Global Support – The changing Mantra

The corporate landscape has changed globally in the last decade. This has primarily been dictated by economics, unearthing of talent pools, and advances in technology. This has resulted in a variety of activities like outsourcing, off-shoring, etc. It has also resulted in geographically and culturally diverse teams working seamlessly to deliver products or services to a globally diverse customer base. While delivery of products is a challenge in its own right, supporting global consumers of these products is a challenge as well. How do you address this in an evolving flat world?

Have international “presence” of support
This does not necessarily mean that you need to have personnel in every continent. This means that customers anywhere should have the means to access support from the vendor with reasonable response time and acceptable answers. This should happen despite time differences in areas under consideration. This goes beyond direct, phone or email support.

Use advanced technology in supporting customers
Phone, email support has given way to web support. Online case resolution, knowledge databases promote self service. Discussion forums, online communities and social networks promote many-to-many interactions from subject matter experts (SMEs) that might reside outside the corporation in the customer base.

Specialize content
Customers care about specialized content related to their issues. Corporations need to focus on providing them content focused towards addressing that need. This could relate to customer profiles developed over time.

Have multiple channels of escalation
Customers should not feel trapped by self-service only. They should have the power and ability to escalate issues via other channels – a combination of email, web and self-service - if need be.

Make the interaction secure
This will make customers feel comfortable sharing their data with agents instead of asking for on-site support.

Offer incentives to customers to use self-service
Small incentives can go a long way. Offer knick-knacks for customers to use self-service. Have customers email in articles of successful experiences and have a periodic award for the best contributor. Also highlight contributors of answers on your forum. Recognition can be a motivator for people to contribute.

Routinely educate customers on new developments
This can be done via newsletters, podcasts, webinars etc. Customers can come to know about new features, releases, known issues, added solutions in the knowledge base, best practices etc. By doing this you are attempting to decrease your call volume before agent interaction.

Great vs. good support organizations?

What distinguishes great support organizations from good ones?

Process
Great support organizations follow a process. Irrespective of where the teams are located, these organizations are bound to follow a process. These serve as guidelines in tackling simple or complex problems. This also serves as a means for management to measure and maintain the quality of support. It also enables support personnel to deal with escalations. Anyone in the organization should know what the "next step" is in the support process. Nothing is more detrimental than the classic "run around" to the customer.

Metrics
Great support organizations are measured by metrics. These metrics might be as simple as measuring incoming cases, case closure, time to closure or number of cases escalated to R&D. Metrics gives support management a tool to monitor the effectiveness of support. It also promotes accountability in the ranks. Finally it might point out problematic areas in the product offering.

Soft skills
This is like the icing on the cake. All individuals are different. Some individuals who have better people interaction than others are likely to satisfy customers more, other things remaining constant. Soft skills give individuals the ability to connect with the customer at an emotional level besides the logical/technical support they provide. These include a variety of skills such as listening, saying no to the customer, dealing with abusive customers, phone/email communication skills and much more. Great support organizations heavily emphasize soft skills and routinely emphasize soft skill training.

Training
Technical or product training is essential for addressing customer needs. Customers log cases to get solutions to problems they have. Nothing can tick off a customer more than a support individual who does not know what they are doing. Incompetence in product knowledge leads to inferior support, delayed problem resolution or escalation - either one of these being detrimental to the organization. As product content changes, the support team should be kept abreast of the latest developments using training. Great support organizations put high emphasis on replenishing the skill set of support teams.

Knowledge Base
In order to decrease the support load on an organization, knowledge bases are developed. Ideally, a knowledge database should enable self service and 24/7 access for the customer.
This should also act as a filler to enable complete product coverage by the support team. Great support organizations will push customers to self-service databases as a first step and supplement that with other kinds of (email, web, phone, direct) support. This helps keep support cost down if done right.

Tiered support structure
Great support organizations will distinguish between customers based on significance (financial or strategic) to the corporation. Generally speaking in most corporations, the 80/20 rule applies. Eighty percent of the business comes from twenty percent of the customer base. Should these "Top 10" customers be treated differently. Absolutely. This is a business decision vs. an emotional one. Executive management should definitely put the same process in terms of providing support for everyone but monitor the top 10 customers closely. Bigger customers can be expected to "pay" for support and get "additional" perks besides the "regular" support. This might include more frequent review meetings, priority in fixing issues, executive sponsorship and perhaps even access to R&D.

Corporate Strategy
Great organizations will emphasize support as a key corporate function not as an afterthought.
They will realize that excellent support is often a key contributor to repeat business and customer loyalty. They will also view support as a feedback loop for product improvement and best practice promotion. Great support organizations can be an important source of revenue generation as well. Clear goals and organization structure coupled with clear lines of communication will foster this.