Cisco Systems Customer Support

Creating new value in customer service

"Value Network Mapping of an organization, or even better, multiple organizations is the most unbiased and necessary view into what really goes on in business interactions. If done successfully, it changes the way job roles and the value of interactions are perceived and measured."

LaVeta Gibbs, Former Director of Global Contact Center Strategies pioneered the evolution of Cisco's Customer Interaction Network (CIN) from a call-based system to web-based. At the time her team began the transition there were 539 different numbers to contact Cisco for stakeholder support. Due to this fragmentation they were feeling a negative business impact in terms of inconsistent levels of service and lost opportunities. They felt if they could better utilize information gained from contact with the customer that they could provide valuable insights to other customers within Cisco.

In the book Bust the Silos (Hastings and Saperstein 2009), La Veta lays out the logic for why she took a value network approach.

"What I'm going to say probably does not sound profound, but it is. In first building the CIN model, we needed a new way to view what we were trying to do - to other than through square boxes and organizational charts. I wanted my organization to think about our role and how we fit in the company differently. And I thought that the value network mapping was the best visual and process for us to go through - to stop thinking about who works for whom, what your job description is... how we view our interactions inside the company."

The first step was to use value network mapping to identify who people were seeking to contact and the exact nature of that inquiry. Using call center data it was fairly simple to classify calls as "tangible" or "intangible." Tangible interactions had to do directly with product, services, and contractual agreements. Intangible interactions were those that helped to build relationships and share information in a more informal way. For example "Guests" meaning non-Cisco customers, were seeking information about events, trying to reach employees, inquiring about employment, signing up for seminars, and requesting more general information. Surprisingly, even direct customers and partners had many intangible requests as well. This is a very simplified view and provided a powerful visual for the contact support center to better understand the value network of stakeholders that they need to support.

The "As Is" map

Once the roles were identified the team mapped out the way things were actually working at the moment, the "As Is" map. A number of critical issues quickly became apparent.

- The Technology Overseer role was overburdened with intangible interactions. The Technology Overseer had the responsibility to assure that the customer support network had the technology it needs. However, if you look at the nature of the interactions, all of the requests were informal and the responses showed that priorities were all set by others. There was no "teeth" in the requests and clearly more structure needed to be put in place to assure that customer support could formally request support and order technologies.

- Theatre Managers are those who managed individual call center in different geographic locations around the world or support centers focused on specific products and technologies. Two major issues were revealed. A) There was virtually no interaction with Operation Overseer, the global oversight group responsible for overall contact center performance, and B) they were individually sending their technology requirements to the Technology Overseer, further confusing and complicating that role.

- Vendors are those who run and manage the contact centers. The value network diagram showed that customer contact for Cisco was fragmented and diffused through those vendors and the roles that managed the vendor relationships. The direct connection to the customer needed to be tightened up.

- Another key insight was that the Business Analyst role was really a performance management role, focused only on call center metrics. The mapping provoked a discussion of what might be different if there really were some kind of Business or Opportunity Analyst that was actually working with the feedback and data from the customers and could provide better customer insights to others inside Cisco.

Future State - Operations

The project team identified a number of "pulse points" (the little hearts in the diagram) where the interactions were especially critical. They were addressing the question, "If this really were a living system, where are the pulse points? What would you need to monitor to know the whole thing was working more effectively?"

Note that there are some significant changes from the "As is" map. For one thing the Technology Overseer role has virtually disappeared. With a formal request and provisioning process put in place there is no need for the considerable resources that were being expended to support a special Technology Overseer. That role was combined with other operational tasks into Operational Overseer. Technology provisioning became a routine task handled within that new Operational Overseer role.

Also, there is now a new role called "Opportunity Analyst." In this operational view that role only has inputs. That role collects insights and opportunities that are identified by others at the operational level based on their interactions with the customers. Theater Overseers who had almost no interaction before with global oversight now have structured ways they are expected to provide recommendations and identify insights and opportunities.

Contact center agents are now referred to as Cisco Access Enablers, who are not just responsible for answering questions but are "guides" to help people access web-based support.

Future State - Creating strategic value with customer feedback

If the operational value network is managed with the recommended changes then it provides the capacity for customer support to become a highly strategic resource for Cisco. The strategic business objective is to more effectively use customer feedback to improve products and provide service innovations for Cisco. The way this would work was described in the strategic scenario map below.

In this map the Opportunity Analyst and Operational Strategists are identified as the "heartbeats" for the value network. 

The Opportunity Analyst we saw before on the Operational Map. There their work would involve collecting insights and spotting opportunities. To convert that input into strategic value they now become a knowledge resource to other units within Cisco, from solution providers to business units. They become a design partner for technology solutions, and provide valuable feedback to operational oversight and business units.

Consider the role of Operational Strategist. Where did that come from and who executes that role? In the past the same people who had oversight for global operations also developed global strategy. As the team considered this role it became apparent that this role could actually be played by a global team and did not need to be a full-time responsibility for any one person. With this insight the wheels were set in motion for this role to be played by a team consisting of the operational oversight leaders and each of the theater managers. This group could come together for a two-day offsite two or three times a year to set the global strategy for the entire customer support network.

While not all of the improvements were implemented, this shows how just working with the maps alone can bring fresh perspectives and insights into what can seem like very complex issues. The actual time spent with the team learning about value networks, doing the mapping, and developing strategies was only a few days total - time well spent when tackling such a complex challenge.

Hastings, H. and Saperstein, J. (2009), Bust the Silos: Opening Your Organization for Growth.

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