| |
| Case Study |
| |
Patni's 24x7 Technical Support helps US client raise the bar of its worldwide customer service
|
The client meets its target of enhanced customer satisfaction, with improved support turnaround time through Patni's 24x7 services from offshore.
The Client
A global leader in Embedded Linux distribution, the client provides GNU/Linux based open-source software solutions and offers a family of products.
The Challenge
The client provides embedded Linux based software distribution that address broad-based software developer needs encompassing applications ranging from communications infrastructure to consumer electronics. Multiple Editions of the distribution are available, each catering to a broad category of requirements.
The demand for Embedded Linux has been rapidly increasing from customers wide spread across the globe. As Linux based distributions are inherently open source, its support function is as important as the product itself.
The client was facing a number of challenges:
 |
With an increase in the number of products and customer base, the existing support team was heavily overloaded with the volume of customer calls. This called for a new support structure with an increased team size. However, this increasing support requirement was to be met with a limited increase in cost. |
|
It was getting difficult to find experienced support engineers to support the suite of embedded Linux software. This because, open source support involves a number of permutations and combinations of operating systems, browsers, middleware and database, making the troubleshooting of Linux problems exceedingly complicated. |
|
A critical objective was to equip itself to offer 24x7 service contracts to its customers. |
|
It was also looking for a way to improve the support turn-around time for its non-US, i.e. Asia and Europe customers. This would help to meet the varied commitments it had signed with its end-customers for initial response within 1-hr, 4-hr, or 8-hr timeframes. |
The Solution
Patni together with the client used a phased approach to reach the steady state, at which Patni's offshore and onsite teams took over the complete responsibility of resolution of calls.
The key activities at project start and during the transition phase included onsite and offshore training, offshore infrastructure set up, and call resolution handling under the client's vigilance and guidance.
In the steady state, Patni performs the following activities independently:
|
Accepting Call Reports from customer |
|
Root Cause Analysis of Call Reports |
|
Resolution as per the priority/severity levels |
|
Providing a permanent fix for specific problems |
|
Escalating critical defects to the engineering team |
|
Verification & Validation of the suggested solution |
|
Feedback to client on improvements in the core software |
|
Updation of all call related activities in the client's call tracking database |
|
Contributing to the client knowledge base for customer selfsolve |
|
Contributing towards product and support process improvements. |
The Technology
|
Embedded Linux |
|
Source System: SAP R/2, Manugistics |
|
Siebel Defect Tracking tool |
|
Debugging tools for hardware and software. |
| |
 |
The Benefits
|
Improved support turn-around time for worldwide customers |
|
Overall cost reduction due to offshoring |
|
Easy access to skilled engineers with the ability to ramp-up or ramp-down requirements to need |
|
Off-loading of service request load from US support engineers |
|
'Follow the Sun', i.e. 24x7x365, support made possible |
|
Resultant increased availability of embedded applications |
|
Improved customer satisfaction. |
|
