ISOdx Prez

Shattering the Limits of Tiered Support

2013-04-09T05:48:20-07:00

Technology support teams are garnering more and more attention as technology organizations (ISVs, OEMs, MSPs) begin to augment their financial models by offering customers new subscription-based, on-demand products and services in addition to their traditional license-based offerings.These new offerings typically increase the time required for a customer to generate a profit for the company, so measures such as customer satisfaction and customer retention are migrating from interesting tactical measures to key components of an organization’s overall strategy.

According to a study conducted by one B2C company, 55 percent of their customers were willing to spend 10 percent more for better service. The challenge, of course, is defining “better service.” Companies that define rigid tiers of support services such as Silver, Gold, Platinum, may be leaving money on the table by giving their customers a limited number of options (e.g., Customers that want only two of the services in the Gold option may opt for the less expensive Silver option because the price difference doesn’t justify the value of the two options they desire). Technology companies focused on providing their customers with the best experience possible recognize that offering customers an a la carte approach is a win-win. Customers can select (and pay for) only the services they want, and the company improves customer satisfaction and retention rates while maximizing the revenue generated from each customer.

Today’s Advanced Remote Monitoring applications enable technology support organizations to offer these a la carte support approaches and to bundle them seamlessly as part of their existing products. Further, the built-in data gathering engines, configurable analytics and multi-tenant databases provide technology companies with the flexibility, automation and scalability required to create a la carte support offerings right out of the box.

For more information, visit www.isodxsolutions.com

Automating the Mundane

2013-03-12T05:34:29-07:00

One of the most cherished metrics in the world of technology support is the Cost to Resolution. This metric provides insight into both the time required to resolve issues, as well as the expense of the resources required to resolve the issue.

Consider the following two scenarios, (i) a support issue is resolved by a level one representative in 30 minutes, and (ii) a support issue is resolved by a level three representative in 30 minutes. While the two scenarios have identical Time to Resolution, the second scenario would likely have a larger Cost to Resolution. Technology support organizations are continuously in search of striking the correct balance between Time to Resolve and Cost to Resolve, all under the auspices of improving Customer Satisfaction scores.

In my discussions with technology support executives, I’ve found they are very aware of the current challenges being faced by their customers based on the feedback they are receiving from their support team members.

When I ask them to describe the process they follow to diagnose these issues, the most common response I receive is that each customer environment is different, and that different steps must be followed to gather the data required to diagnose the problem. In most cases, the data collection process is not overly complex (one executive described the process as “mundane”) however, the data collection process must be tailored for each customer given a variety of parameters (platform, software version, etc.). At the end of the day, technology support executives are frustrated because there is no standardized way to gather the information they need to diagnose the most common issues as quickly as possible.

The latest advanced remote monitoring technologies were created to address this very issue. These configurable applications periodically collect hundreds of thousands of data points about a customer’s IT ecosystem in an automated fashion, and proactively evaluate the data to identify “known” issues.These dynamic tools standardize the collection process across platforms, software versions, user-defined parameters, etc., so they can be easily deployed across a heterogeneous installed base. This powerful automation is completely transparent to the customer support representative, who can easily access the results from the same ticketing system they’ve always used, as opposed to combing through huge amounts of data in an unfamiliar third-party application.

Because support information has already been collected, advanced remote monitoring tools have dramatically reduced the Cost to Resolve for many technology support teams, as the time spent gathering information from the customer is dramatically reduced, if not eliminated altogether.

For more information on how advanced remote monitoring solutions can help you transform your technology support team, visit www.isodxsolutions.com.

Customer Satisfaction – Tomorrow’s Competitive Advantage?

2013-02-12T12:46:54-08:00

Successful technology companies (hardware, software, managed service providers) continue to grab headlines. From Apple’s latest “i” product to Linked-In’s 200 million-member milestone, much of the innovation that touches our day-to-day lives continues to be driven by technology companies.

Of course, you can’t swing a Lightning recharging cord without hitting a nearby technology company.
So what differentiates the truly successful companies from all the others? Is it the innovative products? The compelling branding thatdrives our purchase decisions? The measurable benefits the technology provides?

Rather than debate the answer, I humbly submit that we should be considering a different question altogether—What will differentiate the successful technology companies of tomorrow?

Like any industry, technology continues to mature. As a result, the products and services themselves become more and more of a commodity.Technology companies that began life driving revenue and profitability from customer acquisition find those margins rapidly decreasing, and successful companies will turn their attention to the financial implications of customer retention. Cloud computing, for example
emphasizes the importance of customer retention in addition to customer acquisition, because they understand the value of the ongoing relationship as well as the initial transaction.

Assuming this shift is indeed occurring, then customer satisfaction (CSAT) will be one of the key measures that separates the successful technology companies of tomorrow from all the others. Organizations that approach their ongoing customer relationships with a laissez-faire mindset do so at their peril.

My cousin recently chose to change cell phone service providers because of a single 90-minute support call that has handled poorly. How do I know about this? Facebook. Like it or not, customers failing to receive the service and support they feel they were promised will not only “vote with their wallet” and choose a different technology provider, they will use every social media outlet available to announce their decision.

Is your technology company feeling the financial implications of commoditization? What initiatives is your organization embarking on this year to tap into the value of ongoing customer relationships?

www.isodxsolutions.com

Personalizing Tech Support Through….Automation?

2013-01-15T05:59:44-08:00

When you hear the word “automation,” what image springs to mind? I don’t know about you, but when a company tells me it has recently “automated its technical support processes,” I envision an endless litany of automated voice prompts when I contact the organization by phone, and an avalanche of useless web pages in an online FAQ / Knowledge Base that make it impossible for me to find what I’m looking for. In short, impersonal, one-size-fits all technical support that negatively affects my perception of the product, service and brand.

However, when a company announces it has made an investment in “improving the customer experience,” my expectations change dramatically. I envision a person with some knowledge of my relationship with their company answering my phone call, and an informative online Customer Portal that visually displays useful information tailored to my specific needs. In short, I’m able to get what I need, when I need it, and leave the experience with a more positive perception of the product, service and brand than I had before my need for support occurred.

Ironically, automation is a key driver in both of these experiences.The difference lies in how each
company chooses to bring automation to bear, and more importantly, how the customer is positioned to interact with said automation.

Take the first example – when customers contact the company for support using the telephone, they are put into a standardized voice response unit to help triage the nature of their call, so that their issue can be directed to the appropriately-skilled individual to assist them in resolving their issue. Unfortunately, this use of automation assumes that the customer making the call is skilled enough to
self-diagnose their issue, or has the systems access necessary to answer a litany of computer-generated questions.

In the second example, automation is used to collect standardized data elements from every customer, and proactive analytics are put into place to identify known and potential issues. When the customer contacts the company for support, an overview of that customer’s unique situation is displayed, so
tailored information germane to the customer is available immediately.

For more examples of how the automation provided by today’s most popular advanced remote monitoring solution can help your organization improve the customer experience, visit us at http://www.isodxsolutions.com/the-isodx-solutions/isodx-remote-monitoring-in-action

Why Customer Self-Service Initiatives Fail

2013-01-04T05:40:46-08:00

Technology support organizations of every stripe are exploring customer self-service options as a way to reduce their technology support costs. With the average technology support phone call topping $200¹, it is easy to understand the financial driver behind this imperative!

Unfortunately, with customer self-service success rates continuing to fall year after year, few technology support organizations are able to reap the financial benefits of these initiatives. In addition, failed self-service success rates can negatively impact customer satisfaction rankings.

One of the main reasons customer self-service initiatives fail is that they require too much effort on the part of the customer. How many of us have frustratingly scanned page after page of FAQs looking for a topic that vaguely resembles our particular issue, or have searched countless knowledge base articles in the hopes of resolving what we believe to be a common, straight-forward support issue?

Providing customers with an easy to understand dashboard with visual cues about the state of their technology environment is the latest best practice for delivering self-service capabilities to your customer base. Information about the customer’s entire IT ecosystem is collected and analyzed, from the hardware layer to third-party applications and databases. Complex analytics are automatically evaluating the collected information, and customers can be proactively notified when a “suspect” or “known error” condition is found to exist.

Further, the customer does not have to embark on an information expedition to find the root cause of the issue. By providing the customer with access to comprehensive snapshots of their entire IT ecosystem, collected at different points in time, a simple comparison can be run to quickly identify, down to the character, exactly what changed in the customer’s environment that resulted in the support issue.

For detailed information check out this video.

¹TSIA 2013 Service Capability Heat Map

Advanced Remote Monitoring--Buy vs. Build

2012-12-04T12:46:40-08:00

Advanced Remote Monitoring & Management (RMM) tools can dramatically improve mean time to resolution (MTTR) and customer satisfaction for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).

I have had a number of conversations recently with prospects who are considering the trade-offs between purchasing an advanced RMM tool or building their own proprietary tool. Given my role at ISOdx Solutions, I, of course, have a biased opinion on this topic! However, the number of these conversations I have had recently led me to seek out an unbiased opinion on the topic.

I contacted John Ragsdale of the Technology Services Industry Association (www.tsia.com), and asked for his take on the buy vs. build topic. “In my experience, companies that build remote monitoring/proactive support tools on their own regret it,” John told me. When I asked John to explain his thoughts on why these internal initiatives fail to live up to expectations, he cited two specific limitations. “Often, internally developed tools for remote monitoring have to be updated after each product release, slowing rollout times or delaying the availability of the tools to be used by support. In addition, internally developed tools will not be able to read information from the various systems and platforms that may be in the customers’ environments, and keeping up with every OS and platform version is a full time job.”

I encourage anyone interested in learning more about the invaluable, world-class benchmarking and research capabilities of the TSIA to contact them directly to receive more information at http://www.tsia.com/become_a_member/corporate_member_interest_form.html.

If you would like a copy of our new white paper, Advanced Remote Monitoring: Managing Today's Pace of Change, please go HERE.

The Cost of Customer Defection

2012-10-23T05:56:20-07:00

In the most recent edition of Loyalty Magazine (Q3 2012), an article by Kana Software provided compelling information about an axiom many of us believe, but find hard to quantify—it is far more economical to retain customers than to attract them.

The article states that the average cost of finding a new customer is roughly six times that of retaining a current customer ($118.16 vs. $19.76).

The same article reports that a large insurance company with an 11 percent dissatisfaction rate reported a loss of $476 million per year due to customer defections. Not surprisingly, a report from Gartner on customer experience management found that poor customer service was the number one reason for customer defection.

Unfortunately, there is little evidence to suggest that customer service capabilities are improving in any material fashion. Historical scores from The American Customer Satisfaction Index confirm that very little improvement in customer satisfaction has occurred (http://www.theacsi.org/acsi-results/national-quarterly-scores).

What’s behind this perpetuated behavior? Based on my experience, one or more of the following can be easily identified as a root cause:

Organizations place far more value on new customer acquisition than on customer retention. This skewed priority affects everything from the amount of investment capital to the skill and experience of personnel to the technical assets allocated to new customer acquisition.
Management does not believe they have a customer retention problem. What is your organization’s customer defection rate? Is it even being tracked? In my experience, 9 out of 10 organizations do not track this metric, and therefore have no idea if a customer defection issue exists (and if so, how big it is!).
Customers are wary of change. In many cases, they acknowledge the support they are receiving is substandard, but they are willing to continue with the “devil they know.” Few firms are willing to differentiate on customer service, despite the fact that organizations with higher customer satisfaction ratings also have a much higher customer retention rate than their competitors.

I believe there are tremendous opportunities for companies to compete on improved customer service as opposed to product or service feature/functionality. What do you think?

Tech Support: Knowledge Management

2012-08-22T08:10:56-07:00

View Video!

Is Your Organization Shackling Innovation?

2012-06-21T08:51:31-07:00

I was recently doing some work in my yard and had to relocate a portion of the Invisible Fence cable we use to ensure that our extroverted, I-don’t-know-you-but-I-love-you golden doodle stays on our property. After spending over an hour tussling with a spade that was in desperate need of sharpening, the job was complete.

While I was proudly admiring my work, it hit me. I could have gotten the job done in about five minutes if I had used the gas powered trench-digger-cable-laying contraption that the Invisible Fence team used when they originally installed the cable. So much for my feeling of a job well done!

In my experience, successful organizations view information technology (IT) as a tool to enable their business. The better the tool is aligned to the job at hand (gas-powered contraption vs. dull-edged spade), the bigger the advantage an organization has over the competition.

Unfortunately, too many organizations don’t consider IT as a tool to enable the business – they view IT as a construct within which the business must operate. These organizations have layers of subject-matter experts that will wax on poetically (or the technical equivalent thereof) about why a new business concept can’t be accomplished. This risk aversion is certainly more common in large organizations, where, granted, more control is required to comply with a variety of regulations, audit requirements, etc. I will submit, however, that this is a contributing factor as to why innovation occurs more often in smaller organizations that view IT as an enabler to realize their business objectives; not a construct within which the business must operate.

To avoid this construct mentality, IT leaders need to work closely with business leaders to understand the business objective being pursued. Once the concept is clearly understood, it is the IT leader’s job to determine how that objective can be accomplished. Can it be done with minimal risk, or does it require introducing new and/or significant risks to the organization? What resources will be required to support the business objective, and how much time will be required until the new venture can be launched?

Having answered these kinds of question, a constructive dialogue can occur between the IT and business leaders regarding the validity of the new business objective.

This is not to say that IT leaders are not capable of developing innovative ideas on their own; obviously they are, and they do. The point, however, is that so many IT leaders are too quick to explain why innovative ideas developed by business leaders cannot be accomplished instead of working together to make the vision happen. As a seasoned entrepreneur, I can confidently state that with enough time, talent and resources, any business objective can be accomplished. The competitive advantage falls to those that most effectively use the tools available to them.

And with that, I think it’s time to go sharpen that spade!

NextGen KM: Automated Knowledge Management

2012-06-07T11:00:08-07:00

If you’ve ever met John Ragsdale, you’d remember him. John is an insightful, energetic analyst for the Technology Services IndustryAssociation (TSIA) and a tireless customer advocate. He is one of the most credible analysts I know. At the recent “Best Practices” TSW show, I had the opportunity to speak with John about his latest book, Lessons Unlearned: 25 Years in Customer Service. The book is a collection of observations and humorous yet insightful anecdotes from John's experiences in the industry, and simply put, is a must-read for anyone interested in learning more about customer service.

One of the most debated software categories in the customer service function, Knowledge Management (KM), is tackled in the fourth chapter of his book. According to John, “The impact of a knowledge management implementation on support technician or contact center agent productivity is wide-reaching, as many productivity metrics are linked. When evaluating the return on investment of knowledge management in terms of agent productivity, here are the key metrics to monitor: Average talk /handling time, First-contact resolution (FCR) rate, Incidents handled per shift, and Training days per year.”

Today, KM systems are used by agents as part of a standard issue resolution process.This process is typically comprised of the following steps: Entitlement, Issue Description / Validation, Information Gathering, Developing a Problem Theory,Testing the Problem Theory, Root Cause Identification, and Issue Resolution. According to Gartner, over 80 percent of the time spent on the issue resolution process is spent on problem identification. Much of this time is spent with direct customer communication, asking questions and obtaining information. Unfortunately, the manner in which KM systems are used today does not have a significant impact on this process, and therein lies the challenge.

Fortunately, the next generation of knowledge management software (NextGen KM) will dramatically reduce this “back and forth” by automatically gathering hundreds of thousands of data points about the customer’s entire IT ecosystem. In addition, these data points will be gathered over a period of time, which means that the Customer Service team will have all of this forensic information on hand before the customer ever calls with an issue. Imagine calling your ERP vendor to report an issue and after describing the problem the representative says, "I understand the issue and have all the information I need to begin my analysis. Can I call you back in twenty minutes to provide you with an update on my progress?." Now that's what I call service!

NextGen KM will include powerful analytic engines that can identify known issues and proactively take action without human intervention. Say that you've recently upgraded your ERP system to the latest release, but unbeknownst to you, the software upgrade process fails in midstream. NextGen KM proactively identifies this issue and sends you an email notification about the failed software upgrade – before you even encountered an error. Incredible.

As you can tell the topic of NextGen KM is a passion of mine. John covers it well in his book. And speaking of his book, if you ever want to know what an industry analyst actually does for a living, the answer is finally revealed in the first paragraph of Chapter 7.

If you’re interested in learning more about the NextGen KM tools that exist today, leave a comment below and I’ll be glad to point you in the right direction.