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Published on: June 2005
Type of content: WHITE PAPER
Format: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf)
Length: 2 pages
Price: FREE

Overview:
Rare is the company that doesn't claim to place a premium on their service and support delivery, and while it behooves most organizations to do just that, there are companies operating in certain vertical sectors, geographical regions, and products and services for whom it's more a mandate than a convenient philosophy. Financial services, high-tech and communications providers are among those who strive to differentiate themselves from competitors by the ways they serve their accounts. Case in point: According to a recent survey conducted by Forrester Research, 33 percent of financial services firms said they have an executive - besides the CEO - in charge of their company's entire customer experience, while a significantly lower percentage of firms overall (24 percent) have someone dedicated to overseeing this function. For more and more companies, service and support have bottom-line influence.

Recognizing the need to optimize service, however, doesn't mean there's a formulaic approach to delivering it in a high-quality, cost-effective manner. Designing an effective service model - and the subsequent selection of technologies, process engineering and workforce hiring - depends on a range of factors, including the business value the service/support organization provides; the products and services it supports, the vertical sector in which it operates, the value of individual customers, and numerous others. While there's a wealth of rich, increasingly comprehensive technologies available enabling businesses to drive toward true service and support optimization - remote diagnostics and support, self-healing, intelligent search and navigation, service resolution, personalization, multichannel integration platforms, collaboration, predictive analytics - the decision to deploy and across what channels should depend on a strategy based on clearly defined goals.