Top 10 Support Sites - Internet/Web/Online Service Information

Home Office Computing, Feb, 2001 by Keith Kirkpatrick

THERE'S A MIND-NUMBING NUMBER OF firms competing to deliver good, Web-based support that eliminates the need for costly and cumbersome phone-based help. Each year, The Association for Support Professionals (www.asponline.com), based in Watertown, Mass., selects 10 of the most helpful sites. Winning sites for 2000 were chosen based on ease of navigation, wealth of content, and simple-to-use interactive features, says Jeffrey Tarter, ASP's executive director (see the sidebar, "Making the Cut").

"We see a trend toward broadening the definition of what support means to customers," Tarter says. "The early sites we looked at were primarily a company's own tech support knowledge base; but today, users have a larger sense of what they need compared to what the software companies thought they wanted."

Tarter says tutorials and white papers, along with training and consulting services, are now often considered by customers to be essential components of a good support site. "Sites struggle to put all of these options in front of the customer. But it's where these sites are heading in the future" he asserts.

One site chosen by the ASP exemplifies this trend. InstallShield (support.installshield.com) provides a Reference Center, which contains product documentation, sample projects, and developer resources that are frequently updated and modified based on user feedback. The site has a simple but successful customer-service philosophy: "There's always room for improvement to make it easier for the customer to get to the piece of information they're looking for," says Scott Drayhos, director of product support services at InstallShield. "When a customer requests a piece of information, or [inquires about] a certain area of the product they're not comfortable with, we'll create an example."

However, most support sites need to figure out the perfect mix of functionality and user comfort. Support.dell.com, another site mentioned as a top support destination, has implemented a feature called Resolution Assistant to allow a Dell technician to access a customer's computer via an Internet connection and diagnose the problem.

This interface is more than online tech support. "There's an advantage to this function" explains Rick Chase, Austin, Tex.-based vice president of tech support for Dell's home and small-business products. "We can get configuration information off of your machine--with your permission--to help me troubleshoot your problem," explains Chase.