14 TRENDS

Photography: Robin Kuijs

MODULE SPECIALISTS: CONNECTING CUSTOMER, KNOWLEDGE AND TOOL

ANNEKE WESTERMAN
is a team leader, consultant and TOPdesk module specialist

TOPdesk employees share their knowledge, skills and experience with our customers every day. Account managers, consultants and support specialists are TOPdesk experts, but they also have to be able to send our customers requests for improvement to the right people. TOPdesk introduced so-called module specialists to process module-specic questions and feature requests.
TOPdesk has grown rapidly over the past 15 years, both as a tool and as an organization. We currently offer 15 modules and have over 420 employees across six different branches. This can make it challenging to nd the right expert to answer your question. A few years ago, it became apparent that each department needed a contact person for each module: a module specialist. The specialist is familiar with the modules strengths and areas for improvement, knows about its exotic applications and is a point of contact for other departments. A module specialist is a developer, account manager, support specialist or consultant whose experience or education provides them with unique knowledge of a specic module. Anna Ravensbergen, a Support department module specialist, tells us more. We have an in-depth module knowledge that lets us engage in discussions with customers and really help them with specic questions and problems. Module specialists share knowledge with customers and colleagues, but are also help improve the software, as Anna explains. You can inuence your modules development. Its great to discuss customer experiences and wishes with the developers. I was able to make a considerable contribution to the development of the Change Management module.

YOU CAN REALLY INFLUENCE YOUR MODULES DEVELOPMENT

Anna Ravensbergen

Role and task allocation

Customer contact provides plenty of input regarding wishes, comments and complaints.

Text: Anneke Westerman

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For instance, a customer has a question for TOPdesk Support regarding a feature that does not work, or asks their account manager whether TOPdesk can be used for resource planning, while a consultant faces the question of how to make a clear overview of maintenance task expenses in TOPdesk. How can the various module specialists process such questions? The Support module specialist gathers bug-related incidents to discuss with Development, answers module-specic questions that colleagues cannot solve themselves and gives feedback to customers regarding features requests. The specialist is also responsible for sharing their knowledge in TOPdesk using the Knowledge Base and standard solutions. The Account Management module specialist answers colleagues questions about TOPdesk applications, confers with other account managers about specic customer wishes, turns those wishes into feature requests and provides updates about module developments. The Consultancy module specialist answers questions about setups and informs colleagues about the modules latest developments. They also group feature requests from other consultants and provide internal documentation that can be used to implement the module.

are translated to so-called user stories that describe what a certain TOPdesk user wants to do and why. We work together to determine which user stories have the highest priority and how they can be taken into account for a release.

also used in customer contact. You may have met one of them during a themed session or at a customer event. During implementations, TOPdesk advises customers to pay special attention to sharing and recording knowledge to improve the quality of services. The module specialists help TOPdesk achieve this goal: they help translate customer practice into the nal product, as well as record and publish their valuable knowledge. This benets our colleagues and our customers. The module specialists have already helped us take our software and services to the next level, says Ravensbergen. But theres always room for improvement. For instance, the Support department is coming up with better ways to inform customers of the status of their feature requests.

Straightforward communication
Using module specialists makes day-today communications even easier, says Ravensbergen. The specialists are important contact persons within the organization. A developer demonstrates a new feature to the module specialists and they can immediately tell him whether or not the feature addresses customer problems. If a consultant runs into a problem, they simply ask the specialist whether it is a known error or if a workaround is available. Specialists are

USER STORY: TASK BOARD

Mark, the second line support employee, wants to have his list sorted per day so he can easily distinguish information from one day to another. The solution in TOPdesk 5 When Mark opens the Task Board, he sees the tasks displayed per day.

USER STORY: PLAN BOARD

Anouk, the dispatcher, wants to quickly assign incidents to operators so she can divide the workload evenly. The solution in TOPdesk 5 Anouk can drag and drop incidents from the Dispatch panel to operators or operator groups. After dropping the incident in the overview, the appointment date is displayed in blue or red mini to-do lists, grouped per day. Anouk can now see the number of assigned incidents per operator.

User stories and priorities

The module specialists come together in periodic meetings lead by TOPdesks product managers. Several topics are discussed: long-term goals, feature requests and the status of the module. Since Support started working with module specialists, issues have been clearer and easier to prioritize, says Ravensbergen. The feature requests

User stories help us improve TOPdesk. Here you can read two examples of user stories that lead to new features in TOPdesk 5.