What is support automation?
Support automation is an innovative technology that can automate the discovery and diagnosis of technical problems at the customer site. Typically, it involves a software agent that resides next to a technology vendor’s product at each customer site. By continuously monitoring the system for both known problems as well performing predictive monitoring, contact center operators are able to receive alerts about potential problem at customer sites, and proactively contact customers to take corrective action. 

By using support automation, call center operators and support engineers can automate many of the manual tasks performed today - such as walking the customers through a fixed set of questions to understand the customer environment, or having the customers read out or send information required to diagnose the issue. In some cases, even the resolution can be automated by programming the remote agent to apply the appropriate remedy.

Support automation technology can also assist in continuous maintenance, allowing customer support professionals to perform remote service, such as automating software updates, checking configuration and taking other steps to ensure systems at customer sites are appropriately maintained.

Second, support automation leads to increased customer satisfaction, since customers are naturally overjoyed when the service provider contacts them when a problem is in the symptom stage, as opposed to them calling up the contact center once the problem has fully developed. This allows organizations to increase retention rates and protect annual service and support contracts. Some organizations even leverage the technology to increase service revenues by packaging such “Smart Services” as premium support offering.

Finally, support automation can have a great effect on the morale and utilization of contact center staff. Since the resolution of many mundane issues is automated, operators can now focus their time on solving more challenging situations. Astute contact center executives can now better utilize this extra time, for example for up-selling additional products and services.

Which industries are benefiting from support automation?
Support automation is most prevalent in industries that are seriously impacted by application downtime and poor product performance. These include healthcare, telecommunications and manufacturing. It is not hard to imagine the implications of downtime for a cellular operator or an oil plant and the value or having a remote service in place. However, several industries, such as financial services and enterprise software, look to support automation for a competitive advantage. In many industries, service and support contracts are at constant risk due to the proliferation of 3^rd party service providers. This is significant since post-sale service and support accounts for over 50% of revenue in several industries.

What are some of the best practices for implementation?
The first thing that any organization that implements support automation must remember is that this is a company-wide project, not just a contact center task. In order to truly reap the maximum possible benefits, different areas of organization must be aligned.

The success of any deployment is ultimately dependent on end-customer adoption, with one of the most important departments is that of services marketing. Organizations must effectively communicate the benefits of the technology and determine the right incentives which will encourage end-customers to use and deploy this technology. Furthermore, product development teams should be educated as to the benefits that data collected at customer sites can provide to the formulation of new products and services.

Do you have some final tips or advice for using support automation?
All of the above must of course be coupled with training of all levels of support personnel including field service technicians.

On the technical side, as is the case with most contact center technology, organizations must carefully plan the integration of their support automation platform with commonly deployed technologies such as CRM and knowledge bases.

Finally, support automation is an ongoing process, so it is important to continue to develop your support automation offering.

Our customers constantly find new and creative ways to leverage the data they collect to provide more efficient service and gain valuable customer insight. At the end of the day, that is what the contact center is all about.

About Nimmy Reichenberg:
Mr. Reichenberg joined NextNine in 2008 and leads the company’s marketing efforts. Prior to joining NextNine, Mr. Reichenberg held various Product Management and Marketing positions at M-Systems (acquired by SanDisk in 2006). In his last role as Director of Marketing for Enterprise Solutions, Mr. Reichenberg successfully founded M-Systems’ enterprise marketing department and developed a market leading product portfolio. Mr. Reichenberg holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and an MBA from Tel Aviv University.

About NextNine:
NextNine is a global provider of support automation solutions. Its patented Virtual Support Engineer™ allows technology vendors to proactively monitor and service their products at the customer site and automate the discovery, diagnosis and resolution of problems before the customer is disrupted. Global companies utilize NextNine’s platform to cost-effectively increase customer satisfaction, reduce support costs, secure service revenues and maximize system uptime.