A Modern Approach to Customer Support

The world has changed. Top-down command and control models are obsolete. Today, the road to success means empowering customers with Web 2.0 technology and then enabling users to manage their own experiences while simultaneously contributing back content and knowledge beneficial to all.

What does this mean for the business of service and support?

Scaling Service and Support

Service and support keeps getting harder.

• Products are more complex, from consumer audio devices to network equipment and from enterprise software to variable annuities. Who ever called technical support for a phone or a cassette player? But wireless PDAs and computer-attached MP3 players create millions of support cases annually.
• Customer expectations continue to rise, set not just "fairly" by industry peers but also "unfairly" by every specialized enterprise catering to customers' whims. Enterprises want the same personal and rapid response offered by the corner store. Enterprise buyers meet obvious merchandising attempts during service and support with skepticism, but marketing executives increasingly understand that the brand is built through a long series of post-sales interactions that meet and exceed rising customer expectations.
• Financial pressures are increasing, as buyers apply pressure during the contract renewal process and the installed base continues to grow. SSPA Research reports that support and maintenance revenue is the backbone of profitability for high-tech companies serving enterprises, but "enterprise customers have turned to renegotiating maintenance and support contracts as a primary lever to reduce internal IT (operational expenses)." Service and support organizations simply can't afford to keep hiring staff to meet increasing customer demand.

How can service and support managers transcend these problems and succeed in using each customer interaction to build customer loyalty and drive service-leveraged revenue? The stakes are high—and since problems are complex, customers expect more and money is tight, trying to continually optimize the old approaches is, at best, running in place. There needs to be a new approach to delivering service and support.

The right model is to empower customers to become partners in the customer service process. How can you do this without undue risk? Pioneers such as eBay, Wikipedia, YouTube and others have pioneered a set of principles for empowering and engaging customers. By applying their proven and successful techniques (named "Web 2.0" or the "Live Web" by analysts), enterprises can evolve from the mixed results of Web 1.0 self-service sites to a new model for great e-service delivered economically.

The Principles of Web 2.0

What sets Web 2.0 apart from traditional models?

Tim O'Reilly attempted to codify what was meant by the term Web 2.0 in a September 2005 paper. In it, he outlined the core competencies required to be successful in building Live Web sites, as follows:

• Value: Unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as people use them;
• Collaboration: Trusting users as co-developers and harnessing their collective intelligence;
• Self-service: Leveraging "the long tail" (narrow niches and user-specific needs) through customer self-service; and
• Abstraction: Software "above the level."

Web 2.0 hype has focused on high-visibility Web startups like YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn. But effective service and support organizations already have these competencies:

• Value: A knowledgebase that evolves and improves with use as customers ask questions and open cases is certainly a unique data asset. This kind of continuous improvement is a hallmark of knowledge-centered support and other best practices for knowledge management.
• Collaboration: Support forums and collaboration spaces demonstrate tremendous ROI for support organizations, with passionate users and staff each bringing their own specialized knowledge.
• Self-service: Self-service is a key tool that organizations have been able to scale to their "long tail" of users. Self-service not only deflects cases; it drives loyalty by satisfying the demand for service and support that never would have resulted in a case or call.
• Abstraction: Multi-channel contact and support centers are increasingly the norm, replacing the device-specific call centers that came before them. Service and support are now integrated into devices, documentation and the out-of the-box experience.

Leading service and support organizations are already at the leading edge of the Web 2.0 revolution, which means they're in a great position to benefit from technology that enables and formalizes Web 2.0 practices.

Who Manages The Service Resolution Process?

The Old Model: Enterprise control
Today:  Customer control

The Old Model: Escalation
Today: Collaboration

The Old Model: Rigiad enterprise boundaries
Today: Permeable boundaries

Read the entire Web 2.0 White Paper at www.knova.com/whitepapers

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KNOVA provides "intelligent customer experience" solutions that maximize the value of every interaction throughout the customer lifecycle. Its suite of self-service, contact center and peer support applications automate the most critical part of customer service—actually resolving the case, not just tracking it. KNOVA's Interactive Marketing solutions deliver a trusted, personalized and optimized customer experience. The result: reduced service costs while improving customer satisfaction, and increased revenues from a more loyal customer base. For more information, visit www.knova.com

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