I N C I D E N T A L S

Customers: Keeping in touch

Promoting confidence within your service and support operation

Professional support teams are often frustrated by the customer's inability to follow-up their own support issues. Be it a customer searching and applying a pre-existing solution from the Knowledgebase or responding to a Technician's request for further information related to the customers support request.

On the other side of the service desk, the customer complains about lack of communication from service staff. They are annoyed by the Technician's unavailability to deal with their queries, or about not being updated in a timely manner regarding support concerns. Customers can also be infuriated by the lack of opportunity to state their opinion regarding the service they received from the support team.

With frustration and communication issues being big-ticket issues for all support staff it is any wonder that service technicians stay in their job. And because gaining customer confidence in the service desk is imperative for business growth, the capability to fine-tune the service and support offering is mandatory.

In an attempt to minimize the service desk grievances, LiveTime version 5.0 has implemented customer-focused facilities such as Live Chat, RSS Feeds and, for gaining insight in the support process from the Customer perspective, User Group Surveys.

Live Chat

LiveTime's Live Chat facility allows Customers to initiate a chat with an appropriate technician or a member of the technician's team from the Customer Portal, regarding any of their open or pending requests. When the chat has finished, the transcript is saved as a Request note and a copy of the chat is also automatically emailed to the customer. Technicians do not have to fear that they have lost control over their availability to Customers, as the 'Available to Chat' functionality must be enabled for them to participate in an instant message (IM) based dialogue with the customer.

RSS Feeds

In an era of multi-channel communication options, an excuse for not being informed or not keeping people updated is hard to find. To ensure that users are always informed about their relevant support issues irrespective of whether they are logged into LiveTime or not, RSS feeds can be used. RSS feeds allow Customers to subscribe to relevant LiveTime information for streaming to their Portlets of generic RSS feeds. This enables clients to receive immediate notification of relevant support changes, such as item outages or new notes added to a service request.

Customer Surveys

As the saying goes "ignorance is bliss" but to survive in the competitive marketplace gaining feedback for services provided is crucial. To this end, be it that LiveTime is used for internal or external customer support the service, the service can be refined based on customer feedback. User Group surveys can be generated for each support issue or general surveys can be created for service desk user groups. LiveTime allows the Service Desk to create, distribute, collate and analyse survey responses to ensure customer feedback is easy to access and use.

Look to the Tips and Tricks section of this newsletter for specific details regarding activation and use of the Survey and Chat features.

Tips and Tricks

All about Live Chat and Surveys

Within version 5.0 the default settings for LiveChat and Public Surveys is set to No. To enable this functionality, as Administrator go to the Setup tab. Select the Privileges sub-menu option, select the System tab.



Public Surveys - To display the Surveys link on the application Log in page, select Yes for the Public Surveys option. This will allow customers to complete any public surveys without logging into the application. Surveys displayed within this link have the survey Audience option set to Everyone.

Live Chat - To enable the instant messaging facility for requests, select Yes for the Enable Chat option of the System>Privileges. For the "Chat Request Assignment" option select Technician if you only want the Customer to chat with technician assigned to the Request. If you want to broaden Chat pool options for the customer, select Team for this option, which will allow the chat to commence with any member of the technician team.



Technician Chat Availability - Technician control over their availability for chat, is maintained within the Technician's My Account tab. The Available For Chat option can be switched to Yes or No, depending on their preference.



Online Help - Customers and Users can access the complete User Guide through the Online Help Button.

Within any LiveTime screen, click the '? Help' button to display the relevant page of the User Guide. To access the User Guide Menu bar, click the Show link in the top left corner of the User Guide screen.

What's coming....

Time to Upgrade: LiveTime version 5.0 is here

The good news for LiveTime Users wanting to upgrade to the new v5 release is that the process is straightforward, and can be performed by the LiveTime administrator in a matter of minutes! Now for those of us that have dealt with enterprise software upgrades, that's something to really be excited about!

In fact, upgrades of LiveTime are managed seamlessly within the LiveTime application itself. This means that upgrades are achieved without the need to engage the entire deployment team of DBAs, System Administrators and Security experts.

For those wishing to have immediate access to the 100+ new LiveTime v5 features, including Surveys, Live Chat, Internationalization and Mixed-Mode Authentication, to name a few, please contact support@livetime.com. A quick summary of the simple steps will be forwarded to you and you can choose to step through the process at your own leisure, or set-up an appointment with a technician to take you through the upgrade process.

LiveTime Partner Update

Portugal's TintaDigital joins LiveTime's Reseller Program

Over summer, the LiveTime reseller program signed Portugal ITIL service management specialists - TintaDigital.

Lisbon-based TintaDigital specializes in IT services and solutions development for SMEs and large enterprises in Portugal with major clients in the Finance, Telco and Distribution industries. TintaDigital's expert professionals create flexible value-added solutions based on best-of-class products offering innovative technology.

TintaDigital's primary areas of activity include IT Infrastructure, ITIL Support, Website & Portal development and IT Training and Consulting Services. The company's strong relationships with clients are founded on a motivated team with extensive technological expertise whose simple goal is to fulfill clients and partners needs.

For more information about TintaDigital please visit their web site at http://www.tintadigital.com