SPOC- Single Point of Contact

What Is SPOC?

The SPOC concept (Single Point of Contact) refers to how to unify all the information channels between customer and agent into a single point, and it’s setting the trend in delivering services to users and customers.

SPOC: Benefits and Application Areas

But what does this mean beyond the acronym? In the following article we’ll cover the concept and its main benefits and application areas.

The SPOC concept — although it may sound like science fiction to some — is as simple as the acronym describes: single point of contact.

It consists of unifying all input and output information channels into a single point, so that the information — wherever it comes from — is organized and reliable, and leads us to make the best decisions, avoiding errors caused by lack of coordination and missing information at the critical moment.

SPOC Objectives

How often do questions like these come up: Who replied to the customer?, Does the customer know their issue has a cost X?, What’s the latest information the users have?, Is there any action needed?, What was agreed with the customer? — and a host of other questions that come up day after day, both in small and medium-sized companies (due to the lack of dedicated specialists in each area) and in large corporations (due to the need to coordinate the activities of different departments so the customer/user perceives they’re getting a single, consistent message).

The goal of SPOC is precisely to gather all inputs and manage them in a unified way, offering customers and users a single output — or several, but always in a way that makes them feel their requests are being managed efficiently and consistently. This way, the customer/user feels better served, and their satisfaction with and trust in the company or department providing the service grows.

A Practical Example

A company that provides IT maintenance and support services — we’ll call it IT Support.

IT Support has 10 employees and provides support services to small and medium-sized businesses. Let’s focus on the customer service and support team.
When a customer calls IT Support to solve a problem, the person who answers and logs the call is not the same one who’ll handle the case nor the one who’ll bill and collect payment. How do we record it?, An Excel sheet?, Email?… SPOC.

With ServiceTonic, you can effectively log all of this:

• The person receiving the call logs the request in ServiceTonic: contact details, request information, and actions taken.

You can also set up a mailbox to automatically receive all information, for example: support@itsupport.com

• The technical lead receives the task assignment via ServiceTonic: assignment notifications, or automatic assignment via business rules (by department, service category, etc.).
• When the technician opens the case, they have the information on when it was opened, who first attended to the customer, what information was exchanged, and so on.
• The technician resolves the case, and all actions, customer communications, and other critical information are logged.
• If the technician can’t resolve the case, they can assign it to another agent or team — who will already have all the information on tasks performed so far and previous customer interactions, avoiding duplicate questions and repeated work and clearly boosting productivity.

This way, we avoid any uncertainty and possible loss of information — and we know all the information is in our ServiceTonic.
Once the incident is closed, it can be assigned to another team for billing and collection, and if any questions come up, they have all the information on the actions taken by every agent.

Depending on company size, the billing and collection unit may or may not have its own billing software.

Either way, with ServiceTonic you could:

• Create an additional service (separate from the entire Customer Service area) for managing and tracking collections. ServiceTonic’s Multi-service concept allows for an unlimited number of services without any extra licenses. They can share contact lists or not, depending on how the company is organized.
• Integrate with your billing and collection software to log tracking and incidents in ServiceTonic.
• Work separately, reporting technical activity to billing leads through ServiceTonic reports:
• Predefined reports: Basic; they show help desk performance.
• Custom reports: Tailor-made, with no programming or database changes required. They can be scheduled to be automatically emailed to the relevant recipients.
• SQL reports: In the (unlikely) event that custom reports fall short, you can query the database directly.
  All reports can be exported in HTML, XLS, and PDF format.

This simple approach lets us work in an integrated, coordinated way, focusing all efforts on the activities that generate the most value for the customer/user — and therefore for the company itself.

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