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

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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-t

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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

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SaaS & Customer Success, The (new) Definition of Customer Support

There is a tendency for some SaaS/Cloud vendors to think that Customer Support is the same as it was in the traditional sector, only with less demand and therefore a significantly lower staff. The core of that mis-perception is that Support is an unfortunately necessary evil, the group that only deals with problems resulting from breaks and interruptions in service after they occur. That’s a serious mistake for a company to make. The result is substantial losses from overlooked revenues, lower c

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The HotLine Update

New Resources The Papers Page For over thirty years, Mikael Blaisdell has been writing about customer retention through support and service.  Long before Customer Relationship Management became an industry, he was engaging in online discussions via the early time-sharing resources and sharing insights and best practices in published articles and columns in the print media. The Papers page is where you can find a list of articles as they become available.  As each new entry is added, the title wi

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