The Hotline Magazine
The Redefinition of Customer Support
The SaaS & Success Project

Thursday September 9, 2010




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The Customer’s Metric

To the Company, the basic purpose of the contact center is to increase long-term profitability through customer retention. On the other end of that relationship, the customer's basic metric is simply: "Quickly connect me to a courteous, competent representative who will completely resolve my problem in the shortest amount of time." The customer uses that metric in every interaction with you to answer the unspoken retention question: "Do I want to continue to do business with these people?" You n

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The Definition of Customer Support

Customer Support quality has long been a sensitive subject for the senior executives of technology companies. As the Software as a Service (SaaS) wave continues to grow, the pain of customer support quality is also swelling. In the previous briefing, I talked about The Customer's Metric, how the customer differentiates between Good and Bad support. Good support is getting an acceptable resolution to the customer's problem from a courteous competent agent in the shortest amount of time. Bad supp

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SaaS/Cloud: Tsunamis Are Not Small Things

I had a conversation with the CEO of one of my oldest software manufacturer clients. He's a veteran, having successfully weathered a number of industry changes over the years with his company, but he made a comment that concerned me. "We can go SaaS at any time," he said. "We've got the code already revised and in place, so it won't be a big deal if we decide to offer that model." Unfortunately, the reports of those who have undertaken the journey to SaaS show that it will be a big deal, and the

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SaaS/Cloud & Support: The Strategic Key

A customer support contact center is a knowledge inventory operation, and its process is very mathematical. The speed of response to incoming requests is determined by the average duration of the interaction, the volume of requests and the number of available, trained staff members. Customers want fast, courteous response and complete resolution, while the provider struggles to meet those expectations and the cost of the required resources. In a previous Briefing, I outlined some of the standard

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SaaS/Cloud & Support: Showing the Proof

At every SaaS industry event, I am certain to hear some enthusiastic proponent of the On Demand / Software as a Service model telling the audience that "customer support necessarily must be better in the SaaS ecosystem because the customer is free to switch to a different vendor at any time. Therefore, we have to constantly re-earn our customers' loyalty month after month." I'll discuss the deceptive illusion of "switchability" in a subsequent briefing. For now, let's take a closer look at that

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By Mikael Blaisdell
Part of Series

I’ve had discussions with many senior executives over the years about the potential of using Customer Support quality as a competitive advantage. It has a nice ring to it, and in theory, sounds good. Here’s an example one executive gave me.

The sales rep for XYZ Corp., an enterprise software manufacturer, began the meeting with the prospect’s senior management team by dialing the speaker phone in the middle of the boardroom table. After hearing the canned greeting and the on hold announcement for the Support department of their principal competitor, the rep turned the volume off and started the presentation. 45 minutes later, during the Q&A period at the end, the prospect’s CEO asked: “I’m curious; why did you start by calling your competition’s support number?” The sales rep smiled, and reached forward to turn up the volume. They were still on hold. He then ended the call, and invited the CEO to call XYZ’s Support number. 20 seconds later, they were connected directly to a support rep — and the deal was in the bag.

The story may be apocryphal, but it’s useful to illustrate what most people would think of as superiority of Support Quality and of its use in a competitive scenario. The moral of the story is: Offer quality Customer Support. Answer the phone quickly and competently; don’t leave people on hold and you’ll win the deal. But the easy answer is not really a true competitive advantage. Any company willing to spend the money on the necessary resources can answer the Support phone quickly. A fast, competent and courteous rep may satisfy The Customer’s Metric, but that isn’t a sustainable competitive advantage because the competition can easily equal it.

What’s needed is something more, a revolutionary redefinition of the concept of Customer Support itself. If software can become a service, then it’s time for support to go beyond fast resolutions of problems and become an inseparable core component of the relationship product. If you’re ready to go to that level, we’re here to help.

Series Table of Contents