The Starting Point

When I took over the global technical support operation at Tyco/JCI, the state of the teams was bleak. Agents were overwhelmed. There was no standardised knowledge base, no consistent skills framework, and no clear escalation path when things went wrong. Leadership across the four centres was fragmented — regional managers operating independently, with little coordination and minimal oversight of how cases were being handled.

The symptoms were visible every day. Customer escalations were regular and often chaotic. It was common to get an escalation call late in the afternoon or overnight when a system or service had gone down — and nobody had a clear protocol for who owned the response, who communicated to the client, or how the incident was tracked to resolution. The operation was reactive by default because it had no proactive framework.

“It was common to get an escalation call overnight when systems were down and nobody had a clear protocol for who owned the response. The operation was reactive because it had no framework to be anything else.”

The Framework: Where We Started

ITIL wasn’t the only tool we applied — Six Sigma and Lean initiatives ran alongside it, and we implemented Erlang C for workforce scheduling — but ITIL provided the structural backbone that made everything else possible.

We started with Incident Management, specifically at the service desk level. This was the right place to begin: it was where the operational chaos was most visible, where the impact of inconsistency was most felt by customers, and where standardisation would produce the fastest measurable improvement. Before we could address problem patterns or manage change, we needed the service desk to be able to handle individual incidents consistently.

Once Incident Management was established, we built out Problem Management — the discipline of identifying root causes of recurring incidents rather than continuously resolving the same issue at first contact. This is where the operation shifted from reactive to proactive. If the same class of incident was appearing weekly, we now had a process for investigating why and addressing the underlying cause, not just the symptom.

Change Management came next, including a formal CAB (Change Advisory Board) process for reviewing and approving changes to systems and services. Uncoordinated changes to the platform had been a source of unplanned incidents — the CAB process created the governance layer that prevented that.

Running in parallel: Six Sigma methodology for defect reduction (applied to ticket handling quality), Lean process improvement for workflow efficiency, and Erlang C modelling for scheduling — which transformed how we staffed the operation from instinct-based to data-driven.

Rolling It Out: Four Centres, Four Different Challenges

The implementation was deliberately sequenced by complexity. Starting with the most straightforward centre and building toward the most resistant gave us early wins, a refined approach, and the credibility to push through the harder conversations later.

Phase 1 — Easiest
Toronto, North America
Single product, concentrated in-office team — the ideal starting point. We hired managers and added supervisors with clear accountability, then rolled out quality frameworks, Six Sigma methodology, and schedule tracking built on Erlang C modelling. Toronto became the proof of concept that showed the rest of the organisation what the operating model could look like.
Phase 2 — Moderate
Montreal, North America
Three different products across the same centre — significantly more complex than Toronto. Multiple manager relationships, product-specific knowledge silos, and a more complicated scheduling model. The Toronto framework provided the blueprint; the Montreal rollout required adapting it for multi-product complexity without diluting the standards.
Phase 3 — Moderate with nuance
Heathrow, UK
Similar product complexity to Montreal, with the additional dynamic of being physically co-located with the sales team. That proximity helped with internal escalations and client relationship context — but it also created pressure: client-facing sales conversations happening in the same space as technical support handling created expectations that needed careful management.
Phase 4 — Hardest
Echt, Netherlands (EMEA)
The most challenging centre by far — and not for technical reasons. The senior manager and leadership team in Echt were experienced and established, and somewhat resistant to change. They had served as the backup to North America prior to the onboarding of the Indian team, which meant they supported all four products and had developed a self-perception as subject matter experts across everything. That expertise was real — but it made the cultural shift to a standardised framework harder to drive. Patient, consistent leadership was the approach that worked.

The Training Foundation: ITIL Foundation for All Leaders

A critical decision early in the rollout: get every manager and supervisor ITIL Foundation certified before the operational implementation began. This wasn’t optional, and it wasn’t symbolic. The reason was practical — if the leaders running each centre weren’t operating from the same conceptual framework, every conversation about incident classification, escalation thresholds, or change management would require translation. The certification gave us a shared language across four countries.

The training approach varied by centre. Echt had a dedicated training team that we worked with directly. Toronto had a single trainer who became the centre of the knowledge rollout there. Montreal used existing supervisors as the training delivery mechanism. The delivery differed; the content and standard didn’t.

Alongside the ITIL Foundation training, we embedded the Six Sigma approach at the team level — equipping supervisors to identify and address defect patterns in their own operations rather than waiting for top-down analysis. This was the combination that made the improvement sustainable: a structural framework from ITIL, and a problem-solving methodology from Six Sigma, both operating at every level of the hierarchy.

What Changed

The outcomes were measurable across the metrics that mattered most to an operation of this type. First Contact Resolution improved as agents moved from ad hoc handling to structured incident classification and documented resolution paths. Mean Time to Resolve came down as problem management caught recurring incidents earlier and addressed root causes rather than symptoms. CSAT and NPS improved — a reflection of the more consistent, more professional customer experience that a structured operation delivers compared to a reactive one.

The escalation chaos that had been a daily feature of the operation became significantly less frequent. The CAB process meant that platform changes were no longer creating unplanned incidents. The Erlang C modelling meant staffing levels were set against data rather than instinct, which reduced both the over-staffing in quiet periods and the under-staffing during peaks.

Measurable Outcomes

FCR ↑
First contact resolution
MTTR ↓
Mean time to resolve
CSAT ↑
Customer satisfaction
NPS ↑
Net promoter score
CAB
Change governance established
Erlang C
Data-driven scheduling live

What Made It Work

Sequencing by complexity, not by geography. Starting in Toronto wasn’t a random choice — it was the centre most likely to succeed quickly, and early success mattered. It gave us a working model to point to when the harder conversations came in Echt.

Getting the leaders certified before the operation changed. ITIL Foundation for every manager and supervisor wasn’t overhead — it was the prerequisite. You can’t hold a centre to a standard the centre’s leadership doesn’t understand.

Combining framework with methodology. ITIL defines what needs to happen. Six Sigma and Lean define how to improve it. The combination — structural governance and continuous improvement discipline operating together — is what produced sustainable outcomes rather than a one-time improvement that drifted back.

Patience with the resistant centre. Echt required a different approach than Toronto. The leadership team there had real expertise and real credibility — dismissing that or forcing change without earning buy-in would have produced compliance on paper and resistance in practice. The approach was consistent, patient, and grounded in data rather than authority.

ITIL Incident Management Problem Management Change Management CAB Six Sigma Erlang C Global Ops Process Improvement FCR MTTR