Key Support Statistics
Issue: As the great W. E. Deming pointed out, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” All good managers recognise this and seek the key statistics that will aid their decisions and strategies. Two things can get in the way. One is a misleading emphasis on ‘Service Levels’ for reporting to a clientele which, if the service is perceived as adequate, may be indifferent. The other is the emphasis on quantities alone, which give only a fraction of the picture.
Approach: ‘How many’ and ‘how quickly’ on their own are of little help. There needs to be a context. Were those quantities cost effective? Was speed achieved at the expense of thoroughness? Was quality affected by quantity? And if there are service levels, are they arrived at by science or by convention? Is a four-hour fix time good or prohibitively costly? And where are those costs incurred? Do they offset higher costs elsewhere?
I can help: My ‘NumberKnow’ coaching (click for info) shows your support managers how to gather, calculate and exploit statistics to aid real decision making affecting service investment, performance, quality and value. Or find out for yourself how you perform, by downloading a programmed spreadsheet to benchmark your team against its peers.