TSANet offers members the opportunity to showcase their company’s customer support organization. The latest company in the “Member Spotlight” series is CA Technologies.
TSANet interviewed Rob McCabe, Vice President of CA Global Support Centers and Mike Haering, Chief Engineer for CA Customer Support.
About CA
CA Technologies has been in existence for 40 years, and today has a team of 11,000 strong. The company is known for creating software and solutions that span the entire application lifecycle. Their mainframe, enterprise distributive, and SaaS software solutions support digital transformation – from planning to development to ongoing operations with security at every stage – to eliminate barriers between ideas and outcomes. Click here to learn more about their products. CA has been an active member of TSANet since 1997 and served in several leadership positions globally.
CA Support
CA Technologies maitains 28 support centers worldwide to offer support in 9 major languages and cover every geography. CA has over 750 support engineers with an average tenure of 20 years. They have over 100 managers organized in a matrix structure aligned with engineer-focused centers and product-based delivery teams. CA Support with its focus on providing technical support to customers is just one component of the company’s Global Customer Success organization. The Global Customer Success operation also includes over 300 individuals who serve as customer-facing Customer Experience Managers to help ensure a strong strategic partnership between CA Technologies and its customers.
CA Support handles over 210,000 cases per year through multi-channels including engineer-assisted online and phone troubleshooting, live chat session, and self-service knowledge bases and communities. CA offers 24×7 support access as is common in the industry and utilizes follow-the-sun coverage to handle severity 1 (critical system down) situations. In addition, they offer Enhanced Support, Upgrade Support and Customer Success Advocate programs. Enhanced Support provides customer accounts with a designated engineer. Upgrade Support offers customers a heightened level of assistance to migrate to the latest software release. Customer Success Advocates serve as a primary contact, acting as a concierge between a customer’s company and all things at CA. The primary contact helps monitor support cases, analyze trends, and provide regular reporting. Click here to learn more about CA Support.
CA Training
According to Rob McCabe, a fully engaged, well-trained employee is vital to their success. CA has a clearly defined onboarding program, continuous learning for new releases, products, and trends, as well as a certification programs. The time required to onboard new engineers depends on the complexity of the product and the skill level of the new employee. It can take 1-3 months for some and for others 6-8 months.
CA Education provides flexible learning options for customers based on the customer’s budget, travel requirements, and role. Their training methods and tools are designed to help user work teams become more productive in less time. Offerings include classroom and virtual instructor-led training and a web-based training option where students can learn at their own pace.
Multi Vendor Support
Mike Haering began using TSANet over 10 years ago as a support engineer. When he advanced to an Advisor level in Support with a title of Chief Engineer, he also assumed responsibility for:
- Engineer Tools – Program Manager
- TSANet – Program Manager
- Support Tool Integrations Advisor/Architect
- Supportability of CA products Advisor/Champion
- CA Remote Engineer Diagnostics Tool Product Manager
- Search Improvement – Support Lead.
“I think it is vital to have the TSANet process for directly engaging partner companies to ensure that our software works well together. With the heightened focus on customer experience at CA, we find TSANet extremely valuable in helping our common customers without burdening them to serve as a middleman between vendors. We instead use the TSANet partnership to communicate directly, vendor-to-vendor, and work out problems quickly to get our customers a fast solution,” said Haering.
When CA gets an escalation for a TSANet case, they have a clear process and contact at the partner company to help move a difficult case forward. When speaking to customers, CA will mention their TSANet membership and that they apply TSANet methodology for collaborating with other vendors.
Mike offered the following feedback on TSANet features:
- Request an Account: As Program Manager, I love the new “Request Account” function which allows the user (or caller) to enter information directly and simply send me an approval email. I can quickly look them up in our organization and approve the request.
- Group Login: Our internal Support Tools wiki site includes the TSANet group login URL that takes our support engineers directly to the TSANet member website. They just enter their name and email address to access the process documentation from a partner company. An internal redirect for https://TSANet.ca.com to point to the TSANet group login URL will offer further ease of use.
- Reporting: The reporting capability allows us to see which partner companies we have reached out to and which companies are approaching us for assistance. This helps us more easily see the value we get from TSANet.
- Partner Company Tiles: The TSANet site allows us to offer quick access buttons or tiles when our support engineers log in, so I can get them to the most common partner.
CA Technologies Best Practices
CA is a 4-time winner of the Omega NorthFace Scoreboard Award, which is an industry award that recognizes companies who achieve a high level of customer satisfaction. CA also earned TSIA Industry Certification for Global Support Excellence in 2015, a CXPA Customer Experience Impact Award in 2015, the Gainsight Award for Innovation in Customer Success, the Brandon Hall Award for Best Results of a Learning Program, and the Excellence Award for regional APJ Customer Success Programs.
One thing that sets CA apart from other support organizations is their focus on customer experience. According to Rob, they are very focused on delivering a superior experience, not just through their Support team or Global Customer Success organization but across the entire company. They have a Customer Promise which reads, “To consistently deliver a superior experience by putting your organization at the center of all we do. The ultimate measure of our success is through your success and earning your trust as a strategic partner.” Customer experience, as measured through CSAT and NPS, is a strategic focus that guides CA growth as the entire company considers how to help customers eliminate barriers between ideas and outcomes.
Another best practice within CA’s support organization is their matrix management of support engineers. One side of the matrix is organized around regional engineer-focused support centers. In each support center, Support Managers work directly with engineers to care for all their professional development needs, Human Resources issues, and performance management. The Support Manager also handles the coaching of engineers. CA has implemented high-impact coaching best practices which focus on helping engineers self-assess their progress in 8 vital behavior areas. Customer experience outcomes inspired by these vital behaviors are reflected in performance metrics such as mean time to resolve (MTTR), customer satisfaction as measured through case closure surveys, and customer loyalty as measured by Net Promoter assessments.
The other side of the matrix management structure aligns to global product lines. Within each Support Delivery team, a Support Delivery Manager directs the worldwide progress of product-related performance results and delivery of service from a technical standpoint. Both regional Support Managers and global Support Delivery Managers collaborate continuously to ensure a consistent level of technical support for customers and coordinated management oversight for engineers.
CA Support also relies on an internal Voice of the Engineer program to engage engineers for input and feedback on transformational changes. Regional representatives and global social forums provide the mechanism for soliciting ideas on how to innovate while also raising awareness and adoption of changes to improve the customer experience.
We would like to thank Rob, Mike, and CA Technologies for their support and participation as a Premium Global Member of TSANet since 1997!
If you would like your company to be featured in Member Spotlight please contact Brittany Jimerson, brittany@tsanet.org