Customer Service and Network Performance: Aligning Business Service and IT for Success

GRG is a rapidly expanding multinational company based in the United Kingdom, which provides hosted incentive and loyalty marketing services to over 700 clients around the world including many blue chip corporations in major sectors such as banking, telecoms, automotive, pharmaceutical, and retail industries. Their latest fiscal year sales turnover is forecast to exceed 350m Euros.

Advanced technology is at the heart of the business. GRG’s technology is used to help clients build closer and better relationships with their customers and employees. Highly customised services are designed to retain and increase loyalty, encourage new and repeat sales, and improve both employee and business performance.

The company’s services are delivered through Internet and e-mail communications, call-centre operations, interactive voice response (IVR), simple message systems (SMS) texting, as well as paper mail and facsimile. All these services are based on users’ accessing them at any time of the day or night, from any time zone in the world. If the technology fails or drops below expected performance standards, the company’s reputation suffers.

“We host and run all the services, which involve holding and securely managing vast amounts of information,” explained Steve Parkinson, GRG’s Information Services (IS) Manager. For example, there are thousands of bank accounts where participants accumulate their incentive rewards before redeeming them in an ‘online store’ for goods, services or holidays. Other services include Web-based childcare accounts, created by regular contributions that make BACS payments to child carers, all of whom are enrolled with their banking details. Another automated service uses IVR telephone technology to test learning and knowledge. With this service, users answer multiple-choice questions by keying in numbers via their telephone handset.

Critical automation

This fundamental reliance on IT means GRG continually looks for new ways to automate processes and reduce demands on IT staff. Previously, said Parkinson, GRG relied on “people working long hours and being very dedicated to their job. Literally, it was a lot of goodwill and many people working over and beyond the call of duty.

“We now have a team of 30 specialists of which, typically, nine specialists manage the network the network. Our network performance is critical in providing the high level of service expected by clients,” said Parkinson. He stressed the importance of day and night accessibility, 365 days a year: “On Christmas Day 2006 we took over 100,000 calls. There is no room for error, and we need to know the service response time immediately and precisely.”

Companies quantitatively monitor and measure the availability of their network performance, but to gain a competitive edge, GRG also needed to qualitatively evaluate the customer’s experience. The company wanted a resource that would report: “Is the service available? Can I log in? Can I access data?”

GRG selected ASG-TeVISTA™ Performance Manager because, said Parkinson: “There were other solutions around in the market, but while other network products analysed components, ASG’s solution was the only one I encountered that offered true network performance monitoring. It was very tailorable to exactly what we wanted, and affordable too.”

The solution also provides what ASG calls the ‘TeVISTA Synthetic User’, a testing method based on software agent technology, able to measure the response times for specific application transactions. Besides checking services for availability, the performance experienced by a user is also measured against service level agreements (SLAs).

Risk management every two minutes

The software-based ‘Synthetic Users’ act like real users and may be deployed in different scenarios to check end-user access to a given application. Operating in key areas such as AS/400 database applications and Microsoft IIS web servers, the agents are run every two minutes and test the end-to-end access time across the network. If a performance value exceeds a pre-defined threshold, network administrators are alerted automatically.

To do this, GRG uses an optional third party extension to the ASG solution called AlarmPoint®. It sends a simple message system (SMS) text alert to the network support teams’ mobile phones and an email to their RIM Blackberry devices. The vital aim, he said, is to sort out the issue before the customer becomes aware of it.

“If something fails along the network, it will be one of my critical areas of performance management. By having a number of tests spread across many parts of the components of the network – whether it’s a web server, a SQL server, or an IVR – if there is a bottleneck, another kind of risk, or a failure, we will know immediately.”

“We can layer up the system with different types of reporting capabilities. For example, we can test for questions like: ‘Is that there?’, ‘Is that page displayed?’, and ‘Can you log into that server?’” Parkinson’s team can assemble those elements into a single test to cover a particular part of the network. Monitoring and testing ‘24 hours-per-day and seven days a week, the test procedure not only notifies the support team, but also checks whether anyone has acknowledged the alert. If the first engineer fails to respond within a defined period, it escalates onto the next one and so on, right up to chief executive level. It closely supports the mission critical nature of services being monitored.

“One of the examples that stands out very well for us concerns IVR. If we see an alert that says IVR, we have to act on it very quickly because it represents critical downtime.” Parkinson explained that telephone-based services managed by GRG are used by customers for around 50 million minutes each year. If the service is down for only a short time, the company loses thousands of minutes very quickly.

“Every two minutes, we test the system by dialling up one of our IVRs, from an external source. The test performs a log-in and checks back into the database. It does a dialling test - as in the tones – and checks it gets a response back. This is a core function and a very reliable test,” he said.

Currently the solution is used in the company’s UK offices and other countries making up GRG’s fast expanding network of global operations that range from the USA, through Europe to the Middle East. In particular, Parkinson has deployed ASG’s technology to provide second and third line support for operations in Ireland, Spain, Germany and Greece. In theory he said, “I can set it up to monitor all nodes on our network across the various VPN’s (Virtual Private Network) that we have in place throughout the group.”

How does ASG’s solution fit into GRG’s overall IT strategy and does it exchange data with other systems? Parkinson explained it performs an integrated role in the company’s service support offering and SLAs. “We do use some other tools as well for more basic, rudimentary tests but the solution is at the heart of what we do. It integrates as a testing platform for all the applications across the network - it’s an essential part of our being able to report on what’s going on in the business.”

Service management and ITIL®

The company also uses ASG’s solution, said Parkinson, as a basis to produce service level agreements (SLAs). “The SLAs define GRG’s uptime across various services, so whether it’s an agreement relating to a network, internet, or IVR service, we measure each of those things against an SLA and say OK, this is what we profess as an uptime. We report on that to the senior management team every month, and to members of the board as well. So they see how we have performed as a group across our IT function. We also put that out to clients too, basically saying, 'this is what we can do’”.

That last point is among the most important for GRG -- helping the company win new business. Now that they have invested in advanced network performance management technology, the company can demonstrate exactly how this works to potential clients. This shows the real value and stability of GRG, providing the hosted services supplier a differentiating edge over its competitors.

“We don’t build everything with immediate return on investment in mind, but you know instinctively if something’s going to help you as a service offering,” said Parkinson. “If it helps you in front of a client and if they ask tough questions like how do you measure success or accomplish your clients’ goals and you can comprehensively show them what you can do., then they are more likely to do business with you.”

Commenting further on ROI, he said: “We could go down to the extent of qualifying ‘x’ amount of hours saved et cetera but, as a business we don’t tend to operate like that. We tend to say that it’s about good sense.”

Grass Roots Group is now in the process of implementing a company-wide strategic IT governance initiative aimed at continually enhancing customer service quality, improving business performance, and ensuring compliance. Key to this development is the management methodology represented by the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL®). Its main purpose is to make sure IT operations and processes best support the business.

Please note: ITIL® and IT Infrastructure Library® are registered trade marks of the Office of Government Commerce in the United Kingdom and other countries.

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