Hang it up! - Web-based support replacing telephone support for many customers - Internet/Web/Online Service Information

Software Magazine, May, 1997 by Julekha Dash

For more and more customers, the Web is replacing the telephone as the first place they turn for service.

Despite the fanfare that accompanied its arrival on the IT scene, the Internet has drawn criticism from many corporations who have attempted to exploit it for commercial gain. Corporate Web sites may offer a wealth of information on a company's products and services, but relatively few organizations have been able to leverage that to significantly impact their bottom line. Many lament that the static nature of their Web sites communication reveals little about their customers' concerns and buying behavior.

But, as more organizations free up resources by enabling both employees and customers to help themselves to corporate information, the Web is gaining favor as a customer service vehicle. Forward-thinking companies are relying on the Web to deploy customer service solutions that not only deliver content but also store and track information that let them learn more about their customers. Some are developing their own solutions, while others are purchasing Internet-enabled customer service and support (CSS) applications that tie to their help desk and back-end systems.

This self-service model, says Dave Muirhead, manager of Internet business development for the Help Desk Institute, Colorado Springs, Colo., offloads some of the burden placed on help-desk professionals, making them more efficient. "When [help] requests come in and they get paged in their in-basket, [the reps] can work on those [requests] that can be solved right away and they can take longer on the questions that take longer to resolve. They have a lot more control over how they organize and do their work," says Muirhead. Customer self-service is also cost-efficient, he says, because it means fewer employees are needed to perform the same tasks.

Not surprisingly, software vendors - which are traditionally help desk intensive - have been ahead of the pack in implementing Web-enabled customer service solutions. In 1996, according to Dataquest, an IT market research firm based in San Jose, Calif., software vendors handled 8% of electronic support incidents {{how else would electronic be handled?}} via the Internet. Dataquest expects the percentage to rise to 29% in 1998 and to almost 60% by 2000. Now, industries such as telecom, financial services and health care are jumping aboard. According to the Gartner Group, an IT market research firm based in Stamford, Conn., two-thirds of all enterprises using call centers will expand their system's capabilities to include electronic access and will be conducting transactions {{customer service}}electronically by the turn of the century.

In response to these changing paradigm, the customer support software market -- including call center-based customer service, field service management and quality assurance {{usually development-related - check}} software - will soar to $1 billion by 1999, from $400 million in 1996, predicts the Aberdeen Group, a market research firm based in Boston, Mass. Aberdeen analyst Chris Pavlic attributes this growth to the fact that companies are desperately trying to one-up each other in offering customer service. "Customer service is the single greatest differentiator in a company, especially as products become commoditized," says Pavlic. Where competing products are too similar to differentiate, he says, better service will earn new customers and retain existing ones.

Nobby Akiha, vice president of marketing at Inference Corp., a help-desk software vendor in Novato, Calif., says a number of factors have contributed to his customers' increasing demand for Web-enabled CSS technology. "Their customer base is increasing, their products are becoming more complicated and there are higher level expectations by [the end-user] for getting support." This results in more calls to the help desk and increased demand for more accurate, consistent answers, preferably in their first contact.

Companies deploying Web-enabled CSS solutions say the added value for customers includes 24x7 availability and consistent responses. While some end users may get different answers to the same question if they talked to different call-center employees, the Web site can act as a "central repository," offering consistent, easily locatable support information. Pavlic says that a central repository is key to any support organization, because it enables them to create virtual help desks and more readily share information that is critical to solving customer problems.

Furthermore, with CSS software, companies can store and track information on their customers as they log on. "It's one of the aspects of customer information you can track so you know how many times customer has been contacted, what they're buying, whether they need an upgrade," says Pavlic.

For some companies, Web-supported customer support has turned out to be more effective than direct sales. That's the case at American Finance and Investment, a mortgage lending firm headquartered in Fairfax, Va. President Jack Rogers describes his company as a "virtual lender" because they provide credit to people all over the U.S. from their central offices. "We don't have an army of commissioned sales reps in branch offices all around the country," says Rogers.