by non-technical staff and should cover the complete life-cycle of the request for service.
The questions should collect the maximum information and be suitable for entering into an analysis sheet. You should use two or more styles of answer eg graded, yes/no.
You do not need to include the following in your questions: customer name, customer address, customer contact name and telephone number, call reference number.
Task C – Interpret trends
1 Briefly describe data filtering.
2 Look at the trend symptoms on the Trend Analysis Sheet provided by your assessor. In the spaces provided on the sheet, list two possible causes and two items of preventative action, for each trend.
3 Briefly describe trends that may occur in support requests.
Task D – Provide remote technical support
1 Remote support organisations often use specialist teams to respond to customer requests for service.
Design a simple flow chart, with question points, starting from the customer making their initial call and leading to a response by a specialist. The chart should be capable of being used to recommend the layout of an
automatic telephone routing system in a call centre handling
• hardware support
• software support
• installations
• upgrades.
The call centre supports a wide range of IT equipment, and there should be provision for a customer enquiry that does not fit in to the normal call flow. Check that a customer can ask for progress about an existing call without logging a new call.
2 You have listened to a customer call to the customer call centre and are concerned at the lack of structure to the diagnosis process. The customer has an ICT workstation that will not operate.
Use the diagnosis script sheet to write a short script that a call centre diagnosis engineer could use for this type of fault. Include suitable tests that could be carried out remotely.
The script will help the diagnosis engineer repeat the diagnosis steps in a logical order for each occasion that this type of fault is reported.
Task E – provide written user instructions for non-technical customers and to recommend suitable training courses and coaching sessions
1 Write three short explanations to enclose with disks that are being sent to non-technical customers on each of the following.
• Installing a new driver.
• Booting from an emergency boot disk.
• Loading and running a diagnostic disk.
The instructions must enable the customers to carry out the required actions and should explain the purpose of the operations.
2 The profile of a call centre diagnosis engineer is that they only have product training and customer on-site experience. You have been asked to recommend a coaching plan.
Prepare a short report to recommend suitable training courses and coaching sessions. Include the following in your report.
Identify three types of call centre customer and their respective knowledge requirements Methods to assess current call centre diagnosis engineer skills. Three potential coaching subjects.
Ways to evaluate the effectiveness of the coaching.
A list of different coaching methods to satisfy a range of learning styles.
The report should have sufficient information for the call centre manager to use as a development plan. It should therefore prioritise the coaching requirements.
