Support requirements are becoming more complex as the result of constantly increasing customer expectations, product complexity, and the need for end-to-end solutions. Support organizations face the challenge of responding to these demands while the support machine continues to operate 24/7. Change needs to happen on-the-fly because there’s no time to stop, take a deep breath, and diagnose what needs to be done.

Glueck offers insights and lessons learned on how Cisco has been overcoming these challenges. His concept of Service Change Management, which is analogous to Supply Chain management, provides a dynamic framework to engineer change while continuing to fulfill day-to-day support obligations. Leveraging this framework, Cisco has upgraded its partner management processes, implemented predictive leading indicators, improved customer satisfaction by solving the right problems, and adopted a repeatable, best-practice process to capture feedback for continuous improvement.