Text Jim Larkin

Satisfaction rate for TIEs Customer Care

97 .8

Since 1987, the St. Paul office of TIE Kinetix has been conducting customer support, incident management, implementation and Managed Services for over 600 TIE customers per year. With a handful of dedicated employees, this tremendous undertaking is overseen by a soft-spoken support expert who is keen to keep both customers and employees content.

duction, and service departments all work together to service our customers many needs. We all constantly make recommendations to each other to make the product better. It doubles as market R&D and keeps our products up-to-date and nimble. This is true for many of the departments at TIE and its a huge advantage of working for a smaller company. Wearing many hats becomes part of your day-to-day work. Happy EmployEEs mEans Happy CustomErs As an industry, customer support centres have had high burnout rates and even higher turnover. Troubleshooting, problem-solving and managing the expectations of an upset customer can be very demanding on a day to day basis. This was not what I found when I moved to TIEs Service department, says Hentges. What I found was that theres a deeper value in working with people who know their product, and

began my career managing large call centres, says Jeanne Hentges, TIE Customer Relations Director. Managing such sizeable departments with considerable volumes of incoming calls, e-mails and customer communications, not only showed me the value of smooth support, but also the pitfalls of call centre agents who are forced to focus on a number of calls per hour, and extreme productivity requirements. At TIE, we ensure that every call is answered by a person, not

by voicemail. There is no queue, no time limits on calls or quotas to achieve. Every incoming ticket gets addressed quickly and comprehensively. We take a personalised approach and work hard to partner with our clients to fix any data transmission issues as best we can. A big advantage at this branch is the close proximity of our interconnected departments. Much of what TIE does is tailored specifically to our clients, and thats shown in the fact that development, pro-

P20 ~ 2/2010 ~ TIE

BUSINESS INTEGRATION

had a hand in building and rebuilding it. Lets face it, our staff has been here a long time, laughs Hentges. Gerry - 17 years, Robert- 11 years, David - 10 years and so on. This is a prized management situation where we have a great technical support staff that are excited about what they do, have an excellent understanding of the product and push ever further to meet the needs of the customers. They truly love it. This is the secret to their success and longevity here, as opposed to other service departments in this industry. Its a great crew weve got here. partnErsHip In many ways, TIEs Business Integration Platform serves as an extension to our clients EDI department. And thats the feeling you get in much of the interaction between TIE customers and their support representatives. This also effects the interaction, trust and dependency between TIE and its customers year after year. TIEs constant commitment to this partnership keeps customers EDI data and order processing secure and is reflected in the thousands of customers that have trusted in TIE since 1987. In an effort to gain an overview of how TIE was performing in the eyes of its clients, a survey was sent to any customer that had dealt with support within that previous week. These results supported much of the teams mentality and said a lot about the training and professionalism in the support department. 94% of customers were satisfied or extremely satisfied with TIEs support technicians knowledge of TIE Products. 97.8% of customers were satisfied or extremely satisfied with their interaction with the TIE support technician (professionalism, politeness). 93.2% of customers had their issue solved with the information/recommendations provided by TIEs support. These numbers reaffirmed the focus on customer service and the commitment to making it better. Jeanne promptly addressed any specific concerns raised by customers personally, proactively ensuring that TIE was doing the right thing. EVou In line with the evolving commitment to bringing more improvements to TIE customers, the eVision Optimization Utility (EVOU) was created. This provides additional diagnostic functionality to help them get the most from their TIE Busi-

ness Integration system. Running the new eVision Optimization Utility will give TIE customers the information they need to reduce operating costs as well as providing improved responsiveness from TIE, betteroptimised EDI processes and time saved on recurring errors. Working with TIEs customer care team will help customers avoid costly inefficiencies and time spent on addressing the costs of repetitive errors in researching, correcting and sending. TIEs support is very proud of this new initiative. tHE Jim HEnslEy award On 24th January 2005, TIE suffered a deeply personal loss when TIE support representative Jim Hensley passed away. To keep his memory alive and to promote his beliefs and values regarding customer service and TIE Kinetix, the Jim Hensley Professional Excellence award was created. This award is given annually on the anniversary of Jims death to a TIE employee who demonstrates and practices the beliefs and values demonstrated by Jim. Jim would look at things from the point of view of the customer, and would ask what we could do to make the product better. This award reflects his dedication. For this award, TIE selects an employee who goes the extra mile for our customers, who works to deliver a better product, who goes above and beyond their job description. The Jim Hensley award goes to a person who strives to make TIE or any of our products better. tHis yEars award winnEr: CHEryl tHEisEn In the words of TIEs Vice President of Professional Services, Eric Hutchinson: Were happy to announce that this years winner is Cheryl Theisen. Year after year, she has done a

great job with implementing and training. Cheryl has a natural ability to walk into a new customers site and walk out with another happy Customer. Shes demonstrated this time and again as our lead trainer for Epicor implementations, and has been instrumental in consistently producing satisfied customers (who, as a result, have served as references for other prospects). Cheryls team members in Consulting, Sales, and Customer Care look to her for advice and feedback when it comes to technical and process-related questions. She has an innate ability to assess issues quickly and comprehend the customers implementation and training needs. Historically, weve received extremely positive feedback on her abilities as a trainer and consultant. Her easy-going, down-to-earth style, coupled with her thorough expertise put both novice and experienced EDI trainees at ease, providing the customer with confidence that their needs will be met.

Youre still the best technical support line Ive ever had to call.
TIE Customer portal
Over the last year, TIE has made many improvements to the ever-changing customer portal. These updates include flash video tutorials, support incident creation, email and incident follow-up forms as well as a restructured look and feel. Many more customers now use the portal. If you do not currently have a portal login and would like one, please request one at: info@tiekinetix.com

Actual Customer Quotes

Keep up the excellent support. Its nice to talk to a person as opposed to being routed through a phone system. Im not sure when I last contacted Technical Support, however the response time and the service provided is always excellent. Thank you! The assistance from your technical support was an immense help in getting the job done! Quick and perfect answer to my concern.

TIE ~ 2/2010 ~ P21