In my previous article, I discussed the different Customer Success Team Engagement Model, their Pros and Cons. Neebal has always believed in knowing the industry's best practices about delivery processes. Tweaking & customizing the training as per its work culture, delivery processes, customers, and nature of their business & technology platforms. In this article, I would cover a customized Version of Core Flex Model adopted by Neebal for its Enterprise customer. The later part of the article would also discuss how to identify which model suits different requirements since no one size fits all models.
In line with our philosophy, we have come up with our version of the core flex delivery model, which has worked well with our customers and us. We had tried to overcome the cons listed above of conventional core flex model with our tweaks:
KPIs beyond traditional SLA tracking
Following Key KPIs are tracked on a monthly basis apart from Team SLA:
Quantifiable improvements in Ticket resolution time for same category of tickets
Month on month reduction in Incident Rate against no of transactions executed in the system
Hours spent on every service request & incident
No of change requests delivered & efforts spent against them
Total cost value of CRs delivered against Incidents & CRs
% Effort Reduction recurring service requests
Budgeted vs. actual spend for every core flex Resource
No of Wikis/KBs created
Find below a sample dashboard shared with one of our customers for their Core Flex Team:
Capping of Costs of Large CRs Delivered
Small CRs with Dev Efforts <10 days are executed without estimates approvals allowing agility to delivery small but important feature releases quickly
Estimates shared & agreed upon for CRs with estimated Dev efforts > 10 days
The customer pays for the agreed efforts for the month’s billing
Thus, the Core Flex model is value-driven, unlike traditional TnM model & Shared Service Models of support. Rather than focus on the number of hours spent, importance is given to value derived from change requests delivered & reducing the number of service requests & incidents occurring in the application.
Having Implemented this model across multiple Enterprise customers, we have observed the following Gains:
The question arises on how CIOs; IT heads of enterprise companies decide which model to opt for considering every model has its pros & cons. Neebal has created a decision tree to help IT leaders determine the Customer Success Team Engagement model. The decision tree has been provided here:
Typically, application maintenance & support consumes 80% of total application lifetime cost. Hence, identifying a cost-optimized support engagement model is critical to reducing overall lifetime support costs. The decision tree made above is an excellent guide to arrive at an engagement model. Any engagement model you agree with, identifying quantifiable KPIs & objectives which the customer believes creates value for them for the money they are paying for the engagement is significant. Tracking these KPIs regularly and reviewing them with vendors would allow a Customer Success Engagement model, which fits your business & applications/platforms, supporting it.