Solution-Centered Support
Manager's Survival Guide

So your organization is about to adopt Solution-Centered Support , you're team is about to participate in the adoption roll out, and you're saying to yourself, and probably to other people, "I don't have time for this. We've got too much work to do. How is this going to affect our service levels?" And probably numerous other questions, all of which are likely to be valid.

Yes, you and your team are about to experience a shift like none other in the history of support. A shift for which there is no known appropriate alternative. The growing complexity of solutions that organizations are delivering and customer are developing is driving customer demand for more support that creates a requirement for more training on the part of support engineers. The demand for more support creates a demand for more people and their training detracts current engineers from delivering support. The addition of more people is also in direct conflict with the organization's attempt to manage cost growth as a response to continually declining margins due to price cutting to keep pace with the competition. And then there's the continuing effort to replace people that leave which creates additional training requirements thus reducing the productivity of seasoned engineers. In short, it's a real mess, from which you may feel like there is no escape. Actually there is a way out. Solution-Centered Support is a business strategy for the future of support which can provide relief from the vicious chaos described above.

Solution-Centered Support Principles

Solution-Centered Support is a set of interrelated disciplines developed through a collaborative effort by some of the most well know high-tech companies in the country. Solution-Centered Support is not a program to be implemented; it is quite simply a better way of doing business which provides hope for the future. The disciplines to be adopted and developed center around culture, content, process, quality and technology. While the methods of developing these disciplines are provided in the adoption workshops they are defined as follows:

• Culture. The expected skills, habits, behaviors, and values of the people who are part of the environment. Within an SCS context, the action of a Solution-Centered culture recognizes and values the sharing of knowledge. The culture encourages collaboration and considers people part of the solution.
• Content. The collection of knowledge that represents an organization's captured experiences with the products it supports such that the knowledge can be re-applied in future activities. Within an SCS context, the support organization's knowledge is captured through the Solution Management Process in the form of solutions. Solutions integrate the Situation with Information, Analysis, and a Resolution in a standardized structure.
• Process. The operational activities that develop stakeholder value. Within an SCS context, the activities of the individual and the organization are designed to create synergy that increases the capacity of the system.
• Quality. The products and processes that meet the needs of the stakeholders. Within an SCS context quality processes assess, balance, and evolve all dimensions of the environment as a single system.
• Technology. The electronic media, automation, and conduit for the support processes. Within an SCS context, technology makes the system accessible, shareable, and scaleable.

Solution-Centered Support Practices

• Move solution delivery as close to solution capture as possible
• Create a solution for all issues that warrant a solution
• Create a solution sing the same process as is used for solving a problem
• Access solution elements when and where needed, on demand
• Design solution content to map to the experience and need of the audience
• Improve the precision and relevance of the solution throughout its life-cycle
• Measure solution reuse explicitly within the system
• Measure the contributions of each participant of the system and recognize how they add value to the strategy
• Formally recognize the value of contributing solution elements for framing or improving content
• The quality of the solution is determined by the customer
• Map each measure to business objectives
• The whole corporation understand the strategy and the surrounding organizations work with support to enable it

Benefits

The benefits which result form a successful adoption and continued development of the Solution-Centered Support disciplines are many. Some of the most evident benefits experienced by organizations currently adopting Solution-Centered Support are:

• Reduced redundant effort caused by multiple people working the same problem
• Reduced rediscovery of solutions to customer problems
• Reduced average time to resolution for customer problems
• Reduced training requirements for new individuals
• Reduced time for new individuals to become productive in the organization
• Ability for individuals to provide support for broader range of products
• Improved individual productivity
• Creating of new challenging work for engineers; e.g. solution management, root cause analysis
• Improved employee satisfaction
• More consistent quality of solutions delivered to the customer
• Call avoidance through web delivery of known solutions
• Increased capacity to pursue more value added customer services
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Improved management of support cost growth
• Improved support organizational performance profile

Promoting A Successful Adoption

The next question is probably something along the lines of "OK, so how is it that you manage to attain all these marvelous results?" It's a most appropriate question, and the answer is a bit easier to describe than it is to perform.

The successful adoption of solution centered support depends on the consistent alignment of efforts of all levels of the organization to focus on doing those things which contribute to results and improve their capacity to improve in these areas. More specifically, the focus needs to be on developing understanding and skills in the areas of integrated problem solving workflow processes, content structuring, products supported, and the organization's capacity to share knowledge and collaborate on the development of knowledge. The specifics of these areas are presented in the adoption workshops.

Specific activities managers should perform to promote alignment are:

• Consistently attend meetings to discuss the SCS strategy - show up on time and stay for the whole meeting
• Participate in training sessions with your team
• In staff meetings, put Solution-Centered Support first or in a prominent position in the list of topics
• Spend time watching how people create solutions
• Don't adopt a victim or un-empowered position regardless of the size of the challenge
• Understand the vision of the organization
• Define the vision of the team
• Build the team's strategic framework top-down (includes vision and strategic objectives)
• Present the top-down view to the team
• Enlist the team in defining their operational goals and committing to their targets
• Meet with individuals on the team to line up their current performance system to the goals and development needs that will enable the individuals to meet their collective and personal objectives.