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

Thursday September 9, 2010




Page Two


The HotLine Recommends

For Customer Support Professionals

For Technology CEOs / CxOs

For Contact Center Technology Vendors:


Related Materials
Below Are Excerpts From Articles Related To The One You Are Now Viewing

SaaS, Success and Counting

“How many SaaS companies are there?”  At the recent On Demand conference in San Jose, I asked several key members of the SaaS community this seemingly simple question.  “Around 2,500,” one said. “Most of whom you’ve never heard of because they’re too small to attract much notice.”  Other estimates I’ve heard  in the past few weeks give the current number of SaaS players at 1,600  to 2,000.  More companies are entering the SaaS ecosystem every day, as existing software manufacturers create on dem

More on page 633

SaaS & Professional Change

Awareness of the fundamental changes driven by the shift to SaaS to the profession and practice of Customer Support, both to external Support and internal IT Help Desks, is growing.  The Help Desk Institute has asked me to write a two-part series on the subject for their SupportWorld magazine, drawing on the continuing research of The SaaS & Support Project (tm).  The first article, on “SaaS, Cloud Computing and The Redefinition of Customer Support,” explores the changes to Support when a co

More on page 719

SaaS, Technology and “Let’s Pretend” Profitability

As an analyst/consultant/writer with a very long background in customer contact center technology (CCTECH), I regularly get a lot of calls from manufacturers.  Every one is an opportunity to get a snapshot of what's going on in the profession, to see the difference between what is talked about and what can actually be done.  For example, we've all heard a lot about running Support as a profit center.  But when the manufacturers call, especially those offering the key elements of the support tech

More on page 330

The SaaS & Support Project in 2010

Almost five years ago, Bill Gates warned Microsoft about the significant challenge to the company and industry posed by the advent of SaaS.  While the new business model has yet to fully reach the gains predicted for it back then, the momentum is building.  An ever-accelerating number of traditional perpetual-license software companies are readying SaaS products or have already quietly released them.  In the process, a lot has been learned about the magnitude of the change that is SaaS.  As comp

More on page 711

Creating and Sustaining Profitable SaaS Customer Relationships

The essential key to long-term success for a SaaS company is simply stated: No Churn.  Get the right customers and keep them.  But all too often, Software-as-a-Service companies fall into the bad habits of their traditional-model predecessors by focusing only on acquiring new licensee customers.  The resulting unconscious assumption that all customer relationships will automatically persist and/or be profitable is a huge and largely invisible risk for a SaaS company.   It’s time to ask some poss

More on page 568

Print Print
Comment Comment
Email This Post Email This Post
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Blogplay
  • LinkedIn
  • Live
  • Technorati
  • Twitter
By Mikael Blaisdell

tssf print 6x3in 300x150 The SaaS Support Forum (TSSF)The SaaS tsunami has had profound impacts upon the software industry, and it isn’t over yet — especially for Support, where it’s just beginning.  While traditional software vendors and their customer contact center teams desperately struggle to keep ahead of the expensive floods of “It’s Broken; Fix It NOW!” calls, Support in SaaS companies is different.  A new era has begun; what was once a despised but necessary evil in the traditional software game is fast turning out to be the key to long-term corporate success in the new SaaS ecosystem.  For Board members, CEOs and senior management teams of SaaS manufacturers and their partner organizations, it’s time for a conversation about redefining the role, profession and practice of Customer Support.  Facilitating and extending that conversation is the purpose of The SaaS Support Forum ™.

TSSF as a Resource

TSSF is hosted by LinkedIn.com, and will be managed by a team led by Mikael Blaisdell, Publisher of The HotLine Magazine.  While the main audience for The SaaS Support Forum are the members of SaaS company boards and senior management teams, the resource is open to all interested professionals.  (A LinkedIn membership and profile is required in order to access the Forum or to post comments in it; there is no cost for the membership or for participation in the Forum.)  All who post comments in the discussions are fully identified by name, company affiliation and title, which aids both civil discourse and credibility.  Although the conversation will focus on Support in the SaaS community, there will be a lot of value therein for support professionals and senior management teams from traditional software manufacturers as well.

As with The HotLine Magazine, the ongoing TSSF conversation will deal with the Strategy, Process, People and Technology of Customer Support.  A link will be added to appropriate THL articles here on the Magazine site, enabling visitors to join in the discussion of the particular topic on TSSF.  Topics on TSSF will often include links to THL articles and other resources.

Joining TSSF

If you already have established a free LinkedIn profile & basic membership, follow this link [ http://tinyurl.com/cwnwbl ] to request admittance to TSSF.  If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile yet, here is a link to the starting point at www.linkedin.com

TSSF Policies & Administration

When appropriately managed, online discussion forums have proven to be popular and very useful resources since CompuServe forums became widely available in the early 1980’s.  Keeping the discussion on-topic and the content well-managed are the keys to success for any forum, and TSSF’s administration team will work towards those goals.  Questions about TSSF’s policies may be submitted through use of the Comment button below.

Published: April 21, 2009

Revised: February 14, 2010

Tags: , ,