John Linton
and start the zig-zag trip home in a few hours.
We wound up the Exetel SL review about 30 minutes ago with a quiet dinner with the SL general manager. Earlier in the day we signed the new lease for 6,000 sq feet of office space on the 25th floor of the East Tower of the World Trade Centre building where we have operated (on the 9th floor) since June 2008. We obtained a remarkably good deal, for whatever reason, and will get double the space on a much higher (theoretically more expensive floor) for not much more than we are paying now. I'd like to claim credit for being a really good price negotiator but I doubt that's true. We also signed the contract to move our current operation from Level 9 to Level 25 at a much lower total cost than had been quoted and we arranged to move banks to get the benefit of lower operating charges so we had a very good 'financial' day. I suppose the reality is that we were true 'babes in the wood' when we first came to Sri Lanka and we are now, having learned the hard way, paying more realistic prices for things than we did when we first came here some two years ago.
Although those financial 'accommodations' were a pleasant surprise the real benefits from this review have come from the discussions on how to improve the rate, width and depth of the knowledge transfer processes. Moving 6 key operating 'departments' from one country to another via recruiting 40+ people whose knowledge of the products, services and processes was zero is not the easiest task in the world to try and accomplish. I think that, via the amazingly effective hard work and dedication of everyone concerned we have pretty much accomplished those very, very difficult tasks. Perhaps our total lack of experience of carrying out such a transition and our total ignorance of how to go about it has assisted us, in a perverse way, as we just used common sense and ignored the difficulties in setting up and operating a new company 10,000 kms away from 'home' and have been rewarded with a sophisticated company larger than the Australian operation it supports.
We have discussed, debated, mutually agreed and now established the twin targets of zero TIO complaints and zero 'unnecessary' support calls as the bench marks for the next two years of the Sri Lankan company's existence. This is to be accomplished by a unique new knowledge inculcation process and measurement system/set of processes that, while as far as I'm aware, have never been put in place by any other company seem, at least to me, to have the potential of solving everything that is 'wrong' in operating a 'support' function for a relatively complex service. At this stage it's only a concept and it may well turn out to be impractical but it seems, at least logically, to have more likelihood of success than anything else I've ever become aware of.
In case that sounds totally stupid or, worse, perversely coy, let me simply say that if every customer had all the knowledge, tools and capabilities of the most knowledgeable and experienced 'help desk' person - why would they need to call a 'help desk person'? So we will continue the long process of putting in pace the tools and 'instant' answers to any possible support question in a way(s) that the end user, irrespective of their knowledge/experience level can access and radically increase their own ability to diagnose and fix whatever problem they encounter.
Pretty simple really. Why haven't the millions of call centres around the world ever done this? I have no idea. Perhaps they work in a world where a call centre is a given as being necessary part of the company they work for? I don't really give a damn either way as I have had a stimulating, and I think productive, few days looking at really difficult, even complex, scenarios and have, through sensible discussion reached some stimulating conclusions on how to radically improve how Exetel provides better, and quicker, support solutions to those of our customers who need them.
I believe it's going to be possible to ensure that a much higher percentage than 60% of our customers will have no need to call a 'support person' in Exetel in 2010 - and that would be a very good outcome of a few day's discussions.