Social media has captured the attention of businesses of every kind, as well as individual lines of business. Where else can a company quickly locate current and prospective customers expressing their needs, interests, and opinions? It’s no longer a matter of preference whether you leverage social media. It’s time to embrace it, even if it is just to monitor what your customers are saying. But where to start?

Technical Support Excellence is the achievement of the maximum positive impact on profitability and reputation of the company, product or brand being supported through the efficient and effective delivery of support. Consider the following 10 practices in your pursuit of technical support excellence.

How efficient and effective is your support organization? Do you measure how efficiently staff are handling core support activities? Do you meet or exceed industry performance benchmarks? The process of delivering support is labor intensive and costly. It is imperative that you establish and measure support productivity. Learn How.

The Service Innovation Series highlights examples of innovative approaches companies take to achieve service excellence. In this Service Innovation profile, we feature IBM’s use of its own Watson technologies as a platform to deliver a new approach to service delivery – Cognitive Support.
Read on to learn about IBM Cognitive Support.

First Contact Resolution (FCR) measures the percent of assisted support cases that are resolved as a result of the initial interaction with a qualified support representative. Resolving cases at first contact will positively impact customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Scores. More importantly a well-defined method for measuring FCR assures that the insights gained from FCR performance will point to meaningful corrective actions to improve support efficiency and effectiveness.
This article introduces The TOP 10 PRACTICES FOR MEASURING FIRST CONTACT RESOLUTION.

Developing a social media strategy for Support does not mean that the organization will have to commit significant resources. Social media strategies can begin with a very passive approach, such as monitoring communities and learning from customer discussions. The key is to develop a strategy that makes sense based on well-defined business goals and realistic resource constraints. It’s better to start small than not start at all.

What percent of cases can your Support team close at first contact? The industry average rate across all customer segments and product types is 53.7%. Some support groups close cases at higher rates while other groups close cases at first contact at far lower rates. The question every support team should be asking is “Can we close more cases at first contact? If not, why?”

This article introduces the top inhibitors to closing case at first contact.

If you are an executive at an information technology company you have a lot to think about on a day to day basis, but there are 5 more things that you need to be aware of.
Your service organization is an incredible source of metrics and measurements that describe ongoing interactions with your customers. They can tell you about the top concerns of your customers, the challenges they face using your products and the features they want to see in the future.

Service interactions with customers offer a wealth of insights into how to sustain and grow customer relationship value and create opportunities to differentiate your products. Of all the metrics your service team tracks there are 5 important areas that you should key a close eye on.

The industry average first contact resolution rate is 53.7%, an interesting yet meaningless number for determining what your FCR performance level should be. This article provides industry average FCR rates organized by common product characteristics including: The type of product; product complexity; type of customer supported, product price level; and the quality of the product as measured by defect rates. Leverage these benchmarks as a guideline to establish your optimal FCR performance level.

Developing a social media strategy for Support does not mean that the organization will have to commit significant resources. Social media strategies can begin with a very passive approach, such as monitoring communities and learning from customer discussions. The key is to develop a strategy that makes sense based on well-defined business goals and realistic resource constraints. It’s better to start small than not start at all.