Resources
The Value of Support
Knowledge through customer interaction
As support organizations get good at capturing their experience in solving problems and answering questions (KCS) they move from a transaction based operation to a highly leveraged, value based operation. The value support creates is not just responding to customer issues it is in the organizational learning that takes place as a result of the customer interaction. The knowledge captured through customer interaction becomes the source of the value. Using that knowledge to support customer self-service and to identify opportunities to improve the products and services is what creates the leverage.
Not a trivial change
The value support creates is reflected in higher customer loyalty and improved products and services driven by a more complete understanding of the customer experience. This creates a significant challenge in terms of how we measure and articulate the value of support. It requires that we move away from transaction based measurements in the organizational silos to value based, cross-functional measurements - not a trivial change.
The Story
The "Value of Support" story was developed based on the discussion at the 2008 Executive Summit. The intended audience for this story is executives outside of support ("C" level executives; CEO, CFO, COO). A good outcome is the recognition of support as a value generator and the realization that we need new measures to assess and optimize the value support creates.
We offer this story and the PowerPoint deck as a framework for the support value story. It is our expectation that people using this deck will modify it to reflect the vocabulary and story that is relevant to their company.
Both the "Value of Support" story and the new measurements continue to be work items for the Leadership Committee and a topic of discussion at our Executive Summit.