I recently asked a customer in our kick-off meeting what their goals for the support team were. The answer:

1. Double productivity
2. Halve the cost
3. Create a “Wow” customer experience

That sounds neat, doesn’t it? Here’s the rub. They want to do this leveraging a virtual support team comprised of independent hourly contractors scattered throughout India, Dubai, etc. because they feel it’s cheaper and aligns with their overall business model.

This could be made to work provided the business processes are very consistent, precise, and well thought out. They aren’t. And of course someone would need to closely monitor all of it, enforcing rules-based customer service that usually results in an adequate, if underwhelming customer experience. But we’ll have halved the cost so we can check that off the punch list.

Tribal Knowledge

Tribal knowledge is the aggregate ‘stuff’ shared within and across people in a small team. It’s the stuff everyone knows but no one has written down anywhere, or if they have, only fellow tribesmen know where it is.

In my experience in the support business there’s a reflexive need to move away from tribal knowledge because it means that you haven’t institutionalized your business processes or captured critical information inside the heads of your service team. It makes training new people difficult, costs more when someone leaves, etc. I agree it’s necessary to suppress it in the looooong run.

Personalities

It’s a mistake to ignore or underestimate the fundamental personality make-up of successful support staff. Good service people are, by nature, amiable and expressive. They *like* speaking with and helping others. More importantly, they thrive within interactive environments. That’s where all of the learning happens, after all. It’s also, coincidentally, where great service experiences are produced.

Tribal Knowledge tends to accelerate a strange kind of “service gestalt”. As a business grows tribal knowledge risks becoming more of an albatross, but it’s serves a critical role in small & medium sized organizations. I remind customers that:

• It’s essential to understand your customer’s needs for service from the outside in, not your need for service from the inside-out. That understanding comes from positive customer interaction which is subsequently chatted up among peers.
• You can’t outsource what you don’t have within, be it a business process or a culture. A core team of great service folks must be nested close to the product (and customers) before you can outsource in order to reduce costs or scale for growth.
• Rarely can you process your way in to a truly outstanding customer experience. You have to build a team that takes pride in it both as individuals and as a whole and are consistently recognized and respected for it.