What I Heard: Service Technology Trends
Conversations from the 2008 AFSMI, SSPA, and TPSA Fall Conference
Author: John Ragsdale, Vice President of Research, SSPA

Download as a PDF

B2B Functional Gaps Dominate Technology Discussions
The single best way to identify industry trends is to spend time talking to those in the trenches. At the recent co-located 2008 Fall Conference for AFSMI, SSPA, and TPSA, research executives for all three Associations held pre-scheduled one-on-one meetings with service and support executives, as well as engaged in countless conversations in hallways, the partner Expo, and during networking events. What emerged were three general topics representing technology trends that will be front and center in 2009 and beyond. The three trends are:

• B2B functional gaps. There have been many innovations within the customer service technology world in the last decade, with numerous platforms now available for multi-channel incident tracking and community-created content.  Unfortunately, most were conceived for a consumer support audience, leaving enterprise (B2B) support organizations struggling to piece together a best-of-breed, end-to-end solution.
• Lack of tools for converged services. Several keynote presentations at the event focused on service convergence, i.e., bringing professional services (PS), technical support, call centers, and field service operations together organizationally, aligned around the customer. But early convergers are finding that no tools exist to meet their needs, and technology vendors seem a long way from viewing this as a problem they need to solve.
• The Greening of support. With a keynote speech, the Recognized Innovator Awards, and a breakout session all focused on Green Support, the Fall 2008 event emphasized the environmental impacts of customer service and support. Large member organizations have already embraced the concept, and SMBs are beginning to, partially due to media attention, but often for the immense cost savings most Green initiatives provide.

Support Tool Innovations Largely Ignore Enterprise Support
It should be no surprise that the majority of vendors who develop technology to automate and streamline various aspects of customer service and technical support target consumer-facing companies (B2C) more than enterprise-facing companies (B2B).  With software deal sizes determined by the number of concurrent agents and page views by customers, there is more money to be made in consumer contact centers with thousands of agents and millions of customers.

For B2B support organizations looking for a best-of-breed, end-to-end solution to guarantee a competitively differentiating customer experience, most off-the-shelf software will require retrofitting, custom extensions, and cross-enterprise integration to meet the needs of enterprise support. According to members, missing capabilities are centered on:

• Service Level Agreements (SLAs). For B2B hardware and software companies, service levels and maintenance agreements are not a “yes/no” proposition. Large corporate customers have complex service level guarantees, with different agreements for different equipment or locations. Unique maintenance options are created for many customers, so there is no longer a single standard by which to measure response and resolution times. In this environment, tracking performance against guarantees requires complex rule systems with custom entries for large contracts—not something supported by customer service suites or even many CRM suites.
• Detailed entitlement. Once this complex web of SLAs is defined, how do you entitle each inbound interaction to be certain the incident is routed, handled, and tracked correctly? The majority of customer support suites handle entitlement at the account level, with no support for entitlement by product ID or serial number.  Multiple members have found that even after purchasing a best-of-breed CRM or eService platform, they still needed a specialist system (such as Encover) to track and automate entitlement.
• Internal collaboration/communities. Discussion forums and other online community functions help companies collaborate with customers, but what about internal company collaboration? The page view sales model makes discussion forum specialists shy away from internal community deals, but even when adopted by internal service communities, such as global tech support or PS groups, the consumer-centric product designs get in the way. A key area of dissonance: hard-coded reputation models that don’t factor project assignments and skills into reputation scores, making the identification of internal experts difficult, if not impossible.

Organizational Convergence Occurs Prior to Tool Convergence
A long anticipated trend finally coming to fruition is service convergence—bridging the strategy, knowledge, people, technology infrastructure, and processes across PS, contact centers, technical support, and field service. The advantages of such a convergence are clear: more tailored service options, greater customer intimacy, lower operating costs, and ultimately, faster and more efficient consumption of products and services by customers.

But companies already embracing service convergence are finding that tools to support the requirements for a converged service organization do not yet exist, with early adopters finding disconnects in the following two areas:

• Workforce management. One member has a combined technical support and professional services workforce, with 800 highly trained specialists who respond to customer issues when in the office, but are frequently scheduled for onsite PS engagements. The challenge is that there is no single workforce management (WFM) solution to accomplish scheduling of employees across both job profiles.

Not only do schedules for tech support engineers need to address historical volume peaks by product, but the same workforce also must be allocated to PS projects of varying length. Traditional WFM tools can schedule support techs by interaction volume history and skill set; traditional professional services automation (PSA) tools can identify project consultants by skill set and availability.  But currently no technology exists to do both, and the member is faced with a large internal development project to create a custom system or a complex integration project to bridge off-the-shelf WFM and PSA tools.

• Knowledge management and search. One of the most siloed areas of technology across service organizations is knowledge management (KM). Tech support creates indexed libraries of problem/resolution scenarios, often with a proprietary search tool optimized for those KM libraries. PS leverages completely different stores of content concerning project details, customization libraries, and details of consultant skills. Field service organizations have their own content network of tips and tricks and repair procedures accessible via mobile devices while onsite.
  

Support Goes Green
There is enormous attention today to environmental issues, with increased awareness of corporate carbon footprints. While the majority of corporate Green initiatives relate to issues beyond the control of service and support (hazardous chemicals, factory emissions, eWaste), association members across AFSMI, SSPA, and TPSA are embracing Green Support with new technologies and processes. Green Support is a growing topic of conversation due to three primary factors:

• External pressure. Immense attention from the media, community leaders, and ever-increasing compliance legislation is forcing boardrooms across the globe to come to terms with how corporate operations impact the environment.  Association members note that Green requirements are now routine in requests for proposals (RFPs) from prospects, and some companies are using Green initiatives in competitive positioning.

• Internal pressure. Some of the most earnest pressure to launch Green initiatives is coming from company employees, particularly younger Generation Y workers who came of age in the era of hybrid cars and solar panels. Many executives also cite influences even closer to home: Generation Y children pressuring parents to be more environmentally conscious in the workplace.
• Cost savings. The best news about Green Support initiatives is not only do they have a positive impact on the environment, but they also can provide substantial savings to support organizations. Streamlining field service schedules reduces miles driven per shift, lowering fleet costs. Remote/virtual workers reduce the need for office space. Eliminating onsite visits can save $500 or more per appointment.

For more information on the technology fueling Green Support initiatives and related cost savings, read about the winners from the Fall 2008 Recognized Innovator Awards: Green Edition , addressing these three areas: virtual support centers, eliminating onsite visits, and field service schedule optimization.

The SSPA Recommends
The current economic recession is forcing budget re-plans for most Association members, and even industries that do not rely on financial services revenues are bracing for the inevitable fallout. With an eye on the trends discussed in this report, keep the following recommendations in mind as you head into 2009:

• Document Green savings up front. Funding for new technology will be tight in 2009, so be sure to include the Green Support angle when lobbying for a project. Even with a compelling ROI story for cutting costs and improving productivity you are still competing for limited IT resources. The extra effort to explain how the implementation will decrease the company’s carbon footprint may help the project receive approval faster.
• Identify your technology roadmap prior to organizational change. Nothing drives organizational change like a push to lower costs, so expect to see more service convergence projects in 2009. However, be certain the convergence plan addresses how the technology needs of the combined organization will be met, particularly in the areas of workforce management, knowledge management, and enterprise search.
• Verify that new support platforms meet B2B requirements. With multiple vendors competing for fewer and smaller customer support technology deals in 2009, large discounts will be offered to help close a deal. Regardless of the price, if the technology cannot meet your requirements, it is not a bargain. In recent weeks, members have submitted inquiries regarding “best fit” technologies, only to discover that a short-list finalist was overstating functional capabilities. Please use your free AFSMI, SSPA, or TPSA member inquiry service to receive an objective third-party view of your list of possible vendors prior to finalizing a deal.

If you have any questions about this article, please contact Shawn Santos at ssantos@thesspa.com or 858.674.5491.