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  Esteban Kolsky 06:43:04 pm on October 21, 2008 | 1 | # |
  Tags: Feedback Management, Green IT, Industry News, Remote Support, Show, SSPA

  Live from Vegas… it’s SSPA!

  OK, so it is not as exciting as New York — but the SSPA show is the pulse of the customer service and support world.  It has been great to be here, see some presentations, do another (second coming of email – slides available via email is you are interested or a post coming tomorrow in this blog), and end up exhausted.

  I like this show, there are some interesting things I can always find here.  In case you have never made your way here, you should consider it.  It is like a smorgasbord of case studies — all sessions are run by real customers, with real case studies, with real problems and solutions.  You want to see how to solve a problem? It is likely there is at least one aspect of it covered in one or more presentations.  Lots of really good data, good information – and all based on real-life!  Sure, the presentations tend to be sponsored by vendors… there is some vendor-speak in them.  But, for the most part, it is about users talking to users.  Very interesting.

  The bottom line: customer service and support is becoming more worldly, and there are three very clear trends to highlight:

  GREEN IS IN.  Lots and lots of companies dealing with remote support, remote troubleshooting, remote just about anything.  As organizations become greener and want to optimize their resources and get better productivity for what they use these vendors are blazing a new trail: how to take care of your remote employees, how to serve your remote customers with less resources, and how to optimize your field force to make them more productive and raise customer satisfaction.  Very interesting concept, and taking hold quite rapidly.

  What do you know? I was right… CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE and FEEDBACK MANAGEMENT do matter!  A whole other group of vendors dealing with feedback management and customer experience – but most of them are beginning to focus on the back side.  I said it before, and will say it again, anyone with a garage and a weekend can put together a survey package.  No genius there… what you do with your data is what matters. These vendors are focusing on both analytics as well as insight-driven actions – what to do with the results from your analysis.

  WEB 2.0 IS REAL.  Yes, I did say  before there was a lot of hype and not enough being done on W2.0.  Well, no longer the case… anything from social networks and communities being leveraged for service and support to killer applications that leverage W2.0, all the way to presentations showcasing case studies on W2.0.  We are finally seeing some delivery on the perpetual promise of distributed computing (I am sorry, did I just date myself?), and there is a lot more to come.  I will be really diving into this in the near future… stay tuned!

  Bottom Line:  after so many years of seeing customer service and support as a necessary evil, a cost-center with no purpose, and trying to find the best model to revert that notion it is refreshing to see some change.  Why, there are a couple of booths that even talk about making a profit!  Can you believe that?  Customer Service and Profit said in a positive way in the same sentence… what is the world coming to?

  Additional Resources

  John Ragsdale’s Blog (his impressions on SSPA are great) – http://jragsdale.wordpress.com
   

• Esteban Kolsky 02:20:43 pm on May 7, 2008 | 2 | # |
  Tags: customer experience management, SSPA, Web 2.0

  We just spent three great days at the SSPA conference, where eVergance announced a couple of new transformation services. We had some great experiences meeting clients and friends: we talked to lots of other members about the current state of the Service and Support world, we attended sessions to compare their best practices to what we do – but most important, we came away with an improved and balanced view of the topics that matter the most right now. There are three trends at play today in the Service and Support world (with varying degrees of interest):

  1. The hottest trend, Root Cause Analysis (RCA). This is where close to all of the attendees seem to be spending their time and efforts today. We had several discussions on Knowledge Management Optimization, Analytics, Metrics and Measurements and all the issues that matter to correctly diagnose, quickly, the root of a problem, and how to quash it (also, quickly). There were countless best practices and case studies shared by SSPA members — alas, they all pointed to the same results: if you create the environment and processes to quickly identify a problem, solve it, document and share the solution you then achieve the higher levels of customer satisfaction, reduce costs of support, and improve operations. We shared with members our experiences in optimizing KM to improve the content management and speed of response, and we got great reception… and lots of head-nodding. If this event is any indication, you are quite busy right now working on your own methods and models for improving the speed of response of problems, and leveraging your work.

  2. In the very-interested-but-not-yet-hot category we observed lots and lots of conversation about feedback management and customer experience. There seems to be a consensus that “there is something there”, but almost no one was yet moved to action. There is, still, lots of confusion and lack of strategies about the best way to move forward. Again, lots and lots of head-nodding occurred during presentations on feedback and discussions on how to move forward. We see this as a near-term (2-3 years) hot topic, but not yet reaching the same level of understanding, and adoption, as root-cause-analysis. Stay tuned to this blog for more on feedback management and experience management – we have great things planned!

  3. Finally, the elephant in the room: Web 2.0. Yes, Web 2.0. The most talked about, discussed, and argued subject. Wikis, collaboration tools, forums, engaging clients as active members as opposed to passive receivers, leveraging web services to improve operations — you name it, it was discussed and covered at some level or another. Of course, as I said, it was the elephant in the room (in reference to the analogy of several blind people in a room asked to describe an elephant): we heard so many different descriptions of what it was, how to use it, what to do, and success levels and stories that we walked away, probably, more confused than before. It is not very clear that there is consensus as to what Web 2.0 refers (although Allen has pointed out that McKinsey’s 2007 Web 2.0 survey at least does a good job listing out the various technologies under the Web 2.0 banner) — but there sure is consensus as to the importance of all its components. We saw predictions, and made our own, that see Web 2.0 becoming THE hot-button topic for the next five years… and it will likely become so. We had discussions where root-cause-analysis and Web 2.0 shared the spotlight, we saw vendors introduce it as the next revolution, and we share the enthusiasm… if only we could all agree on what it is that we are enthused about.

  As you can see, your projects and internal discussions are probably not far from where the rest of the industry is moving. I just have two questions for you (and would welcome your comments and your emails):

  1. are you in the same boat?

  2. what was your experience?

  Let us know what you think of our observations and how they match your current problems – we would love to talk some more about what you are doing, and what we are working on.
   

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