Using ITIL principles, Support Excellence provides both outsourced support services and consulting.

by Jeff Goldman [July 11, 2007]

Support Excellence, based in Calgary, Alberta, was founded in 1998 by Alan Jones and Ron Yarwood. "What they were finding at the time was that there was a significant gap in the market for small to mid sized businesses that were seeking a service desk solution, whether that be an outsourced one, or assistance from consultants in developing one for themselves in-house," says company chief operating officer Kyle Ostermann.

The company was started with a focus on providing consulting services to companies that already had their own service desks or wanted to start

Support Excellence 1070, 340 12th Avenue S.W. Calgary, Alberta Voice: (403) 410-1940 mailto: info@supportexcellence.com Web chat link

Key to both offerings, Ostermann says, is the fact that Support Excellence's work is focused on ITIL principles. "It's an enterprise-level approach that we like to take to the various markets that we provide services to—one of those being the ISP marketplace," he says.

ITIL, Ostermann says, makes a big difference in terms of how Support Excellence works with its clients. "It takes the existing or implemented helpdesk that operates at a tier one or a tier two level and gets it involved in the organization as a whole, instead of just being a group of individuals who field trouble incidents from end users and then just pass those along to tier three technicians, infrastructure technicians or administration," he says. "It's a more integrated approach than just a standard helpdesk."

And the fact that Support Excellence offers both consulting and outsourcing services means that an ISP can apply that integrated approach no matter how they manage their support. Some clients, Ostermann says, start by outsourcing the services, then move them in-house as they grow—and Support Excellence is happy to help with that transition. "Because of the relationships that we build with our clients, we definitely can assist them in any way, shape, or form that they need," he says.

Working outside the box
A key aspect of Support Excellence's outsourced support services, Ostermann says, is the fact that the company doesn't maintain a single, centralized call center. "We have a distributed model, which means that 100 percent of our workforce do not work in a large-box call center—they work either from home or from small, remote locations of their choosing," he says. "We have agents not just in our home city of Calgary, but outside those areas as well."

Ostermann says the result is a happier workforce, with much lower turnover than at standard call centers. "It also provides us with access to a lot of individuals that normally wouldn't be necessarily able to work a job like this, or work a job at all," he says. "For example, we have a lot of students that operate on the phones with us, as well as several stay-at-home parents who only have a three- to four-hour window every day to work."

And there's little or no trade-off in terms of central control. Support Excellence's system gives supervisors a significant amount of access to the agents as they work, wherever they may be. "The technology that we have in place allows us to monitor agents on all levels: listen to calls, record calls, take over calls, do call training, call whisper—for example, if I were managing or coaching an agent, I would be able to talk to them on the phone call without the customer being able to hear what I was saying," Ostermann says.

Still, Ostermann does note that all of the company's agents are based in Canada. "We are very dedicated to hiring high-quality local individuals, versus farming the staffing out," he says. "We find that from a quality perspective, it definitely brings us up a notch or two over our competition."

And while Support Excellence currently provides support only in English, Ostermann says local agencies give the company access to just about any foreign language that a client might need.

Reporting and pricing
All clients have the ability to log directly into the system and obtain real-time information on all calls and tickets, and each client also gets a monthly ten-page report covering standard service delivery metrics along with key data broken down into demographic groups. "For example, if we recognize a significant volume of support calls of a certain type coming from a particular town or city or neighborhood in a city that our client is providing service to, that would be included in the monthly report," Ostermann says.

Part and parcel with Support Excellence's ITIL approach, Ostermann says, is the fact that the company does not claim to be a low-cost provider. "We differentiate ourselves with high quality," he says. "That does result in a slightly higher cost than some of our competitors, but we feel that that higher cost is easily offset by the fact that we provide an extremely high quality of service."

The company's pricing can be structured per minute, per call, per incident, or per user. "As far as ISPs are concerned, the per-user basis is the most common, where we take a look at the average call volumes and average call handle times, and we work out a rate per supported user," Ostermann says. "So, for example, an ISP with 2,000 subscribers may be paying $2.25 per month to support each of their users." That rate, he says, is then reviewed every six months, and updated if necessary.

While the company's focus is on the small to mid sized market, Ostermann says there's no specific minimum or maximum size of client that Support Excellence will work with. "We have started with companies that have literally had under 100 clients," he says. "We're very cognizant of the fact that with a small company like that, they can differentiate themselves by having a very high-quality support environment, which is what we bring to the table."

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Related articles:
	[Dec. 27, 2002]	We Need Cheap Overnight Tech Support
	[Jan. 22, 2001]	When Your Help Desk is Distant
	[June 2, 2000]	Building an ISP Business Plan Part 4: Operating & Organizational Plans

Online resources:
	Outsourced Customer Support Directory
	Quick Reference Chart