Assess the Maturity of your Service Support Processes

The Service Enterprise Excellence (SEE)-Capability Maturity Model was developed in 2009 by practitioners and groups of international subject experts to bring together the various models for Total Quality Management (TQM).

The Service, Capability and Performance (SCP) Standards is the US sponsor of the SEE-CMM. The aim of the Institute for Service Enterprise Excellence (ISEE) is to promote continuous improvement and organizational excellence using the SEE-CMM. It has over 200 member organizations. The philosophy of the Institute is summed up in this quote:

The Need for a Model

Regardless of sector, size, structure or maturity, to be successful, organizations need to establish an appropriate management system. The SEE-CMM is a practical tool to help organizations do this by measuring where they are on the path to Excellence; helping them understand the gaps; and then stimulating solutions. The SEE-CMM is committed to researching and updating the Model with the inputs of tested good practice from thousands of organizations both within and outside of China. In this way we ensure the model remains dynamic and in line with current management thinking.

The philosophy behind the SEE-CMM - basic concepts

The Model Described

The SEE-CMM is a non-prescriptive framework for capability maturity assessment. Using this tool an organization can assess whether it is doing the right things and getting the right results. The ensuing assessment of an organization’s performance is measured both by results and by the quality of the processes and systems developed to achieve them. In its most sophisticated form the model is used to assess an organization for quality awards - including the ISEE Quality Award. The assessment looks at the whole organization (or the whole of a part of the organization) using nine criteria. The model provides a balance and a relationship between approach (the way in which results are achieved) and results (what is achieved) - a balance between cause and effect. The criteria which deal with cause are known as enablers. Those which deal with effect are known as results. In scoring the organization both have equal weighting.

The model has 8 criteria. Each of the nine criteria has a definition. Each of the 8 criteria is supported by sub-criteria. The sub-criteria are a series of statements about each criterion which should be considered in the course of assessment. Grouped under each of the sub-criteria are areas to address which provide guidance about the evidence which should be sought to assess each of the sub-criteria. The areas to address do not provide an exhaustive list and gathering evidence for all those stipulated would not necessarily indicate excellence.

The Eight Criteria

The full definition for each of the nine criteria is given below:

Enablers

1. Leadership:
How leaders develop and facilitate the achievement of the mission and vision, develop values required for long term success and implement these via appropriate actions and behaviours, and are personally involved in ensuring that the organization’s management system is developed and implemented.

2. Policy and strategy:
How the organization implements its mission and vision via a clear stakeholder-focussed strategy, supported by relevant policies, plans and objectives.

3. People Development:
How the organization manages, develops and releases the knowledge and full potential of its people at an individual, team-based and organization-wide level, and plans these activities in order to support its policy and strategy and the effective operation of its processes.

4. Activity Management
How the organization designs, manages and plans its processes in order to support its policy and strategy and fully satisfy, and generate increasing value for, its customers and other stakeholders.

5. Knowledge Innovation
How the organization plans and manages its internal knowledge in order to support its policy and strategy and the effective operation of its processes.

Results

6. Customer & channel experiences:
What the organization is achieving in relation to its external customers and channels.

7. Employee & Vendor Productivity:
What the organization is achieving in relation to its people and vendor.

8. Key performance results:
What the organization is achieving in relation to its planned business performance.

Uses of the SEE-CMM

There is a range of uses for the model. Some of those are

All the above uses require a suitable self-assessment process, which enables an organization to measure what it is doing and plan improvement.

However the SEE-CMM can also be used as a visioning tool. This enables an organization to build a picture of itself as world class or best in class.

The SEE-CMM when combined with an appropriate tool, becomes a powerful way of continuously improving the performance of an organization in:

The level of investment in the model and the approach used by an organization will be dependent on what the organization wants from the model. A minimum approach would be as an overview assessment where managers share their perceptions of the organization using the nine criteria. In contrast, a maximum amount of effort would be required to prepare the organization for a campaign of continuous improvement aimed at securing an international award.

Description of self-assessment and evidence

The Institute of Service Enterprise Excellence (ISEE) definition of self-assessment is that it is "a comprehensive, systematic & regular review of activities & results against a tangible model culminating in planned improvement actions". Self-assessment is core to the SEE-CMM. Its major characteristic is that it is done by the organization itself but to an externally defined standard.

Self assessment:

Self-assessment in the context of the SEE-CMM, is based on a framework of gathering evidence both about the way in which the organization approaches the work and the results which it achieves.

Enabler evidence is factual descriptions that provide physical, concrete, tangible proof that:

Results evidence is tangible data that shows:

SEE-CMM Provides a Measuring Stick

There are many vendors marketing comprehensive self-assessment tools and questionnaires, and there are an equal number of service providers available to perform organizational assessments. However, prior to investing the money and effort in such an assessment, the Service support organization can get a quick snapshot of the maturity of its processes using a framework that it likely already understands and uses.

The Service Enterprise Excellence (SEE) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) has become the industry’s premier framework for service process improvement. Many organizations have already adopted the model to assess the maturity of internal service support functions and therefore are aware of the structure and process of CMM assessment. While originally developed as a way to judge the ability of a service organization to deliver higher-quality service and support, the CMM framework can be used as a measuring stick against which any process can be measured. Before implementing a process improvement project, Company can use SEE-CMM Self Assessment to baseline the existing process from a maturity perspective.

Once SEE has been used to map out where the process should be, CMM can be used to baseline the existing process. From this point, the organization can implement specific process improvement initiatives that will move the process from the current baseline toward a fully SEE-compliant best practice.

The four defined process maturity levels within the SEE-CMM model are:

• Level 1 — Reactive. Reactive customer service support organizations are highly labor-driven. They may not have been in existence very long, and are likely not to be “open” for as many hours/days as their customers would prefer. New support organizations are commonly only open during standard business hours (8 a.m. – 5 p.m.). Such an early stage service support organization probably has not developed “tiers” of support within the service support organization and, as such, “generalists” are taking all calls. As a result, the first call resolution rate is low and the percent of incidents that have to be “dispatched” or “assigned” to other departments is high. Generally, the organizations support simple telephony and the work environment can be rather chaotic.

• Level 2 — Proactive. After an organization has been in existence for some time, it becomes more proactive than reactive. The chaos of being reactive can be overwhelming for customer service support organizations, and they are often driven to be more proactive just to survive. Proactive organizations implement needed support technologies, such as incident tracking systems and work towards implementation of best practices for their support processes. They have extended their service hours to meet the needs of a mobile and flexible workforce. Proactive organizations have their staff involved in professional communities (i.e., SEE-CMM and SCP’s Local Chapters). They have developed Service Level Agreements with other departments that provide Level 2 or Level 3 support. They understand that by building a knowledge base of frequently reported incidents for their customers or analysts to see, they can improve service and lower costs. They do not wait for customers to complain; rather they conduct regular surveys and encourage customer feedback. They likely have good information on their technology assets as to location and version number, and may have implemented automated software distribution tools. While they may not have complete service support center performance reports, they have begun to track and report a number of key service support center metrics.

• Level 3 — Customer-Centric. The Customer-centric service support organization is totally focused on meeting the needs of the customer. It consistently provides them with service when and how they want it. The Customer-centric support organization has developed a single point of contact (SPOC) for all customer interactions and documents all customer interaction for quality analysis, backed by product and service improvements. Proper staff planning maximizes the chance for the right resources to be available, when and where needed. Customers can report incidents via phone, e-mail, chat, or other channels as they so desire. The service support organization understands the cost of services by incident type, customer group, and channel of support, which allows the customer to better understand their cost or actual invoices, specifically if chargeback is involved. Customer-centric support organizations consider vendors to be their partners, and have dropped terms such as “we” and “they.” Overall service support center performance metrics are in-depth and broadly communicated across departments and up and down the management chain. Each person in the organization has a deep sense of accountability and commitment to the customers they are serving. All decisions take into account the impact on customers.

• Level 4 —Business-Centric. The Business-centric organization knows the value of the customer, but understands that the customer values and priorities must be integrated with service support efficiency and effectiveness in order to meet the higher needs of the entire organization. At this highest stage of support maturity, the customer service support team has a collegial relationship with its key constituencies like vendors, and internal organizations, as well as partnering relationships with key contacts within the customer groups they serve. Customers are actively engaged to design better service models that improve the value they receive from the organization. Service support leaders deeply understand the business of the customers they serve and how service support impacts organizational productivity and profitability of their customers. Customer business units served have an understanding of the costs and benefits of various support options and how they can work with support to improve overall their organizational productivity and profitability. The customer service support organization provides performance dashboards and regular progress reports that detail how support has delivered value, and how service support can improve organizational performance. The service support function is fully automated and support tools are seamlessly integrated across vendors and organizational boundaries: anticipating and preventing problems from arising, and responding swiftly when and if the problems occur.

Performing the Assessment

Service organizations can perform the initial assessment using a combination of the SEE process descriptions and the CMM. In the course of the assessment, the organization can evaluate and grade each of the key functional areas within each service support segment (see Figure 3).

Instructions:

Evaluate the maturity of processes. Place a check mark in the appropriate boxes to create a report card that can be used for baselining and improvement.

When assessing evidence in respect of Results criteria, each sub-criterion needs to be assessed for:

Figure 3 Service Organizations Can Map Eight Criteria to the Maturity Mode

How Much Maturity is Enough?

Within the service support arena, reaching level 3 or level 4 has become a cost of entry for service outsourcing companies. However, attaining such a level for a service group can become an exercise in increasing costs at a disproportionate rate to an increase in benefits.

However, with the SEE-CMM or other process model as a target, an organization has the ability to chart an improvement path against a published set of practices. At each step of an improvement process, the organization should evaluate:

Recommendations

To Improve a Process, Understand the Process First

Prior to implementing a process improvement program, an organization must:

参阅：中文译文