Dell Technologies Education Services - Best Virtual Lab
Company: Dell Technologies Education Services, Round Rock, TX USA
Company Description: Dell is an American multinational computer technology company based in Round Rock, Texas, United States, that develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Named after its founder, Michael Dell, the company is one of the largest technological corporations in the world, employing more than 145,000 people in the U.S. and around the world (Annual report 2018).
Nomination Category: Product & Service Categories - Education & Education Technology Solutions
Nomination Sub Category: Virtual Lab
Nomination Title: Dell Technologies - Client Virtual Labs
If this is a brand-new product, state the date on which it was released. If this is a new version of an existing product, state the date on which the update was released:
New Course launched on August 31, 2020.
This On-Demand course is designed to replicate the real-world software issues encountered by the Technical Support agents in a virtual environment (Virtual Machines). It provides the learners hands-on experience to identify, explore, troubleshoot, and resolve the top call drivers.
Dell Technical Support provides support to end-users on computer issues. Resolving customer issues in a timely manner and satisfactorily is imperative, more so in technical support environment. Technicians are measured on parameters like resolution, time taken to resolve, customer effort, customer satisfaction, etc. The technicians are trained on hardware and software, however, not all software issues can be covered due to customization and personalization on computers from browser addon to registry modification to applications installed. There are internal resolution tools as well which help technicians follow a troubleshooting path to fix the software issues. But guiding the customer to fix the issue or fixing it by taking remote access of the computer continues to be a pain point for technicians due to complexity and high-configurable options available for the customers. Resolving software issues is not standardized either and each technician follows her/his own path which does not provide a consistent experience to the customers. It is extremely challenging when multiple software or applications are installed causing the issue as they change the behavior of the operating system or the user profile dramatically. It was important to address the low business metrics when handling the software issues that led to conceptualizing and developing the Client Virtual Labs.
The metrics are compared quarter-on-quarter to analyze the performance trend. Here are the benefits observed by the business:
•Reduced call handle time.
•Improved resolution rate (reduced RAR – Repeat Activity Rate) and first call resolution.
• Improved customer satisfaction scores.
• Reduced customer effort score.
• Faster ROI as no hardware equipment is needed.
• Minimal cost as it needs less resources to set up and manage the course.
Some other tangible benefits are:
• Provides an immersive experience to improve learner engagement.
• Better learner engagement results in better knowledge retention.
• Highly scalable to include different issues/scenarios based on demand.
• Provides learner to follow a guided path or explore and experiment.
Traditionally, this kind of real-world scenarios were taught as a lab exercise or through an E-Learning. In lab environment, trainers or lab instructors are required to replicate the issues on actual working computers, and then reset it for the next set of learners. This creates both resource and logistical issues. Apart from this, it also requires hardware or equipment. The procurement and management of physical hardware or equipment at all locations, access to all learners and flexibility of taking up the course is a major challenge. While the E-Learning courses have simulations, they can only recreate some scenarios or situations despite multiple layers of branching. In this controlled environment, the learner must follow a linear approach with pre-defined path and does not have the ability to try steps which otherwise s/he would have tried. This resulted in technicians spending lot of time on the call when dealing with software issues and experimenting with customers’ computer. Adding more scenarios or creating multiple paths would make the file heavy and slow to respond. To overcome this challenges, Client Virtual Labs were created which provides a platform for learners to have hands-on experience to identify, explore, troubleshoot, and resolve the top call drivers. This was innovative as virtual machines were used to create real-world scenarios and allowed technicians to learn by performing the actions. It also provides an immersive experience aligning to experiential learning philosophy. The labs are time-based and can be accessed from any device.
The response from the learners as well as business was overwhelming leading to further discussions to include various other issues as well. This training has already won internal awards and here are couple of testimonials:
-BU lead: The incredible feedback we get from stakeholders about how interactive the experience is and how helpful these solutions are to assist technical support agents to troubleshoot is amazing.
-SME: I’m totally sure that Stakeholders will recognize it as a valuable resource for agent knowledge development and confident that tool utilization will be extended across all regions.