Support Interaction Optimization
Tackling Tech Complexity with Advanced Support Tools
A Frost & Sullivan White Paper
Authors: Nancy Jamison, Brendan Read
Sponsored By: Support.com
frost.com
Introduction....................................................................................................................................3
The Changing Landscape for Tech Support.................................................................................4
The Customer as Driver............................................................................................................... 4
Mobility, Image-Taking, and Cloud Expansion........................................................................... 4
The Rise of Connected “Internet of Things”............................................................................... 4
Challenges for Customer and Technical Support Organizations..............................................5
Challenging Customer Demands................................................................................................. 5
Technology Complexity............................................................................................................... 5
Cost Containment........................................................................................................................ 6
Support Interaction Optimization (SIO) - A Strategic Imperative..........................................6
Support Interaction Optimization - Critical Success Factors...................................................7
Customer Web Self-Service.......................................................................................................... 7
Remote Support........................................................................................................................... 8
Guided Resolution........................................................................................................................ 9
Analytics........................................................................................................................................ 10
Performance Management.......................................................................................................... 10
Use Cases...................................................................................................................................... 10
Conclusions and Recommendations............................................................................................10
Vendor Profile - Support.com.......................................................................................................11
contents
Support Interaction Optimization: Tackling Tech Complexity with Advanced Support Tools
Introduction: The Emerging World of Support Interaction
Optimization
Customer service involves all aspects of services provided to customers to enhance customer satisfaction
levels and cement long-term relationships. Within the realm of customer service, it is customer support—and
particularly technical support experiences —that has the largest impact on the lifetime and profitability of the
customer relationship.
Customer support starts at the sale of the product or service and includes everything from assistance in
planning, installation, and training to maintenance and upgrades. And for Frost & Sullivan, today’s rapidly
changing technology landscape means that troubleshooting is now at the heart of customer support. Effective
troubleshooting results in higher customer satisfaction scores. Companies can also learn from customer
experiences with their products to improve them, which reduces support costs. And companies can leverage
troubleshooting to discover ideas for new products. On the other hand, if failing products or services aren’t
repaired or replaced promptly, customer satisfaction decreases, putting the business in danger of losing
customers to competitors.Furthermore, unhappy customers are also very likely to express their dissatisfaction
through social media channels.
In a world of rapidly changing technologies, providing excellent customer support can be challenging. Consider
that companies today are developing a widening assortment of popular technology-driven products and services,
as well as adding complexity to existing ones. Technology-enabled goods — such as appliances, entertainment
products, and home security systems —are growing in functionality and complexity. Many items have the ability
to be connected to and managed through the Internet. In essence, a dizzying array of computers, mobile devices
and communication devices require high levels of technical support.
At the same time, younger customers in particular have become more impatient, demanding, and knowledgeable.
More and more, Generation Y consumers insist on “omni-channel support”— a coherent, seamless Customer
Experience, regardless of the channel through which they engage a business, from face-to-face service to selfservice or support agents.
Companies today, therefore, realize that effective, intuitive, and flexible support solutions are essential. And
given the complexity of technical support, such solutions must integrate with a growing number of customer
service-related applications and data repositories. The right applications can help resolve customers’ questions
and issues promptly and help retain those customers, many of whom may become enthusiastic brand advocates.
What Frost & Sullivan terms the Support Interaction Optimization (SIO) market is an emerging space
encompassing advanced tools to support agents dealing with complex technical and remote support issues.
Success in SIO hinges on providing the right balance of live and self-service assistance, while leveraging the
proper tools to effectively guide agents through complex interactions. The SIO market is inclusive of a number
of key categories of tools that can be used to optimize customer support, from customer Web self-service, to
remote support, to guided resolution, to analytics and performance management.
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The Changing Tech Support Landscape
Shifting customer and technology climates are affecting the tech support landscape. Companies’ success will
depend on how well they anticipate and respond to often-dramatic changes.
The Customer as Driver
Customers, rather than companies, are now defining support. Customers expect mobile-friendly and intuitive
self-service solutions, and seamless escalations between channels and support levels, without being forced to
repeat themselves at each step, and with minimal wait times. When customers “voice” product or service
concerns or support requests, they also expect prompt replies.
Customers want more personalized interaction than in the past. They expect companies to know who they are
when they contact them, and be knowledgeable about their history and value as customers. Customers also
do not always want the “next available agent,” but instead insist on having one who is an expert at solving their
specific problem or perhaps even with whom they have previously interacted.
Mobility, Image-Taking, and Cloud Expansion
The technical support landscape is changing, too, because of a general consumer and business employee
preference for mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. More customers are using such devices,
the use of which includes contacting organizations for information, purchases, and customer support.
Frost & Sullivan forecasts that the number of smartphones shipped in North America will nearly double
over the next few years, from 213 million in 2013 to 410 million in 2018.
Moreover, both smartphones and tablets provide a powerful tool for support in their ability to transmit and
receive detailed still images and video through onboard cameras. Examples include customers showing support
agents the connections behind their flat-screen TV so as to receive help with configuration and connection
issues, and agents sending instructional clips to customers’ phones. In the retail sector, staff can take a picture
of a customer’s broken device, transmit it to the support agent, and receive a video response in real time
that helps the customer. Consider, too, that smartphones may become “unified interaction devices,” combining
communications and computing, and replacing PCs, laptops, and tablets. Doing so avoids the cost and hassle of
owning and using multiple devices. This trend is being illustrated by the larger screens and virtualized keyboards
and common applications on smartphones. The salience of this trend is seen with the “Gen Zers” who tend to
perform all of their computing and interactions on their smartphones.
At the same time, the software applications these devices use are increasingly delivered as cloud-based
services. There are strong synergies between cloud and mobility. A Frost & Sullivan survey reports that 77% of
respondents agree that hosted unified communications allows them to support mobile workforces.
The Rise of Connected Devices and the “Internet of Things”
For some time, support agents and teams have been remotely accessing computing devices and phones to
monitor usage, troubleshoot problems, configure applications, and transmit and install new and updated software.
Now support staff is being asked to perform the same tasks on a rapidly widening range of non-IT products and
services, known as connected devices or the Internet of Things (IoT). Frost & Sullivan forecasts that globally
there will be 50 billion connected devices by 2020 and 177 million wearable devices by 2018.
With IoT, tiny sensors are embedded into items like appliances, furnaces, HVAC systems, and thermostats in
homes (connected home), on machinery and medical equipment, in vehicles, and on accessories, apparel, and
jewelry (wearables). Wireless, typically Wi-Fi but also cellular networks, connect to in-range, IoT-fitted devices
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Support Interaction Optimization: Tackling Tech Complexity with Advanced Support Tools
and transmit data over secure Internet networks to companies’ operations and support desks. While there have
been connected devices for many years, such as alarm systems, they have typically been single purpose, have
used proprietary technology, and been wired.
Challenges for Customer and Technical Support Organizations
Companies are responding to customer and technical support demands with powerful and versatile
applications. Support organizations are deploying multi-channel support through the Web, including mobile
applications, virtual agent, and SMS/text self-service solutions that capture, flag, and relay cases and tickets
to support agents. Organizations generate tickets from CRM systems, self-service applications, and even
social media comments. The social tools listen for and alert staff to “early warnings” of support problems
when they are integrated with other text and speech analytics solutions. Companies are also using proactive
support to inform customers of problems or potential problems, and supply them with instructions and fixes.
And companies are establishing and supporting social collaboration communities to facilitate customers
collectively solving problems, rather than asking support agents for assistance. Finally, companies are tapping a
wide range of data sources to learn more about their customers and business users in order to better serve
both constituencies.
However, there are several challenges facing customer and technical support organizations that the current
array of solutions cannot wholly meet:
Challenging Customer Demands
Support organizations may be hard pressed to meet customers’ support expectations. Hiring additional higherskilled and educated agents, and escalating contacts to or involving subject experts like engineers, increases
costs. Those added expenses must be tacked onto the products, which forces companies to choose between
decreasing profits per sale or raising prices. Alternatively, companies may have to hike paid support fees, risking
reduced sales and defecting customers.
Complex Technology
The increasing sophistication of products and services presents an additional challenge. Reasons include multiple
supplier partners involved in the products (e.g., in a software suite), when there are hardware peripherals
involved, or when the products rely on internal and external networks.
The rise of the cloud has exacerbated this last issue as the solutions and the networks must be tightly integrated
in order to perform flawlessly. Cloud solutions also must integrate with each other and often with on-premise
solutions, thus creating a hybrid environment, which is becoming prevalent in business applications. Shadow IT,
where employees “go off the grid” to source and use typically cloud solutions, also creates support issues as
users’ problems may relate to how the unauthorized applications connect and interact with the faulty hardware
or software. By the same token, the support agents for those shadow IT products will not have visibility into
the users’ environment.
Meanwhile, many new products and services face interoperability issues. This issue is common with the IoT.
There is a proliferation of vendor standards with each supplier taking its own approach to IoT, irrespective of
others. As a result, IoT product resellers are managing many different applications for “smart” products, such as
connected thermostats.
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As such, support agents are faced with investigating and solving problems involving root causes that may lie with
other companies’ products. A case in point is the connected home. Support agents must determine whether the
problem lies in the furnace, wiring, sensors, the Wi-Fi network and connections, or with customers themselves—
either in what a customer did or did not do, or whether he or she didn’t know how to use a system.
Cost Containment
Complex customer support interactions can be costly due to interaction length and potential escalation to
higher-level support staff or subject-matter experts (SMEs). The contact center industry also suffers from high
staff turnover. Estimates of agent churn are nearly 40% per year, with agents typically leaving after two-and-a-half
years, at a replacement cost of about $10,000 each. Additionally, companies face the cost of lost business from
unhappy customers. Customer satisfaction scores and first-contact resolution rates are shown to have steep
declines with increasing agent turnover.
Yet companies have little room to maneuver on support costs. Consumers expect support to be included in
the price they pay largely due to the shift of applications to the cloud, where support costs have always been
included in subscriptions. The cloud also has reduced software and support costs. Meanwhile, businesses seek
free or simplified support plans, as opposed to the traditional three-tiered support plans. In a highly competitive
marketplace there are ceilings on how much businesses and consumers are willing to pay for technologies
and support before switching to alternatives, delaying or not buying, which also limits how much suppliers are
able to charge.
Support Interaction Optimization (SIO) - A Strategic Imperative
Today’s consumers are increasingly techno-savvy, almost obsessed with the compelling plethora of hightech goods and services available to them. Frost & Sullivan research has shown that these mobile, engaged,
and “always on” consumers increasingly prefer to self-serve first and research online before they engage or
re-engage with a business over the phone. They also attempt to troubleshoot their own product problems.
Only when they can’t self-help do they pick up the phone.
Having gone through the process of exhausting other resources, when they do get to that support line, their
questions are usually of a more complex nature, requiring a higher level of support. At this point customers
often are anxious and stressed, having spent considerable time attempting to fix their problems without
achieving results. Understandably, they will want swift and straightforward answers and issue resolution from
the agents.
Ironically, the vast array of phones and devices that these consumers use to engage with businesses make up
a good portion of the products they need support for. As these devices continue to expand in capabilities
and reliability, the mobility of both workers and consumers will only increase. However, wireless devices
represent just one category of products requiring high-tech assistance. Consider, too, that the Internet of
Things represents another critical category of products. Technical support has become customer support for
items that are not thought of as purely “technical” in the modern use of the term, such as air conditioning
and faucets. These and other consumables represent a growing challenge, but also an opportunity for devicespecific technical support. Populating knowledge databases with solutions will provide agents, or self-service
applications, with real-time resolution paths. These will help companies dramatically cut support costs and
increase customer satisfaction.
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Support Interaction Optimization: Tackling Tech Complexity with Advanced Support Tools
However, the existing array of support applications —such as case and ticket management, customer
interaction management, customer relationship management, and remote access—by themselves are not
meeting companies’ customer support needs. Suppliers and their clientele must devise, implement, and
achieve success with solutions that can improve the Customer Experience, manage complex issues, integrate
with other applications, improve performance, and reduce costs. This reality calls for a new breed of support
solutions that complement the software that companies had already invested in, thus filling in a critical gap in
the technology and support landscape.
Support Interaction Optimization (SIO) offers a way forward for support organizations that are struggling to
balance customer demands and needs, technology developments, cost containment, and market limits. SIO is a
set of solutions that incorporate guided resolution integrated with knowledge bases and interactive analytics
that suggest the right answers and solutions to support agents, who relay them to customers. SIO assists in
customer support environments, but also includes tools geared specifically for technical support as well. The
breadth of SIO applications encompasses remote access, diagnostics and resolution, including the transmission
and installation of bug fixes and new software.
SIO allows companies to manage and solve complex issues in less time and expense with Level One agents by
providing them with step-by-step answers and questions. Analytics tools built into SIO applications provide
real-time insights into agent behavior, support processes, and product data. These tools uncover which
routes — guided, custom, or support agents’ free-form replies — solve problems faster and more effectively.
These tools also check on agent adherence compliance with guided resolution procedures, uncover process
bottlenecks, product causes of average handle time (AHT) spikes, and detect product errors and malfunctions.
As a result, SIO can reduce AHT by as much as 50%. SIO, therefore, results in minimal escalations, and future
or repeat calls. SIO also reduces agent onboarding and training costs.
At the same time, the increasingly complex business IT environment with cloud, hybrid, and shadow IT demands
a methodology and a process to help users resolve problems. SIO fits such a requirement and there will be
demand from business hardware, technology, and services vendors for SIO tools.
Companies that don’t arm technical support agents with tools that can quickly resolve complex support issues
risk being outclassed in customer support by the competition. Those companies that don’t take advantage of
such tools will continue to be faced with more challenges related to hiring, training, retaining, and keeping agents
up to date on increasingly more complex product details and support issues.
Support Interaction Optimization - Critical Success Factors
Support Interaction Optimization success hinges on providing advanced tools to support agents dealing with
complex technical and remote support issues. Success hinges on providing the right balance of live and selfservice assistance, and the proper tools to effectively guide agents through potentially complex interactions.
Frost & Sullivan considers the set of applications shown below the key enabling capabilities to help support
organizations implement a successful SIO strategy.
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Figure 1: Support Interaction Optimization (SIO) Key Capabilities
Support Interaction
Optimization
Customer
Web SelfService
Remote
Support
Guided
Resolution
Analytics
Performance
Management
Customer Web Self-Service
Building on the consumer preference for self-service is critical for SIO. Providers are answering this by offering
Web self-service portals for customers that enable them to get answers to questions, fix issues, and then reach
live assistance if required. Key features of these portals include:
• Search. The capability for customers to search for information and answers by browsing, through
decision trees or through automated guided search.
• Knowledge databases. A diverse set of data repositories populated with information and resources,
including customer and product information, FAQs, troubleshooting information, documents, and links
to information.
• Virtual Assistants. Self-service through an automated agent as a back up to live assistance. These agents
use natural language, chat, and guidance to assist customers with their support queries.
• Mobile Apps. The provision allowing access to customer portals through mobile devices.
• Social Support. Customer portals allow for social support communities so users can ask their peers
for answers as well as contribute support in return.
• Offer Management. Portals can provide specialized offers depending upon what is happening during
the interaction.
• Customer Feedback. Survey capability to get customer feedback to continuously improve the
application.
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Support Interaction Optimization: Tackling Tech Complexity with Advanced Support Tools
Remote Support
The ability for a customer support technician to remotely access and control a customer’s product is critically
important for SIO, and can include the following features:
• Multi-platform (PC, phone, etc.) remote access and control
• Mobile device support
• Unattended access
• Remote diagnostics
• Mobile chat
• Video chat
• Web collaboration (push files, screen sharing, and annotation)
• Team collaboration
• IoT support
• Session recording
• Management tools
• Customer survey
Guided Resolution
An essential aspect for increasing the speed of issue resolution, as well as empowering customers to self-serve
and agents to better serve customers, guided resolution can contain the following features:
• Knowledgebase (integrated across contact center channels and continuously improving)
• Workflow management
• Real-time decision-making
• Agent collaboration, allowing agents to share information about customers as well as documents and
other resources
• Management Tools
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Analytics
Critical components of SIO include powerful analytics capabilities that glean business intelligence to help resolve
customer support issues and give the business greater visibility into how to improve the business. This includes:
• Interaction analytics (speech analytics, multi-channel customer interaction analytics, agent interaction
analytics, customer journey analytics)
• Big Data analytics (product data, usage, benchmarks)
Performance Management
Performance management is required to measure and continuously improve agent and contact center
performance. It includes:
• Performance analytics (agent performance, contact center performance, compliance monitoring)
• Agent training and coaching (agent onboarding, ongoing training, personalized coaching)
• Gamification
SIO Use Cases
SIO has compelling application for repeatable and trackable support processes, such as:
• Hardware, software, and network installation, configuration, and upgrades
• Level One support by support agents, in-store technicians, and field support
• Authentication and security
• IT department troubleshooting, including shadow IT
• Home/remote employee setup and assistance
• End-to-end connected device/IoT setup and support
• Customer self-service
• Returns management
Conclusions and Recommendations
It used to be that innovation, the introduction of powerful new products, and maintaining a competitive advantage
through marketing and sales channels is what allowed companies to thrive. However, with the speed of change
and customers’ ability to rapidly find competitive products and compare features and pricing, these advantages
are not enough to fuel growth. The result is that customer service is now a critical differentiator that enables
companies to survive and thrive in a consumer economy.
However, customer service can be one of the costliest components of business, and when it comes to customer
support, particularly technical support, costs rise with the complexities of products and services sold, as well as
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Support Interaction Optimization: Tackling Tech Complexity with Advanced Support Tools
the amount of time it takes to handle support issues, and the requirement to staff support agents that have the
skill sets to match that complexity.
Matching SIO tools to the specific needs of a business is one way of reducing the complexity and costs of
providing the superior customer support that will ensure a company’s competitive advantage. SIO reduces
support costs by shortening handle times and reducing escalations and follow-up calls. It further limits the
need for agent training, which shrinks onboarding and ongoing HR costs. Lastly, its use will bring further
advantage by matching support to the growing customer preference for self-service as a first line of support.
As such, Frost & Sullivan believes that SIO tools and partnerships that enable SIO solutions will thrive in the
coming decade.
Vendor Profile - Support.com
Headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., Support.com (NASDAQ: SPRT) is a leading provider of cloud-based
software and services for technology support.
Support.com offers Nexus, which is a hosted support interaction optimization (SIO) solution. The Nexus SIO
guides support agents through customer interactions with workflows, or “Guided Paths,” that provide stepby-step answers and questions. Nexus provides in-depth analytics with built-in dashboards. There also is a
drag-and-drop visual designer for custom path creation and updates, eliminating the need for IT assistance to
update and publish best practices. Another Nexus SIO feature, Nexus Guided Path™ Libraries, allows support
organizations to maintain repositories of those paths that reflect their best practices. Nexus was created based
on insights from over 20 million support interactions and is fully browser-based, with no client software on the
desktop, and is wireless-device-enabled.
Using Nexus, contact centers can continuously optimize live support interactions. Nexus analytics provide
real-time insights into agent behavior, support processes, and product data. These tools uncover which paths—
guided, custom, or support agents’ free-form replies —solve problems faster and more effectively. They also
check on agent compliance with Guided Paths, uncover process bottlenecks, product causes of average handle
time spikes, and detect product errors and malfunctions. Nexus remote tools provide access to PCs, Mac,
Android, iOS, and other devices in the world of Internet of Things. Nexus also can navigate complex corporate
IT environments, including cloud, hybrid cloud, and shadow IT to solve users’ problems with its guided path
methodology and remote access tools. Any support process that is repeatable and trackable is a candidate for
Nexus SIO.
Nexus is CIM- and CRM-solution agnostic, which allows it to take cases and tickets that have been initiated
in third-party platforms and flow them into the SIO applications, and integrate resulting data into knowledge
bases. Support.com already has pre-built integrations with Salesforce and SugarCRM, with more being added.
In addition, Nexus was built to withstand security threats, and does not allow support agents to interact with
equipment or data without customer approval. In addition, Nexus also provides omni-channel engagement and is
being used with retail staff to solve customers’ problems in-store or integrated with phone and online channels.
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