HDI Announces Release of 2010 HDI Practices & Salary Report

HDI, a global association for IT service and technical support professionals, announced the release of the 2010 HDI Practices and Salary Report, a comprehensive study that presents an overall look at the state of the IT support industry and allows managers to see how support centers are handling the demands of doing more with less in the 2010 economy.

Report highlights include:

-- As support centers are continually asked to do more with less, the number of incidents continues to increase for most (67%) organizations.

-- Twenty percent of support centers are utilizing chat as a support channel and 5 percent are now receiving tickets through social media.

-- E-mail management tool use went up 5 percent, and configuration management tools are being used by 8 percent more support centers than in 2009.

-- The primary tool implementation initiative is incident management software (14%), followed by knowledge management software (10%), and self-help tools (9%).

-- Results indicate that over 80 percent of support centers are maintaining at least single service level agreements, with a rise in the percent of those maintaining multiple service level agreements.

-- Hardware support and repair is still the most outsourced support function, though down slightly from 2009. The top reasons support centers are not outsourcing more are due to concerns about control of service, service quality, and customer acceptance, then cost.

-- Telephone performance, as measured by average speed to answer, abandonment rate, and first call resolution, has seen improvement across the industry.

-- Ninety-one percent of survey respondents believe an effective support organization must have a customer satisfaction tool; however, 16 percent of support centers do not measure customer satisfaction.

-- On-the-job training (88%) is the most utilized method for training new hires to the frontline. This is followed by mentoring/coaching (78%) and call monitoring (57%), which are, in turn, followed by the more structured types of training, such as computer-based training, formal classroom training, online training, webinars, and virtual classroom training, formats that might require more resources. The primary training concern for new hires to the frontline is customer service skills.

-- Training is considered by most respondents to be the most influential factor with regard to customer satisfaction (90%), performance metrics (85%), and successful product implementation (81%).

-- Twenty-five percent of support centers are paying certified employees more than those who are not certified, a 3 percent increase from 2009.

-- The percent of support centers expecting layoffs, hiring freezes, and salary freezes is down. Over 34 percent are actually anticipating an increase in hiring in their support organizations.

More information on the service and support industry can be found at www.SupportIndustry.com.