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HDI
Certified
Instructor
Support Center Analyst, Team Lead and
Manager ..
Enroll Now!
HDI
Certified
Support Center
Auditor
ITIL Foundations
and Practitioner Certified
Member - itSMF
How Do You
Stack Up?
Check
out our Support Center Assessment
Services and find out!
Read
More
>>
Get the
FREE White Paper from the HDI 2005 Annual Conference
"How to Market
the Value of Your Support
Center"
Download Now
New Focus Book!
 HDI
has just published a new Focus Book authored by Paul M.
Dooley:
"Building a Web Support Portal: Keys to Success"
Advisor
Help Desk Institute
Orange County
Member
Association of Support Professionals
FREE
White Paper!
"7 Steps to Exceptional Customer Service"
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Frequently Asked Questions
Help Desk and Support Center
Services
Q: What are the various types of Help Desk &
Support Center services you provide?
We provide the following types of services for Help Desk and Customer Support:
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HDI Certification Training Classes - we are certified by HDI to
teach individual certification training classes. The following courses
are offered: Customer Service Representative (CSR), Support Center Analyst (SCA),
Support Center Team Lead (SCTL), and Support Center Manager (SCM).
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ITIL Foundations Training and Certification
- we also provide training in the fundamentals of ITIL - ITIL
Foundations training. We deliver this on behalf of HDI, as
well as other training providers.
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Help Desk and Support Center
Consulting - we offer a broad
range of business and technical consulting services.
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| Support Center Assessment - we offer a very
cost-effective online support center assessment service, letting you know
where the gaps are, about
opportunities to improve, and how you can implement a roadmap to eventual HDI Support
Center Certification.
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HDI Support Center Certification - our assessment and certification
services are certified by the Help Desk Institute (HDI), the largest member
organization of help desk and support professionals.
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Customer Satisfaction Surveys
- we offer several ways of handling your periodic customer satisfaction
surveys, from one-time to annual subscriptions.
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Q: Are your
Help Desk consultants "certified" to provide assessments and advisement?
Yes, our principal consultants are certified in a number
of ways, by several industry leading organization – including Microsoft, and the
Help Desk Institute (HDI). Certifications
by HDI include Support Center Analyst, Team Lead, Manager, Instructor and Support
Center Auditor. In addition, our principal instructor is ITIL Foundations
and Practitioner certified (by EXIN). Finally, the management staff leading this suite of
offerings has had over 30 years of combined experience in the service and
support industry.
HDI Certification Training
Q: Do HDI Members get a discount
off training classes?
Yes, Members of the Help Desk
Institute (HDI) get special pricing - please visit
www.thinkhdi.com
for details on current pricing.
If you are not already a member of HDI, we
strongly recommend you join! HDI is the world's largest and most respected
membership organization for service and support professionals. The annual fee
is very reasonable, and the benefits are awesome. Find out more at
www.thinkhdi.com.
Q: How often are classes
held?
Classes are normally
offered monthly. For details check out the
training schedule page.
Q: How are payments made for classes, and when are they due?
For HDI classes,
registrations are done via the HDI web site, with payments made directly to HDI.
For local Optimal Connections classes, we accept credit card
payment (via PayPal), or you may request that we bill you. Payment for courses
must be made 2 weeks in advance of the course. Those canceling their
reservation in the class with less than 10 days notice are subject to a
cancellation fee.
Q: What happens if a class is
cancelled?
In
rare instances a class may be rescheduled or postponed. Should
this occur, you may remain enrolled for the next scheduled class, or receive a
full refund. We will not be help responsible for penalties associated with
rescheduling air travel, etc.
ITIL Foundations Certification Training
Q: What type of
ITIL training do you offer?
ITIL Foundations Training - we also
teach ITIL V3 Foundations on behalf of HDI. This is an accredited 3 day
course that provides as it were a foundation of understanding for best-practices
in ITIL V3. The certification exam is included at the conclusion of the
course.
HDI
Support Center Certification
Q: What is the Support Center measured against in the HDI Support Center
Certification Program?
The The Support Center Certification program measures
effectiveness in eight areas that are critical to a support center operation:
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Leadership |
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Policy and Strategy |
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People Management |
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Resources |
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Process |
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People Satisfaction |
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Customer Satisfaction |
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Performance results |
Each area is represented by a number of standards. The standards committee has
developed a series of questions to evaluate the level of compliance or
conformity to the standards; these questions effectively measure the level of
maturity the organization has achieved. The standards committee continually
evaluates, and revises if necessary, the standards according to industry
standards and best practices.
Customer Satisfaction Surveys
Q: I understand paper based surveys
are costly and time consuming. Can you use e- mail or the web to deploy surveys
to our customers?
Yes - we can provide survey deployment in the form of
e-mail, web or paper-based. We prefer web-based survey deployment, and encourage
our customers to adopt this as the vehicle for deployment. Reasons include: 1)
cost savings, 2) response rate - web-based surveys tend to get a higher response
rate
Q: Am I limited to the number of questions I can ask?
No, there is no fixed limit to the number
of questions that may be on a survey - you may have as many as you like.
However, the number of questions asked does have an impact on the likelihood
that respondents will complete the survey and submit it. The longer the survey,
the less likely respondents will be able to complete it. We recommend that
surveys be kept to 20-40 questions, or a few pages.
Q: Where do I start? Do you have starting templates
for surveys, for the sorts of questions a company like mine would want to ask?
Yes, starting sample templates have been compiled for a
number of industry segments, so we do have a starting template to work from. In
addition, we are able to draw on a stored library of thousands of questions, and
customize both the questions and question types to your particular needs -
resulting in a survey document that it optimally fit to your needs.
Q: What departments in my company ought to be
involved in providing input to customer survey Design, and would be the same
departments that would benefit from the results?
In most companies the heads of the following departments
should be involved in both providing input to the customer survey, as well as
reviewing and acting on results:
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Executive officers |
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Marketing |
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R&D |
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Customer Support |
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Professional Services |
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Training |
Q: What
types of questions does Optimal Connections support?
Optimal Connections supports many different How long does
it normally take to question types. Of course during the Design Phase we assist
you in developing question content, so that you pose the question in the right
manner to the obtain the desired results. Here are some examples of the types of
question formats available:
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Multiple Choice, Single Selection (select only one answer from a list)
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Multiple Choice, Multiple Selection (choose as many answers from a list as you
want) |
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Open-Ended (text box for essay or short answer response)
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Multiple Choice, Single Selection Plus Other (select only one from the list,
and if you select "other" you may fill in a response) |
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Ranking (rank items in a list with numeric values, 1, 2, 3, etc.) |
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Dual Scale (two scales for one question - only multiple choice, single
selection scales) |
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Date (date in MM/DD/YYYY format) |
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Numeric (will not allow characters to be input with electronic surveys)
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Percent Per Item |
Q: How long does it normally take to Design, Administer, and Report the
results for a typically survey?
The time it takes to Design, Deploy, Administer and Report
the results of a typical survey varies, depending on the client - number of
questions required, and the number of customers/partners/employees to survey.
Usually the Design phase takes from 1-3 days, the deployment lasts approximately
1-2 weeks, the Analysis requires several days. Presentation of results requires
about a day. From start to finish the elapsed time usually requires 2-3 weeks -
from start of Design to Reporting the results.
Q: Do I get the actual data when I get the results? Is it in a format that
I can use with other programs?
Yes, we provide a detailed Excel spreadsheet of the supporting data for your
future use as a part of the Reporting deliverables.
Have
More Questions?
If you have additional questions about our services, please
feel free to call 1 (949) 305-3544, or
email us.
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