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through the Response Center. Although undesired phenomenon, quite often customers bypass the call center and approach the FSE directly. It happens when it is a repeat call and they have a way to directly contact the FSE who took call earlier, the customer has a good, friendly relationship with one of the FSEs and the calls him or her directly, or (particularly in a large organization with a large installed base of equipment), a support person happens to be on the premises and can be approached directly. We would like the number of calls going through the Response Center to grow, as the smaller it is, the more it hints to a system that is not managed by its managers, but rather by the whims of its clients.

3. As this is tricky to measure quantitatively, it can be derived if the CS personnel are required to report their direct communications with the clients, especially those resulting in service tasks.

4. Response Center Close Call Rate (CCR) is the fraction of calls that are remotely resolved (closed) by the Response Center, without the need for dispatching an FSE to the client. The higher it is, the more efficient the system is. Of course, availability of a robust expert system and an ongoing education program of Response Center personnel can significantly assist the increase of this rate.

A system is needed for monitoring the changes in all these four factors—both the direction of the changes (does it grow, stay stable, or diminish), as well as the size of them and their trend. It will give both the management and the CS staff a feeling of whether the change is moving in the right direction.

Summary

Figure 30-9 presents the proposed changes in a schematic form.

In general, the changes advocated here, when applied together, are changing the very nature of the CS function; from the traditional and simple, yet expensive and with steadily declining efficiency, service organization, to a more differentiated system as shown in Fig. 30-9, which embeds various levels of expertise in its different elements, and that may involve additional parties.

FIGURE 30-9 Shifting CS to new environment.

True, the emerging CS system looks more complex, but it has one thing going for it: It stands a much better chance of continuing to contribute positively to both the company profitability as well as to its future sales than the system it is replacing.

When the changes advocated here are seen through the lens of a system approach, the contribution of CS to the overall success of the company, which is steadily becoming a thing of the past, gets a new lease on life. I hope that it is a long and productive life.

References

Klapholz, R. and Klarman, A. 2009. Release the Hostages: Unsing Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints for Customer Support Management. Great Barrington, MA: North River Press.

Turban, E. 2002. Electronic Commerce: A Managerial Perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

About the Authors

As the President of the Goldratt Institute (Israel), Alex Klarman, PhD, is leading the effort to introduce TOC to and establish it as the standard management approach in Israel.

His scientific background—that of a biophysicist interested in the evolution of complex systems—as well as his industrial and educational background, including teaching appointments at the Tel-Aviv University and the State Teachers’ College, in addition to years of hands-on experience in industry, makes him exceptionally qualified for this demanding undertaking.

Dr. Klarman was in charge of manufacturing in a metal industry firm for 4 years. This hands-on experience gave him a unique perspective of operations and projects—production, logistics, planning, and material management.

As the commanding officer of Dr. Eli Goldratt during decades’ long service in an infantry unit of the Israeli army, Dr. Klarman became familiar with the very early concepts of OPT and TOC almost three decades ago.

In the course of the last 25 years, he took a major part in the drive to develop, disseminate, and apply TOC. His work included developing