Why PRISM
exists.
I started my career as a first line support agent. From day one I had a habit that set me apart — I never avoided tickets outside my area. If something came in for another team, I'd investigate it anyway. I didn't always have the answer, but I always had the curiosity.
That curiosity got me promoted. First to second line, then within a year to Problem Analyst. Eventually I became a Problem Team Manager — and that's where PRISM was born, though I didn't call it that yet.
I was given a clear brief: reduce ticket reopening rates and cut escalations. Training had been tried before. Nothing was sticking. So I tried something different.
I built scenarios in a test system and gave agents 15 minutes to investigate each one. No right or wrong answers. No pressure. Just a ticket, a system, and their instincts.
Then we talked. Not about what the answer was — about how they got there. What they clicked first. What they ruled out. What made them confident. We unpicked the thinking, not just the resolution.
After the discussion, I'd walk through the ideal investigation path — not to correct them, but to show them a different way of seeing the same problem. I wasn't training right or wrong answers. I was interested in how they thought and what drove them there.
The results were significant. Eight agents at a time, trained over a month, thinking differently by the end of it.
I went on to become a Software Delivery Manager. But the framework I'd stumbled onto never left me.
PRISM is that framework — rebuilt, refined, and scaled. The thinking that transformed one team's performance, now available to any support team in the world.
"I was never training right or wrong answers. I was interested in how they thought — and what that thinking revealed about how they'd handle the next ticket, and the one after that."