Helping Technology Companies
Grow Recurring Revenue

Company executives understand that selling services alongside core product offerings leads to greater alignment and customer value, while subsequently decreasing the likelihood of customer churn and loss of recurring revenue. Well-defined services and the means to sell them are imperative. so why is selling services so difficult? This article introduces 10 ways to help Sales teams sell services.

Today’s customer service leaders are under enormous pressure to deliver high quality service to more customers across a growing number of channels with budgets that are not matching the pace of interaction growth. Facing these constraints, some may find themselves purposely hindering the customer experience (turning off channels, reducing hours of service, or increasing acceptable response time windows) instead of considering an entirely different approach to their costs. Read about why you should really be considering outsourcing right now.

Making it easy for customers to get help depends upon the channels available to access support resources and request assistance. Many companies offer assistance by phone but there is a clear shift towards electronic channels.

Our research has revealed that nearly a third (32%) of Support demand stems from questions related to either installation, configuration, or setup. This understanding gives companies an immense opportunity to reduce this demand—and we see two major keys to ongoing Support issue prevention.

The future success of Customer Support relies on the ability of Support to scale to meet growing demand and fulfill an expanded, success-focused mission. Learn about five proven initiatives for scaling Support delivery capabilities.

Incomplete case records diminish Support’s ability to identify root causes of support demand and plan mitigation efforts such as enhanced self-help, product improvements, and training. This article describes how poor support case closure practices lead to missed opportunities.

Technology is complex. When something goes wrong it can be difficult to sort out which component is at fault and which vendor is needed to assist with the troubleshooting and resolution. Formal, multi-vendor support collaboration is essential to optimizing issue resolution.

From case open to closure, Support case management and resolution processes must be efficient and effective. Yet case management is the most costly and time-consuming Support process and remains labor-intensive and largely sub-optimized. Improve your processes—and customer value metrics—with these research-based best practices.

Modern, well-defined post-sales service portfolios that combine elements of Customer Support and Customer Success can significantly increase your ability to help customers use and apply products; reduce churn; and expand revenue growth. This article will help you to determine the type of post sales service portfolio you need.

How would you rate your visibility into future Support demand?  As you start the new year—AND as you navigate from Q1 through Q4 and into 2022, your understanding of how demand for Support will change is critical to planning, both short-term and long-term. Drawing from extensive research we recently conducted and published, here’s our 2021 Support demand forecast.