Event Leading to Incident Lifecycle

Many reasons of interruption or degradation of service levels are due to challenging events within the service infrastructure.  The event lifecycle is the period in which the infrastructure is being monitored for significant events. Problematic events typically bring about the incident lifecycles. 

The service events lifecycle is there to describe the sequence of events, that start with an infrastructure event and ends up impacting a Service Level Objective (SLO) not limited to hardware and software. If an event affects a Service Level, then we normally consider it an incident.

The event lifecycle starts with monitored activity of people, process, and technology including heart-beat status information.  The monitoring systems including the manual type, filter and correlate these events looking for critical information. The result of this effort is called: moderated alert. 

A Service Level Indicator (SLI) is a routine specifically designed to monitor SLOs and the attainment issues.  Typically we have a group of SLIs to manage the service infrastructure.  SLIs can be weighed or factored to represent the relative importance of each Configuration Item (CI). When one or more is triggered indicating a significant impact to the service, an incident ticket is raised, an impact/urgency/priority is assigned based on the Service Level Agreements (SLA) and the incident lifecycle begins.

Once the incident is resolved and the service is restored, the service impact statement is completed which describes the full scope of all impacts to the client of the service.  This statement is reviewed by Problem Management and assessed for accuracy with Service Management and Client Relationship Management to determine further actions if needed.  At times Service Improvement plans are spawned as a part of Continual Service Improvement initiatives due to the incident.   

All The Best,

EL

Service Catalogue

If you are a service organization without a Service Catalogue, you are like a restaurant without a menu.  This implies that any customer can order anything and the restaurant staff will operate in a reactive manner, any time, inefficiently to prepare the food and deliver a non-consistent food menu which may or may not taste good, and in a none cost-effective way.  

What would be the customer retention look like in a restaurant like this?  What would customer satisfaction look like?  Would they be operating efficiently? Would they know what to keep in inventory?  Would they be efficient in delivery? And so many more questions to follow an operation like this.

Creation of a Service Catalogue is the number one priority if you are a service providing company.  What do you offer? The cost of delivery? The efficiency of delivery? Etc…  The Service Catalogue talks to one or more descriptions of the services offered and perhaps future service abilities.  The customer will be using the Service Catalogue to request and negotiate the services and desired levels of service.  Going back to the restaurant analogy, it makes a difference if you decide to dine in, take out, or have it delivered.  The Service Catalogue then becomes our first level of entry in negotiations and the management of expectation.

The Service Catalogue is a member of a family of catalogues.  We have Goal catalogue in which we describe the entire Service Provider and Enterprise objectives.  We have Activity Catalogue in which all major activities are listed. There is Process Catalogue, outlining and documenting the cross-functional processes.  The Infrastructure Catalogue describes the pre-designed and proven infrastructure that provides guaranteed levels of service.

Keep in mind that a Service Catalogue is NOT a service portfolio.  Service portfolio deals with managing service as investment with a profit and loss perspective.  Service Catalogue co-exists to support the Service Portfolio.  A Service Catalogue can even be integrated with a shopping cart technology.  You might even decide on different Service Catalogues designed to cater to different audiences.  

A Service Catalogue contains a simple schema of: introduction; signatories; dominant contracts and governance; glossary of terms; positioning statement; features and scope of service; service level statements; management of standard and non-standard requests; change procedures and authorization.  

Behind the scene of course, will be a combination of content management, service order management, subscription management, shopping cart and reward systems, cooperating as a part of a holistic service management team. A Service Catalogue normally helps set or influence expectations, manage the customer and service provider encounter, and present a key moment of truth.  Keep in mind that a Service Catalogue runs the risk of becoming quickly outdated  and stale if it is not maintained and kept alive.

Hope this has been of some help.

EL

Mind Your 4 E's

Let's face it, every business strives to offer service excellence. We live in a service based society. The customer experience is the key success factor in surviving and thriving. The key to operational excellence is through understanding what you will excel at, or not; as well as determining the use of your resources to design and apply improvements with most effect.

For service excellence you need to mind the 4 Es. First E is Expectation. Second E is Encounter. Third E is Experience. Fourth E is Emotion. I will briefly get into explaining each but I will only be scratching the surface.

The first E to manage is Expectation. This is your customer's expectation of your service. What can they achieve by using your service?  Expectation determines the level of anticipation the customer has for the quality of service. There are always two sides to expectation: physical and emotional. The two are combined  to form the service experience. Most of the time the emotional component is powerful enough to override the physical need. For example if you are craving a certain kind of food and you have found the restaurant that makes the best; if your emotional need for being welcome in the restaurant is not met, you are likely to walk away.

Likewise, improper setting of a physical expectation can also affect the customer's emotion.

The second E is Encounter. This is when the customer comes into contact with any aspect of the service or service providing organization. Every encounter has a definite beginning and ending. There are always two views of the encounter: one is the customer view and the other the service provider view.  Typically the providers view is less expansive. Encounter is considered the moment of truth and the moment of need. This is also called a touch point. This is when the customer gets the opportunity to form an impression about any aspect of the service or the provider. There are always three components to encounter: greet, use, and thank you. The three components determine when is the beginning and the end. The service provider needs to pay close attention in establishing its own start and end touch points or its own greet and thank you moments. What fits between the two points are determining factors  and indicators of customer satisfaction. When the customer expresses a new need or a change of need, this is the future service requirement and a key indicator of the providers service flexibility.

The third E, is Experience. Personal touches are the differentiating factors between two service providers offering similar services. Personal service brings about loyalty and reduces the time and effort that is needed to sustain the relationship. We can evaluate this by asking few simple questions: what does the organization look like from outside?  How satisfied are the current customers with the level of service and support? What is their experience? When they have a problem or complaint, how do they contact you and how is this resolved? Where should you place resources to improve the customer experience? Always remember the old saying: people don't want to buy a quarter inch drill. The want a quarter inch hole.

The fourth E is the Emotional factor. This is a major element in customer satisfaction. Emotions seriously impact the overall experience. Every interaction between the customer and service provider has within it the potential of inflaming the emotional state of the customer and distracting them from the true value they are receiving. Emotions that are evoked for wrong reasons take a lot of effort before they are turned to satisfied state. But isn't that the same in all our personal lives as well?

Hope you enjoyed reading this article. All the best. EL