white paper
Trends and Directions in
Web-Based Customer Support
Published by:
© 2002 SupportIndustry.com and CRMIndustry.com.
Product and company names may be trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
There's always been more than a little irony surrounding the business of service and support. Support organizations,
both internal and external, are endlessly battling the perception that they're resource-hungry cost centers and not
worthy of the budget considerations of revenue-driving business functions.Yet, for customers, service and support
professionals represent the face of the business, and often dictate the perception the company has in the public eye.
And for employees relying on technology to do their jobs, the help desk can be the last line of defense against
downtime, frustration and lost productivity.
Nonetheless, support centers will continue to struggle to get their fair share of corporate budgets, particularly in times
of economic downturn, as well as battling the high levels of turnover that characterize such operations. Meanwhile,
they'll continue to be asked to support more and more employees and customers with fewer or static resources, while
somehow answering the corporate mandate to please those they serve.
These realities have businesses -- aggressively in many cases -- leveraging the unique advantages of the Internet to save
money and reduce the burden on harried call centers and help desks.The concepts behind Web-based support and
service are simple: If help desks and call centers are able to practice call avoidance and deflection by driving problem
resolution to self-service and other channels, they free support workers to concentrate on more difficult and missioncritical technical problems, and allow customer service workers to spend time on cross-selling and up-selling
opportunities to drive additional revenues. If they're able to leverage the Web to connect with clients to solve
problems remotely, they avoid onsite visits, reduce resolution times and greatly improve time-to-productivity.
Meanwhile, call avoidance and deflection measures are extending support to a 24x7 proposition and giving users the
opportunity to help themselves rather than forcing them to get into what may very well be a long phone queue. And
in many cases, Web-based initiatives are reducing costs by driving service and support toward less expensive touch
points like email, self-service and collaborative channels such as chat and instant messaging. However, while cost
reduction has been a leading driver of such initiatives, analysts caution that the pure cost equations of non phone-based
methods have been oversimplified. In other words, estimating support and service channel costs is a complex
proposition. According to Gartner, when done right, true self-service methods, such as knowledge-base searches, FAQs,
and IVR, can be incredibly inexpensive. With assisted-service methods, including delayed approaches such as email, and
real-time approaches, such as text chat and phone, costs can vary greatly. Gartner places the cost of email-based
support at anywhere between $2.50 and $40, but recommends that organizations estimate costs at between $5 to
$10. Contrast that with the cost of phone-based interaction at anywhere from $2 to $12, and text chat at $7.00.These
cost estimates, says Gartner, do not reflect the fact that agents still predominantly take calls by phone, achieving much
greater economies of scale, nor do they recognize that email support, because it's not done in real time, is often shifted
to less costly off-peak hours.
© 2002 SupportIndustry.com and CRMIndustry.com.
Product and company names may be trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
"I've found that 94 percent of incident volume is still submitted as a call," says Kris Brittain, research director, IT service
and support management at Gartner. "I definitely think the adoption rate will increase, but it takes people time to
adjust."
The bottom line, she says, is whether organizations want to have volume continue to spiral up or better manage it by
driving support to alternate methods. "Five years ago the typical help desk was supporting 25 applications and they're
now supporting over 200, and they've consolidated all their help desks. Most companies have more than one PC per
employee, as well as PDA support to deal with."
Many analysts warn against focusing too much on the cost aspects of alternate methods of support at the expense of
less-tangible benefits. "I would caution [support professionals] not to put too much emphasis on cost statistics," says
Ana Volpi, program manager, software and system support services, at IDC. "In truth, there's no real answer to the
average cost of phone calls and email -- it depends on the company, the vendor, the customer, the technology." She
advises companies to decide what's important to their business strategy, whether it be lowering costs or increasing
customer satisfaction, and make decisions based on that.
Helping support organizations make such decisions are a wide range of e-support and e-service offerings that are
being utilized across business-to-employee, business-to-consumer and business-to-business channels.Traditional help
desk and CRM call management products are leveraging the Web to allow users to open their own tickets and check
the status of their queries. Assisted-help technologies, including email, user forums, chat,VoIP, phone-back, screen sharing,
whiteboarding and remote control and diagnostics, are utilizing asynchronous and collaborative communication to
improve support interactions. Some technologies take collaboration a step further, enabling individuals from various
departments within the company -- development, quality assurance and sales, for example -- as well as key external
collaborators, to work together to provide a complete solution for the customer. Automated help technologies such as
email auto-response and auto-suggest provide solutions while enabling support centers to practice call avoidance, while
self-help options -- knowledge bases, FAQs, troubleshooting wizards, online documentation -- are enabling users to solve
problems themselves, whenever they want.
Today, the primary use of e-support technologies is in the area of online trouble-ticketing and tracking, closely followed
by self-service deployment, says Esteban Kolsky, research analyst at Gartner.That will change as more companies deploy
self-service channels and people become more comfortable using them, decreasing the need to generate online tickets,
Kolsky says.
As the market for Web-based support and service matures, the lines between product lines are blurring, says John
Ragsdale, research director, Giga Group. "Support automation and e-service are consolidating to provide one-stop
shopping for running support operations, regardless of whether it's internal or external support. And they can integrate
easily with CRM products if you want to use those capabilities."
Indeed, says IDC's Volpi, the industry is seeing much better integration between call management systems and Webbased support products.This is not only increasing the use of non phone-based methods of support and service -- and
reducing user frustration -- but eliminating some of the administrative headaches that non-integrated systems cause.
Without integration, if a user searches a knowledge base and can't find an answer, and then escalates to email, chat and
finally the phone, that creates three separate incidents -- and an administrative nightmare.
Whatever Web-based support options companies choose, it won't matter if customers don't use them, so be advised:
market them aggressively.The second biggest challenge beyond maintaining knowledge bases is ensuring customers use
self-service systems, says Esteban Kolsky, research analyst at Gartner. "Target the customers you want, and advertise it."
This white paper will examine the products, visions and strategies of several vendors targeting the Web-based
customer-service and support space. It will also explore the experiences of customers using them, detailing what drove
them to adopt Web-based support technologies, the challenges they're facing and the benefits they're realizing.
© 2002 SupportIndustry.com and CRMIndustry.com.
Product and company names may be trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
E-Support/Self-Service
RightNow Technologies
Bozeman, Mt.
RightNow Technologies provides a range of e-service solutions for customer service and support, comprising selfservice, live collaboration, email response management and self-learning knowledge management functionality.
RightNow competes against such vendors as eGain, Kana and Primus for customer deployments.
RightNow, says CEO Greg Gianforte, has found strong acceptance in markets where companies tend to have a lot of
customers, primarily in B2C scenarios. "The markets where we've seen the most traction have been those with
consumer product companies with lots of customers and lots of repetitive questions," he says. Often these companies
are selling small-ticket items, where the cost of the service interaction approaches the financial transaction. Such
companies have to decide at what point it's okay to ignore questions from customers because it's not cost-effective to
answer them, and the one way they can deal with it is through e-service." RightNow also has customers in the
telecom, high-tech, airlines, government and automotive industries, among others.
At the heart of RightNow's eService Center is a self-learning knowledge engine that incorporates adaptive reasoning,
natural language parsing and fuzzy logic search features to deliver knowledgeable responses to customer queries.The
system has a common architecture across all touch points, including self-service, email management and collaboration,
and leverages its self-learning attributes to increase the accuracy of knowledge-base content. Customers that want to
get up and running quickly can seed the knowledge base with frequently asked questions and capture new, dynamic
content as customers interact with the system.
The reason that many knowledge-based systems haven't worked in the past, according to Gianforte, is that they rely
too heavily on subject matter experts rather than leveraging customer input. "The problem with implementing a
manual knowledge management practice, reliant on subject matter experts, is that it's time-consuming, expensive, the
content gets obsolete quickly and the content is what the subject matter expert thinks is important." Implementing a
customer-driven approach ensures organizations deliver the information their customers need.
RightNow's offering can be purchased to run in-house or as an ASP option. According to Gianforte, 70 percent of
RightNow's customers host with the vendor, which has three data centers with 24x7 monitoring.
© 2002 SupportIndustry.com and CRMIndustry.com.
Product and company names may be trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
For Thule Racks, in Seymour, Ct., the move to e-service was driven by the company's increasing emphasis on the Web
as a sales driver, says Steve Doviak, marketing manager. As the company has grown and expanded its distribution
channels, it hasn't been able to provide the amount of training to dealerships that it once could. Meanwhile,Thule has
moved product into retail locations -- for example, automotive dealerships -- that aren't as knowledgeable about Thule's
products as some of its earlier distributors were.These factors drove up Web site traffic significantly, with both regular
and new customers turning to the company's email channels to get product information.
The increased demand for customer service became unwieldy for Thule's 15-person call center, says Doviak. "We
started researching solutions that were in our price range and that could grow with us. We were literally saying, 'We're
drowning and we need someone to come up with a solution for this'." Thule ultimately chose RightNow's e-service
offering, and within a month of deployment, emails coming from site visitors were down 20 percent, he says.
By offloading repetitive service questions,Thule's agents are able to concentrate on customers who truly need
individual help. "Now we're focusing on answering the kinds of questions that really warrant individual, personal
attention," says Doviak. "I'd much rather have [agents] doing that than providing information that's readily available on
our site."
In addition to external customer service, says Doviak,Thule plans to leverage RightNow's technology for its dealer
network.
Though Doviak says it's difficult to precisely measure call and email avoidance because the company is growing so
much, he's been pleased with the analysis conducted the last time they "tuned-up" the knowledge base -- a process in
which they worked closely with RightNow.
"We did analysis when we [performed our last knowledge base tune-up] and emails were down 40 percent and call
center calls were down 25 percent over the time period," says Doviak. "It is difficult to measure exactly, however,
because right after we measured, more emails started coming in through new distributors.That mirrors growth overall
in the company, which is up 20 percent sales-wise."
As time has gone on and Thule has been able to ease its support burden, it has been able to leverage what it's learning
to come up with escalation workflows and assign certain subject areas to appropriate people within the organization.
"We regularly look at knowledge-base growth to see what customers are searching on. We're able to leverage what
we're learning to really take the pulse of the customer."
Thule has also utilized RightNow's customer service metrics functionality to survey for satisfaction. "When a consumer
wants to look for a dealer, we refer a dealer to them, and then send them a survey. We want to be able to refer good
dealers based on those responses."
When e-service is done well, says Gianforte, there's a major shift from the phone to less-expensive and more
productive electronic channels. "In the next 24 months, we will see Web transactions exceed phone," he says. "As
companies look to the future to building out their technology platform for delivering service, they have to decide
whether they want to base service on a phone model, or an e-service model.The phone won't go away, but it will be
reserved for very personal interactions."
"E-service so fundamentally changes the cost structure and the effectiveness of service delivery, that if companies don't
do it well and their competitors do, they'll be out of business in five years," he adds.
© 2002 SupportIndustry.com and CRMIndustry.com.
Product and company names may be trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
ServiceWare Technologies Inc.
Oakmont, Penn.
ServiceWare provides Web-based knowledge management solutions for customer service and support. At the heart of
its flagship product, eService Suite, is a self-learning search technology, MindSync, that allows organizations to capture,
develop and manage a repository of knowledge. By leveraging this knowledge across all touch points, ServiceWare
customers can ensure their support professionals and their own customers can effectively answer inquiries over the
Web and in the contact center. ServiceWare's products are often integrated with call management products such as
Seibel's and other leading systems.The company competes against such vendors as Primus, eGain and Kana.
"We take a very holistic view of support -- that a knowledge base is very central to both helping an agent and helping
the person coming to the Web," says Scott Schwartzman, ServiceWare's chief operating officer. "It doesn't matter
who's asking the questions: Just ask questions and we'll give you the answer." With ServiceWare's cognitive processor,
MindSync, solutions get stored once, to avoid the administrative problems generated when a knowledge base has 10
different answers to the same question. By matching the same problem with the same solution repeatedly, the
relationship is strengthened in the knowledge base, improving support delivery.
Support and service organizations need to provide access to this knowledge regardless of the channels customers
choose to use, says Mitchell Nitzan, ServiceWare's director of product marketing. "The key thing that CIOs need to
understand is that it's no longer sufficient to offer just a voice channel; they have to offer self-service and automated
response," he says. "There's a huge migration in this direction.The number of queries coming in over the Web has
increased 1000 percent over the last five or six years, because everyone has gotten so accustomed to using the Web
that they often choose that path."
However, Nitzan adds, merely providing multiple contact channels is only the beginning to providing quality service and
support. "Contact centers and help desks believe that putting in new channels will automatically improve support and
increase customer satisfaction, but that won't happen if they're not putting enough time into [knowledge
management]," he says.
Esteban Kolsky, research analyst at Gartner, agrees. Companies that want to provide e-service and e-support must
understand the knowledge base will largely determine success or failure, and to be successful, maintenance must be a
top priority. "If you don't consider the maintenance component of your knowledge base, you're doomed to failure.
Taking care of the knowledge base is the most difficult part of [e-service and support], but it's got to be done right."
Companies need to make knowledge creation a part of everyday life, says Schwartzman. "Our design goal for our
product is have zero knowledge engineering, but you really do need it.You don't want to have to hire an army of
[knowledge engineers], or it defeats that purpose, but you need to ensure that knowledge is created and maintained."
Knowledge creation should become part of the normal support and service workflow, and ServiceWare has created
ways to ensure agents can easily add content to the knowledge base. "We want to take away the barriers to
knowledge creation," says Schwartzman.
Managing knowledge effectively, he continues, helps combat one of the most alarming trends in customer service and
support -- the high rate of agent turnover." Most call centers have high turnover, 40 percent or so," says Schwartzman.
"If you go to any call center it's easy to pick the five best people, because everyone's asking them all the questions.
Our product strength is we take the knowledge of the five best people and share it with others, and with self-learning,
get smarter all the time. Even when brand new, the knowledge base will prompt people."
Kansas City, Mo.-based H&R Block Inc. has deployed ServiceWare's e-service tools for both internal and external
support, according to Rick Parrin, assistant VP, strategic sourcing. On the external side, the company leverages e-service
for hrblock.com, its online offering, as well as for its retail desktop product,TaxCut.The company's approach is to
strongly discourage phone calls by offering e-service options for problem resolution, says Parrin.
© 2002 SupportIndustry.com and CRMIndustry.com.
Product and company names may be trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
"We essentially force them to self-serve, and though we provide a phone number, it's not toll-free," says Parrin. "We
really want them to educate themselves and not have them wait on the phone." If customers run into a challenge on
the self-help side, they can send an email before resorting to a phone call.The e-service options are integrated with
the company's Clarify call management system should problems need escalation.
For its e-service option, H&R Block uses ServiceWare's SmartClix, a dynamic FAQ that adapts according to most
recent, frequently asked questions. "As clients interact with self-help, it reevaluates the FAQ behind the scenes and
prioritizes it.That's provided significant value," says Parrin.
H&R Block has been using the system for its Web-based tax products for three tax seasons and has seen a dramatic
increase in use by customers. "The first day we deployed it we had 5,000 inquiries, and this season we had 70,000 in
one day," Parrin says.
H&R Block also uses the product for internal support for its 10,000 offices.Tax professionals use an intranet to access
information on product support and technical support questions for H&R Block's proprietary tax preparation software.
Parrin sees a number of significant benefits both for the company and the employees and customers it serves. "The
biggest driver is call deflection, followed by email deflection," says Parrin. "Then, if the client can't achieve what they're
looking for, our call centers are looking at the same product and the same knowledge base.The value is first-call
resolution, and decreased labor costs and handle time." H&R Block currently employs 1,000 full-time equivalent
positions.
For the client, he continues, the value is avoiding having to place what might very well be an expensive phone call if
they have to wait in a queue. "The client experience becomes a much better experience.The call center doesn't get
jammed up with simple questions and are able to spend more time dealing with critical calls. And those that place
critical calls are able to get in quicker."
© 2002 SupportIndustry.com and CRMIndustry.com.
Product and company names may be trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
E-Support/Collaborative Communication/Remote Control
Expertcity, Inc.
Santa Barbara, Calif.
Expertcity, Inc. provides Web-based remote-access and customer-support technologies.The company's
DesktopStreaming™ product is a Web-based screen-sharing application that enables support representatives to
remotely view and control users' computers.The product features collaborative capabilities such as chat, whiteboarding
and mutual mouse and keyboard control, and has a back-end Management Center for administration, management and
reporting.
In today's busy support environments, says Chuck Massanari,VP of sales at Expertcity, balance has become critical to
providing quality support. "We're not a panacea -- nobody is -- but rather part of an overall solution. Support needs to
be a balance between the phone and the Web."
"Many of the assisted and self-help solutions are most effective when supplemented with high-touch solutions," he adds.
"If you're providing telephone support and add a knowledge base, you're hoping to cut down on direct phone calls. But
that's not always what happens, and if not done right, it sometimes results in even more calls. A Web-based support
strategy should include not only automated solutions but high-touch solutions like DesktopStreaming as well."
DesktopStreaming is effective both when users can't get the help they need via self-service and also when they can't
adequately describe the problem they're experiencing, says Massanari. "If a person tries an FAQ or a knowledge base
and still has problems, he or she can click for live support and initiate a chat session with the ability to escalate to
screen sharing. With screen sharing and other capabilities, support representatives are able to solve issues quicker and
more efficiently, increasing first-call resolution, reducing incident-handling time and raising customer satisfaction," he says.
Products like DesktopStreaming are particularly good for handling the types of problems that result in lengthy calls due
to complexity, says Massanari. "From an ROI standpoint, DesktopStreaming is more effective with longer duration calls.
For calls longer than 14 minutes on average -- level-two types of calls -- it's very efficient." For users who prefer not to
use the phone, DesktopStreaming's Web-based capabilities offer a way to stay out of the phone queue, many times
resulting in a more satisfied customer.
Expertcity delivers DesktopStreaming as a hosted offering because it's important that its clients can be up and running
within a week. In addition, clients' end users don't need to install anything on their computers to receive support, says
Massanari. "End users can enter through a portal on a Web site and be quickly connected to a support representative
for problem resolution."
At Irvine, Calif.-based Best Software, Inc., analysts supporting the company's customers are using DesktopStreaming
primarily for remote viewing and remote control, says Jim Moore,VP of customer support and information services at
Best Software.The company has what Moore terms a strong self-service offering available via its Web site for external
customers, but relies on DesktopStreaming "when we need to take support to the next level" and the problem can't
be solved via a phone call alone.
Moore says the need for support organizations to leverage such tools is growing, particularly as products and
computing environments grow in complexity. "From an external perspective, the challenge has been that products are
getting more complex, and users aren't necessarily keeping pace with technology, especially with more advanced tools,"
says Moore. "We still solve the majority of cases via the telephone, but this product really helps with the tricky ones.
When working with customers who can't adequately describe their problems, these tools provide great benefit." Best
looked at some competitive products, but opted for DesktopStreaming when it found others too proprietary or
difficult to administer.
© 2002 SupportIndustry.com and CRMIndustry.com.
Product and company names may be trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
As a provider of financial applications, Best has to occasionally deal with database problems. In the past, this required
that customers send a copy to Best so it could restore the database. "With this tool we can access the database online
as long as the customers give permission, and we often fix the problem that way," Moore says.
Moore adds that he's been pleasantly surprised at customers' willingness to allow Best to remotely control systems,
and they recognize the great time-savings that comes with this method.
Though Best considered bringing an assisted solution in-house, Moore says the company opted to go with a hosted
solution to avoid administrative and bandwidth issues and to get running quickly.To shorten connection times with their
customers Best will soon be upgrading to the next version of DesktopStreaming, which will let users click on a live
connect button initiating screen-sharing sessions with their support agent in just one to two minutes.
In addition to Best's 150 external support people using DesktopStreaming, the product has found some use within the
company's engineering group. In addition, the company's sales support group is piloting the product and taking
advantage of its chat and screen push functionality.
Key Drivers and Trends in Customer Service and IT Support
Faced with the recent recession and ongoing economic pressures, businesses across the board are launching selfservice initiatives to offset dwindling service and support budgets, according to John Ragsdale, research director
at analyst firm Giga Information Group. Meanwhile, e-support and e-service functionality is beginning to merge,
and best-of-breed e-service players are adopting broader product visions to battle e-service offerings from
enterprise CRM vendors. According to Ragsdale, a number of factors are driving the adoption of e-service
offerings:
>Corporate downsizing.Though customer interactions with service and support organizations are increasing,
there are fewer agents available to take calls. E-service is part of the ongoing drive to deploy short- and longterm cost saving initiatives for customer service and IT help desks.
>Cost of ownership concerns. IT support and service organizations are pushing vendors to provide fuller
solutions to save on software, implementation and ownership costs. Functional tradeoffs are being made when a
help desk, CRM or e-service suite vendor can offer adequate functionality and keep a project within budget,
avoiding the acquisition and integration costs for implementing products from multiple niche vendors.
>Consumers accept more responsibility for solving their own problems.Tired of the frustration associated with
long phone queues and less-than-helpful automated email responses, customers are more willing to try self-help
channels, opening the door for companies to take advantage of new technologies to increase self-service
adoption.
Trends:
>CRM vendors capture larger IT help desk market share. With some CRM vendors marketing IT-focused
products for employee relationship management (ERM) and enterprise help desk, CRM vendors will likely make
the short list of more enterprise deals.
>E-support and e-service merging. While IT help desks have long embraced knowledge bases and limited selfservice options for employees, e-support functionality is a recent addition to the external customer support
market and will emerge as a key competitive differentiator during 2002 for companies competing in certain
vertical markets. Expect new e-support offerings from both e-service and CRM players in the coming months to
capitalize on this trend.
>E-service vendors broaden offerings, integrate or evaporate: As CRM vendors offer more e-service features as
a part of their support suites, best-of-breed e-service vendors offer broader functionality -- like case
management -- to minimize reliance on CRM partners.
© 2002 SupportIndustry.com and CRMIndustry.com.
Product and company names may be trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
SpartaCom Technologies Inc.
Linktivity Division
Tucson, Ariz.
SpartaCom Technologies Inc., a provider of network connectivity, network resource sharing and remote PC
communications software products, spun out its Linktivity Division a year and a half ago. Linktivity provides real-time
communication and remote-control software to enable browser-to-browser Web conferencing, collaboration and help
desk support.
Linktivity's WebDemo is a Web-based conferencing product that features VoIP, keyboard chat, co-browsing and playback
and record.The product is primarily being used for sales and marketing meetings and presentations, e-learning and
online technical support. WebInteractive is a server-based call center product that provides agents with the ability to
assist customers via voice, chat, co-browsing, whiteboarding, remote control and other technologies.The product
performs system diagnostics, disaster recovery and restore functions. As is often the case with products that offer
remote-control features, users sometimes have fears about support reps taking control of their PCs, which is why the
company offers a number of permission-based features.
Products like WebInteractive are critical to support organizations today because they greatly reduce both deskside
visits and the amount of time a support professional spends working with a user, says CEO Scott Moule.
"With support, only about 40 to 50 percent of problems are fixed with the first call. If the problem doesn't get fixed,
the customer has to go back into a queue," says Moule. "That's where one of the biggest advantages of a remote
control kind of solution comes in; being able to remotely access and diagnose can move first-time resolution to 70
percent and that increases customer satisfaction dramatically. And it makes [support] a more effective and profitable
unit."
One of the primary drivers of adoption of tools such as Linktivity offers, says Moule, is the sheer complexity of
computing environments. Additional complexity comes into play because users have more support options to choose
from, and while that improves support, it can also complicate matters for the support organization.
"Traditionally, the method of support was a call into a call center.There wasn't IVR, fax, email, automated responses,
diagnostics, self-service. Now there's the complexity of educating users on what support options are available and
guiding them toward what are most effective," Moule says.
Not only do newer support options benefit customers and help desks, but they're playing an indirect role in helping
external support organizations justify the economics of delivering support, says Moule.
"If you look at support over the last 20 years, it's moved in cycles from free to fee, from fee to free," says Moule.
"When sales are low, companies offer free support.Then the cost of support becomes a burden and moved back to
fee-based programs. If a company implements good support tools, they can offer tremendous support at lower cost. If
they're charging for support, they can make it more affordable to customers, and they're even more able to offer free
support if they want because they've lowered costs."
Aasys Group Inc., a Tampa, Fla.-based systems integration company primarily serving the banking and financial services
industry, has been using WebInteractive to support Microsoft, Novell, Unix and mainframe operating environments, as
well as line-of-business applications.The company provides support out of three offices in Tampa, Orlando and Fort
Lauderdale for 80 to 90 customer sites throughout Florida. According to Miguel Hablutzel, general manager, deploying a
remot-support solution was a key strategic move, and he did an extensive evaluation before choosing WebInteractive.
© 2002 SupportIndustry.com and CRMIndustry.com.
Product and company names may be trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.
If Aasys's level one and level two help desk technicians cannot solve a problem, it typically gets escalated to one of the
company's engineers, who in the past would travel to the customer site. "We can send engineers within a two-hour
radius for onsite support, but when you consider that eats up four hours of time just in travel, that's not cost effective,"
says Hablutzel. "We worried about justifying that to the customers we charge for support. Because we can handle
many of those support issues through WebInteractive, we're able to pass some of those savings on to the customers."
Hablutzel uses this reasoning -- and the fact that all remote support is performed over a secure connection -- to
market the use of WebInteractive to clients.
Hablutzel praises Linktivity's ease of use, particularly for customers who aren't particularly sophisticated in their
computer use. When users experience a problem, they head to Aasys's Web site, click to connect to WebInteractive,
then fill in a problem screen. A window pops up on an engineer's screen as they come up in the queue, and the PCs
are automatically in collaboration mode. If an engineer needs to take control of the user's desktop, the engineer asks
permission and the user can decide.
Hablutzel takes full use of Linktivity's management reports to analyze support and see how well his group is meeting
metrics. He's also working with Linktivity to design additional fields so he can add billing codes for accounts.
Aasys has only been using the Linktivity tool for a few months, but Hablutzel says he's seen a strong ROI just in mileage
savings. "I've seen mileage from engineer trips come down from thousands of miles to just a few hundred," he says.
"The other benefit is that customers are experiencing quicker response, and while I can't measure that in dollars right
now, we'll be able to do so in the long run. Our service-level agreements stipulate we have to resolve within four
hours, but in many cases we're doing it in five minutes." He also says he'll be able to manage expenses better, and
they'll be able to pass that savings along to customers for increased customer satisfaction.
Call Management/Problem Resolution
The Clientele Group of Epicor Software
Irvine, Calif.
The Clientele Group of Epicor Software Corp. provides CRM, help desk and customer-support applications for small,
mid-market and emerging companies. Clientele Customer Support delivers call management and problem-resolution
solutions for supporting external customers, while Clientele HelpDesk provides call management, knowledge
management and asset management capabilities for IT help desks.The company competes against FrontRange,
Peregrine, Network Associates and Blue Ocean.
Greg Horton, director of marketing at Clientele, says his company is continually evolving its product line to ensure that
customers can leverage the ongoing convergence between the call center and Web-based self-service channels.
"There's a convergence happening that's bringing together call center and self-service functionality, creating contact
centers," says Horton. "Companies can't completely give up their call centers, because people will always want to talk
to someone right now, but it's not cost effective to solely rely on a human to answer every question.They need to
provide customers with multiple avenues of communication. In addition to self-service, the industry is introducing new
potential for collaboration."
To be effective, contact centers need to adopt a layered structure to providing support, he continues.The best
approach is to try to get as many users to help themselves as possible, then fall back on the next less-expensive
channel, from email to chat to phone. Beyond the benefits of increased customer satisfaction, providing these channels
to offload phone support can dramatically improve help desk morale -- no small thing in a time of extremely high
turnover.
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"Highly skilled employees in the call center aren't bored answering the same user questions time and time again,
because the ones that get to them are challenging," says Horton. "Furthermore, call centers are often able to keep
costs down because they're answering simple questions without a human involved, supporting more users without
hiring more employees and improving turnover rates."
"Companies, especially those supporting large and complex products, should recognize the collaborative
element at work within the support organization, and begin tracking, documenting and optimizing the
collaborative processes in place today to streamline resolution for complex problems and to begin
capturing this missing knowledge capital for reuse. While the focus of most e-service and CRM support
products is a linear flow from first to second level, using a searchable knowledge base of solutions, problem
resolution for complex hardware and software products may involve resources from development, quality
assurance, product management, sales engineering and/or professional services."
-John Ragsdale, Giga Information Group
For the past several years, Clientele has been consistently adding features around its strong call management
functionality in both its customer support and help desk products, in an effort to help support organizations become
strategic components of the businesses they serve. In the help desk product, these include change management, asset
management, metrics tracking and satisfaction surveys. Particularly pertinent to those companies that want to rollout
self-service options is Clientele's AnswerBook knowledge base, to which content from a support experience can be
automatically added for consideration. AnswerBook provides natural language search capabilities, as well as the ability to
segment knowledge for certain populations of users.
Knowledge management capabilities such as AnswerBook have become critical to support operations, particularly
when a company runs in-house applications. Help desks "have got to be able to share the knowledge they're
developing. In an IT environment, they might be able to purchase some knowledge, but they have to be able to publish
their own as well, particularly when they're running internally developed applications," says Horton.
Clientele continues to evolve its Customer Self-Service Portal, a companion to Clientele Customer Support, which
gives customers access to their account information via the Web. Customers can get information about logged calls,
service agreements and account balances at any time of day.
The vendor is using its own Clientele products for internal support and in its call center to support customers.The
company is leveraging self-service channels that integrate with its call management capabilities to ensure effective
escalation. If, for example, customers can't answer a problem using the Web knowledge base, they have the option of
entering their phone number into a specified field, and a call will be placed to both the call center and the customer
simultaneously to connect them.
To ensure it continually improves customer satisfaction, the call center is taking full advantage of an internally developed
satisfaction survey that's integrated with its call management system. After a support interaction, an email is
automatically sent to the customer so they can report on the experience. Says Horton, "These surveys have been very
valuable to improving service, and we're getting a 30 to 40 percent response rate."
The help desk for the in-house advertising agency at St. Louis, Mo.-based Nestle Purina Petcare Co. started using
Clientele a few years ago in an attempt to bring some structure and process to its support effort, says Roger Finks,
manger of information systems. "Calls were not funneled through a single number, workers were ordering their own
equipment -- it was a mess," says Finks.
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Using Clientele, the help desk has been able to manage calls in a structured way, as well as deploy asset management
and other capabilities. Finks has been particularly pleased with AnswerBook's functionality and the fact that agents are
so willing to use it to update knowledge. His help desk will soon be upgrading to the latest Web-based version of
clientele.Though he doesn't anticipate rolling out self-service options to the employees he supports, Finks is
considering deploying the email option to provide a phone alternative for support.
Collaborative Support/CRM
ePeople Inc.
Mountain View, Calif.
ePeople Teamwork 4.0 is a Web-based, collaborative CRM solution that improves customer satisfaction and retention
by effectively resolving complex customer issues, tailoring support offerings based on customer value and delivering
customer support across distribution and partner channels.
It enables teams to work together to deliver fast, accurate answers to complex service and support issues. With
ePeople Teamwork 4.0, companies can quickly find and build the best team to resolve each issue and then provide the
team with a highly productive workspace in which to collaborate.These workspaces capture rich sets of knowledge
about problems, resolutions and the skills of effective teams, providing insights that drive improved support and
continuous business optimization. With ePeople Teamwork 4.0, companies can maximize the productivity of support
organizations and deliver high-quality, reliable support that retains and nurtures high-value customer relationships.
"When most people think of Web-based support, they think of self-service, FAQs, searching knowledge bases and
submitting support requests and viewing status," says Chris Derossi, Founder and CTO at ePeople. "We think of Webbased support as bringing people together over the Web to collaborate and solve customer problems."
With ePeople's offering, support and service organizations can construct the team with the right set of skills for any
given problem.Teams can be assembled by any number of criteria, including name, skills, organization or business
relationship, to name a few. Using Team Workspace, team members assigned to handle the request -- as well as the
customer, if desired -- can communicate, share files and access other support tools that facilitate problem resolution.
The workspace enables real-time or asynchronous conversations, as well as maintains a transcript of all communications
and events.The software provides tools for recruiting, management of resources and payment to outside collaborators.
"We believe there are three components to providing support -- assembling the right team, providing a common
environment where they can best work together and leveraging the vast amount of knowledge that results with
analytics that make the process better each time. We're defining a truly effective collaborative workspace as not just a
communication foundation, but as an extension of [the support] environment, that includes all the tools and resources
used in the resolution process," says Derossi.
Though support departments may have been initially reluctant to trust those outside the department, they "now
realize that bringing in other stakeholders, both inside and external to the company, in a structured way outweighs the
risks," he says. "We're breaking past department and company boundaries and people have been wanting to do that
for years," he adds.Though Derossi praises the capabilities of self-service for some issues and customers, he believes
support organizations -- particularly in difficult economic times -- are best served by delivering personalized support to
their high value customers.This is particularly true when organizations are providing B2B support for large enterprise
customers, for whom problems can be complex and solutions mission-critical.
"If this were still 1999, more companies would be willing to shunt customers off to the Web even if they didn't have
the technology in place to handle that.They weren't as worried about losing customers because things were going so
well," says Derossi. "Now the focus has shifted from customer acquisition to retention, and, therefore customer
satisfaction is rising to the top of their list of priorities."
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"ePeople understands the real problems involved with support collaboration," says consultant Bill Cadogan, former
senior VP of Oracle Support Services, EMEA, which uses ePeople's offering to provide support to enterprise
customers. "Companies have got all these bright people to answers questions, but they're not bringing them together
effectively and not capturing the knowledge generated. ePeople has provided a Web-based solution to allow people to
collaborate to fix problems."
Using the product, Oracle is able to bring together specialists -- both internal to the organization as well as skilled
individuals outside the organization -- to address specific support and service problems. Oracle takes advantage of a
deep pool of Oracle-certified professionals when looking for outside help, says Cadogan.
Furthermore, support organizations are able to ensure a high level of expertise when using outside professionals
because ePeople provides a rating system, adds Cadogan. "Each time a customer gets an answer, he provides feedback
on the quality of the response.The support professional gets a rating based on the quality of support provided," he
says.
Because of its size and global reach, Oracle uses ePeople to bring together employee teams as well. "If you have a
major customer running Oracle applications and an Oracle database on IBM mainframes, with numerous other
technologies, you might need to bring together four or five people. In a large company, bringing them together is
difficult. But using ePeople, you set up the collaborative team and they work together with their own expertise," he
says.
In such scenarios, Oracle often brings the customer into the collaborative mix as well, and that's had a very significant
impact. "The customer is seeing all the activity, and that has a very positive effect. It's so much different than taking a call
and saying, 'I'll get back to you.' Customers can add their own input, and it really drives the focus to resolve the
problem," Cadogan says.
In addition, ePeople's collaborative solution has been very effective in helping Oracle capture knowledge gained from
support interactions, and Oracle's commitment to such has helped it dramatically improve its service quality, says
Cadogan.
As they do with any technology they implement, corporate executives will continue to focus on the return-oninvestment picture for deploying Web-based service and support products. While ROI is immediately clear for some eservice and support initiatives, the very nature of support and service as a cost center makes proving hard-dollar
investment returns a difficult proposition.
Indeed, it's difficult to put a dollar value on the increased customer satisfaction that comes with Web-based support,
says ServiceWare's Nitzan. "If you don't have churn and aren't losing customers, then that's customer satisfaction.The
mentality of the quick call being the standard to reach is starting to change.There's still a once-and-done mindset, but
time on the phone is increasing in customer service, and that's showing cross-sell and up-sell." On the technical support side, he says, there's the improved satisfaction and productivity that comes with cross-solving and cross-fixing,
bringing proactive support into view.
"Customers tell us that ROI has to be part of the picture, and we've examined several approaches.The least exciting is
the cost-savings/productivity game, where you can do more with less. Few people buy a product and fire four people,"
says ePeople's Derossi. "Where we're beginning to see people start to pay attention to ROI is when we talk about
retention, growth and acceleration of business with key customers. If a priority customer has support issues, and you
literally can't afford to lose them, you'll make it occur. But if you can do it faster, then maybe you'll get your next order
this quarter instead of later."
© 2002 SupportIndustry.com and CRMIndustry.com.
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According to Expertcity's Massanari, ROI is important when justifying support costs, but companies should consider
essential areas such as competitive advantage, customer and agent satisfaction and personnel management. "We have
discovered that what is important to one organization may be less important to another.The one constant is that
proper implementation and deployment of a Web-based support solution is absolutely critical -- that is the future of
remote support."
Considering Web-Based Service: Steps to Success
With proper execution, Web-based self-service can be a boon to support and service organizations. Done
improperly, it will soon be a bane. According to Gartner, organizations should take the following six steps for
successful implementation.
1. Make sure self-service is needed and wanted. Organizations should survey clients to determine what
they want when looking for support. If Web self-service isn't something they'll use, or if they're not
computer or Web-literate, then other options should be considered.
2. Determine the best method for the organization. When deploying Web self-service, architectural
considerations take center stage. Determine whether a self-service solution can integrate with existing
knowledge bases, and appropriate front and back-end systems. Organizations should develop a vision
that addresses wants and needs, work with system architects to define strategies for the short and longterm and work with vendors to find the best solution for those strategies.
3. Plan for maintenance before deployment. For self-service to work, knowledge systems need to be
continually updated, sometimes in real time. Before moving to implement, the organization should ensure
they have the personnel to maintain content, and strive to be able to do so in real time if necessary.
4. Create escalation processes. In the event that self-service systems can't solve a problem, there must
be backup systems in place -- email, chat and Web call-through technologies -- should the user need to
escalate.The organization must also ensure that processes for escalation are clearly posted for
customers.
5. Integrate with the existing customer service/support strategy.The new model of customer service and
support is built on a centralized architecture that serves numerous channels equally. Managers should
determine how a self-service system will work with existing front-facing systems to avoid a systems
integration nightmare.
6. Create a killer marketing campaign. Building a great self-service system is futile if customers don't use
it. Not only should they be advised on the system's availability, but they should also be aware of the
benefits they'll get by using it.
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