We Want You to Share Your Insight!

Submit a Presentation Abstract – DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JUNE 27TH

In today’s highly competitive technology marketplace, the pace of product innovation continues to accelerate as companies jockey for market share and compete to win the hearts, minds and budget dollars of customers. As a result, the service and support industry has never been better positioned to drive customers to new and greater levels of success.   Whether you’re a consumer company supporting the latest home entertainment systems or a provider of core enterprise computing capabilities, customers need superior support as never before as they endeavor to integrate, operate and avail themselves of the robust – and often complex – features and functions that are continuously released into the marketplace.  

How do you begin to reposition your support offerings and repurpose your customer support platform to deliver value-adding services that empower and enable customers to achieve new levels of success and create differentiation for your company?    At the core of this transformation are key actions and strategies that can be applied no matter the size or operational maturity level of your company or the pace at which you are transitioning to Value-Added Support.

If you’re breaking new ground in any of the following areas, we encourage you to share your experiences and lessons learned with other senior support managers and executives at the SSPA Services Leadership Conference September 30-October 2 in thriving New Orleans.  As a services leader, sharing your insights is the perfect way to help fellow members and advance the support industry.

SSPA Services Leadership Tracks:

Strategy Creation – Technology companies are increasingly using service as a competitive differentiator.  How do you create unique customer value in a world of commoditized products and services? How do you make the business case for services investment to improve differentiation? What unique service offerings have you developed to create differentiation and drive customer value, and how did you develop them? For this track, also consider sharing how you measure your performance and demonstrate unique value to your customers, how your service offerings compete against other players in your space, and how you have taken steps to ensure your customers receive true success-enhancing support.   

Delivery Optimization – No matter how large, profitable or efficient your support business, the reality is you will always be asked to deliver more with less by those who control budgets and set annual performance targets.  A highly efficient support delivery organization is also the foundation for delivering Value-Added Support.  What breakthroughs have you made in becoming more efficient?  Have you found new ways to optimize in the areas of people, process, and technology?  Has business intelligence provided new insights that have allowed you to make game-changing improvements in support performance, efficiency and customer satisfaction? 

Organizational Alignment – As support becomes more vital to customer success and the overall financial health of technology companies, it is imperative for support leaders to synchronize goals, processes and priorities with other internal groups.  Highly performing support organizations proactively drive organizational alignment and collaboration across functional groups and business units.  How have you been successful in aligning support objectives, resources and budgets with product development, services marketing, sales, partners, and/or professional services? How have customers benefited from these efforts? How has organizational alignment contributed to your success? 

Globalization & Emerging Markets – As businesses become increasingly global, support challenges increase.  This track focuses on strategies and tactics for cost-effectively managing global support and extending service delivery into emerging markets.  What are your global outsourcing strategies?  How do you support multiple languages with localized applications and content, recognizing cultural differences?  How do you maintain quality of service in a worldwide support organization?  What challenges have you overcome to optimize support delivery worldwide and meet the support needs of international customers? What are the right services models for emerging markets? 

Aligning Support & Product Development – Support-centric product strategies are an industry imperative. Support leaders must influence development groups to build products that can self-heal and proactively send notification of their need for attention so issues can be resolved before customers are impacted.  Not only does this approach improve customer satisfaction and service levels, it increases agent productivity by eliminating routine incidents and frees up support resources to deliver value-added services.  How is your support organization working effectively with product engineering to improve supportability features?  What metrics, incentives, programs or processes have you implemented to create a true shared agenda between support and product development?  What advanced service programs including proactive monitoring and alerting, and the overall service delivery process are you implementing to reorient support personnel from reactive to proactive, value-added support? 

Innovative Support Technology – Incorporating key service and support solutions into your strategic plan and operations provides the technology foundation to improve efficiency and realize your goals for enabling customer success.  In this case-study track, members will co-present with their industry support solution providers and show how they have successfully partnered using innovative technologies to solve real-world problems.  If you have a great support technology story to share with your solution provider, please share it with your colleagues.

If you have other successful services leadership stories to tell that fall outside the areas listed above, we encourage you to share them with us, too.