At PSS we have proven, repeatable processes in place to make sure you get the results you expect. All engagements are led by project management professionals. Learn more about our processes so you know what to expect when you start doing business with us.
Before you buy anything from us you can expect a reliable estimate of the cost and a clear description of the work we'll perform. The professional services estimation process describes how we prepare our estimates and how long it will take.
Once we start working with you our engagement and delivery process kicks in. This governs everything from gathering all your IVR, CTI, or UX project requirements to performing a smooth cutover when your new solution goes live.
This process explains what you can expect when we estimate the cost of supporting your IVR, CTI, or PBX systems. It also describes what happens when we begin providing support for new customers, and how we handle trouble tickets and escalation.
Once we decide to do business together, our Engagement and Delivery Process kicks in. As a new customer, you want to make sure your project goes just as smoothly as the ones our glowing references described to you. This proven process helps ensure that we consistently deliver high quality work and mitigate risk for both of us along the way.
Finalize Technical Scope
Identify All Business & Technical Requirements
Project Planning
Implementation Plan Signoff
Architectural Design
Application Design
Design Signoff
Test Plan Signoff
User Acceptance Test (UAT) Signoff
System Application Acceptance
Transition to Post Production Systems & Applications Support
When was the last time you read through every word of a detailed proposal before you skipped straight back to the pricing on the last page? Let's face it. We know you're anxious to see what it's going to cost. We also know you don't like surprises. That's why our professional services team follows a formal estimation process. Sticking to the process may take a little longer up front, but it's worth the wait. Our process helps us consistently provide customers with reliable estimates they can count on. This is what you can expect from PSS before you buy:
The first estimate we produce for a customer is normally budgetary. That doesn't mean we shoot from the hip and turn something around right away just to keep you interested. We collect a lot of information and crunch many numbers before we provide a budgetary estimate so we (and you) can have a high degree of confidence its bottom line will be within 20% of the final cost. We normally produce a budgetary estimate within 10 business days. If you like what you see, the next step is a Statement of Work.
A Statement of Work takes the budgetary estimate down to a level of detail that we're willing to commit to. It's no longer an estimate; it's a fixed price based on a detailed set of requirements and a description of the functionality you expect us to deliver. It normally takes about 10 business days to produce a Statement of Work. Because this document will find its way into the contract if you buy from us, it's not unusual to go through a couple of rounds of revisions before its ready for signatures.
Before we prepare an estimate for a professional services project, we need to understand your environment. We schedule a requirements discovery session and talk to people from different parts of your organization who may be affected by the project. For many projects the discovery session can be a conference call that lasts a couple of hours. If the project is more complex or it's time for a Statement of Work, we'll typically spend three days on site with your team collecting the information we need.
Whether we do this discovery session by phone or on site, we come prepared with detailed sets of questions designed to draw out the information we need so we can do a remarkable job for you. As you might expect, we cover all aspects of the project itself to help us nail down specific requirements. But we also take steps to understand the bigger picture. We'll look at your overall objectives and contact center architecture so we understand how this project fits into it. Most importantly, we'll look at the project from the perspective of the people who will actually use the system- the customers or constituents you serve. We'll examine what they want to achieve, how they will use the system, and what kind of experience they'll have when they use it.
This may seem like a lot of information to collect for an estimate, but the way we see it you're trying to make an important decision. It's worth some extra effort to get it right.
We'll dive into:
For an IVR project, we'll also look at:
For a CTI project we'll also look at:
After we collect all the information from the requirements discovery, we organize it and start crunching numbers. We think through all of the activities we need to do, and break the work up into modules. We have sizing templates for several kinds of work modules that we've built and improved through years of experience. Out sizing templates take into account things like:
Based on what we learn from our sizing templates we will build a project timeline and resource plan that takes into account staffing levels, tasks that can be done in parallel, and contingency planning.
Finally we put together a list of all the technical assumptions we've made along the way. This helps make sure everybody's on the same page and you know exactly what to expect from PSS.
You'll get a document that describes our understanding of the requirements in detail, along with our assumptions, a project timeline, and a price. You will find that PSS puts a lot more effort into both budgetary estimates and Statements of Work than other vendors. We capture more details about a project, and by involving all of the right people in the discovery process we make sure those details reflect the needs of stakeholders across your organization. We also pay more attention to the needs of those who will use your system. When callers have a great experience, you're much more likely to achieve your intended results.
When you've got a problem in your contact center, let's face it- there are only two things on your mind: Get that problem fixed and get it done right now. You don't want to worry about what goes on behind the scenes when you call for support. That's our job.
At PSS we work hard to make sure we consistently provide great service to all of our customers, all of the time. Of course we're not perfect, but we have a proven system in place that works very well. We measure everything we can and watch it like a hawk to make sure we keep getting better. Here's what you can expect from us:
We can provide you with an estimated cost to support your IVR, CTI, or PBX system soon after we gather some information about your systems. PSS Sales can walk you through the details, but in general it's not unlike getting a quote for car insurance. We need to know the type of systems you have, their size, location, an overview of the applications running on them, and an overview of the external systems they're connected to. In most cases we can turn around a quote within 48 hours based on the information you provide.
If you like what you see, we'll schedule a time to verify the information and make adjustments to the quote if necessary. It's not that we don't trust you, it's just easy to mis-identify some equipment and we want to make sure everyone's on the same page before we go any further. This way you can be confident that our quote is accurate and you won't get any last minute surprises.
Once we have a signed contract, we roll up our sleeves and get to work. Right away we'll get all the stakeholders together and make sure everyone knows how to report a case to us and what will happen when they do:
We'll review the kind of information that's helpful to have available when you place a call. This will accelerate the process and help us start diagnosing the problem more quickly.
Next, we'll review our escalation process. By default we treat every customer case with Level 1 outage priority until we assess the problem and the customer agrees that we can downgrade its severity. We automatically escalate Level 1 issues as follows:
This aggressive escalation process is triggered by internal procedures-we don't wait for you to complain before we bring customer issues to the attention of senior executive in our company. Since we don't hesitate to escalate 24x7x365, this keeps us all really focused on resolving our high priority cases as quickly as humanly possible. One less thing for you to worry about.
We'll also introduce everyone to the lead support engineer assigned to your system. This person will become the resident expert on your system, applications, and architecture within PSS. Your lead support engineer will be responsible for reviewing and verifying the details of everything we support in your environment. We'll take a full inventory and look at all of the software, hardware, and anything else you consider part of the system. We'll verify and record into our database the system type, version numbers, operating systems, processor types, and a long list of other details that will come in handy down the road. We'll also discuss how to get both remote and physical access to your systems so everything's in place for the first service call.
Once we've got everything kicked off properly and you're set up and integrated to our ongoing support processes, there are several things we do to ensure that we assure a high level of service.