HDI, the world's largest membership association for the service and support industry, has a self-evaluation program for support center operations within a company.

The HDI program is a variation of what I call a "readiness review". Folks in program management or execution-oriented roles sometimes use checkpoints, checklists, and tune-ups before proceeding into the next phase of an effort (e.g., moving from program pilot to national rollout). The fact that HDI has implemented a self-evaluation tool set for support centers seems unique.

Benefits of using the self-evaluation and following up as needed include affecting:

• quality of operations
  
• profitability
• customer satisfaction
• strategic planning
  
• service delivery
• technology optimization

HDI has a special promotion running right now. The promotion membership running right now includes a Gold HDI Membership, an HDM Online Certification training class, plus a test voucher, the site certification self-evaluation I'm talking about here (which is normally $295-$395 for one-year), and an ITIM conference pass for $1,795 (a $2624 value).

Steve Shu