Goals for support organizations

I also supervise a support team and had a hard time coming up with goals the first time around. It helped me to listen to the annual goals casts several times. I had three breakthroughs. One, your goals have to be measurable (think numbers in a spreadsheet). Two, your first attempt doesn't have to be perfect. And three, start with finances.

Support organizations can seem tricky because what you provide is often ad hoc. It can seem harder when you can't aggregate effectively; For example, if you handle a few large requests instead of thousands of small requests. No matter what the situation, it is always possible to set measurable goals because what you do is just behaviors. And behaviors can be measured.

You should always set a financial goal if you have any dealings with finances at all. The casts will give you more insight on this.

Next, think of what your team does. What kind of support do you give? Do you take calls? Do you produce documents? Do you go to client meetings? Negotiations?

Then, think of what your "customers" like most. What do you get the most compliments on? Complaints?

For my organization, we found that if we responded faster to requests then we got a lot less complaints and our "customers" felt better about our work. We set a goal for response times. Of course, that lead to people getting a request and quickly sending an email saying they got the request and where it was in the queue. But, the customers were happier.

The problem-child of our work was mistakes. When we made a mistake it could take hours or days to resolve it. We set a goal for zero mistakes for a period of time. In response to this, we created checklists, standardized processes, and templates. This made us more consistent and reliable and reduced mistakes significantly.

These two goals my not help you, but I hope it gives you some tangible ideas for setting your own goals. (Sorry everyone, I had to find a way to use the word "tangible" in this post, even if it is grammatically incorrect.)

JOHNF

[quote="johnf"]
For my organization, we found that if we responded faster to requests then we got a lot less complaints and our "customers" felt better about our work. We set a goal for response times. [/quote]

Bingo. Just knowing that the support team is *aware* is an important part of the response. Part of my portfolio of responsibilities includes the Help Desk operation.

More recently, one of our vendor/partners calls the individual *each* time a support question comes in to acknowledge that the task is in the queue. Generally, I see it as a nice personal touch and an opportunity to provide feedback.

"Counsel" and "help". I agree that those words don't lend themselves to measurement. I do have two things that come to mind.

One, think about the behaviors involved in the counseling and helping. Does it ultimately take the form of a report? Are there specific behaviors the team can engage in to make the counseling more effective? Think of the differences between your top performers and others--what do they do differently? Do you already have milestones in the process, even informal ones?

Second, you could always use a proxy such as a survey. That may not get you all the way there, but it could be a good first measure. Personally, I haven't used surveys, so maybe others can provide more help.

JOHNF