Providing Affordable IT Management to SME's The Service review - part 2
So in the first chapter of this topic, we talked about how the purpose of the service review was an opportunity to get together with the supplier to talk about how the service is being delivered and to ensure any contractual measurements are being achieved. Now hopefully, if you have forged a good working relationship with them and everything is going ok, this should be a good positive meeting and the CSIP (or Customer Service Improvement Program) should be about how the service is going to be taken forward. Other items that could go on the CSIP are improvements to the current service (at no added costs) or suggestions to take the service forward where a costing may be required.
The CSIP should not be confused with an “Action Register” which is normally used to log actions that are needed when a supplier is not performing, to bring the service back into line. CSIP’s are positive things that show how the supplier is pro-actively working in your favour and no supplier should try to wrap up and action to sort out a problem with their current service delivery as a “Service Improvement”.
So what sort of things could go on the CSIP?
• For your network support supplier it could be an opportunity to review your network, document the current configuration, ensure any router settings are saved to a separate location and maybe to suggest any technology refreshes
• For your desktop / PC support contract it could be a review of each machine with a view to ensuring all relevant patches are applied
• Other suppliers may take the opportunity to review any recent periods of downtime and provide recommendation of how service uptime could be improved
Either way, the CSIP should be a living, breathing document with the purpose of improving you’re the end service to your users, over and above any contractual obligations. The CSIP is normally reviewed during the service review with agreements made to either progress, put on hold or remove the CSIP suggestions.
Now for a number of SME’s the suppliers may be the type that you never have direct contact with (eg Orange for a broadband connection). So how do you carryout a service review for these? A few suggested ways will be discussed in the next chapter of this topic.
14th Jan 2010
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