Posts Tagged technical support
Infolink presentation at TSIA Silicon Valley’s Service Revolutions now available
Infolink is 1 of the nine “coolest ideas” in Service Revolutions at the TSW conference and presented at the live showcase on May 5, 2010!
Infolink presented our Service Revolutions concept before a live audience of TSW conference attendees, followed by a Q&A session with an esteemed panel featuring technology strategist and author Geoffrey Moore; Jim Spohrer, director of IBM University; and John Ragsdale, TSIA vice president of technology research.
Free eBook on the Benefits of Integrated Product Support
Integrated Product Support: Your New Competitive Weapon In The High Stakes B2B Technology Marketplace
How Growing Technology Companies Can Create Referenceable Customers, Bulletproof Their Products, And Beat The Competition Without Breaking The Bank
Today’s technology companies face many technical support challenges including increasing complexity of technology products, increasing cost of providing technical support, and the explosive growth of social media. This eBook will discuss these challenges and then show CEOs, operations executives, support managers and product managers of growth-oriented technology companies:
- Four traditional approaches to support: self-support, use of existing product engineers, building your own support department, and outsourcing to a call center, and why they fall short.
- How the integrated product support approach can cost-effectively provide you the type of support you need in order to offer the Whole Product that will help you attract and retain your essential Early Majority customers, continuously improve your product, and beat your competition.
Download Your Copy Today http://www.productsupportenvironment.com/ebook.asp
Best Practices: 6. WEB 2.0 AND COMMUNITY-BASED SUPPORT
Posted by admin in PSE Best Practices on October 29, 2009
In the Web 2.0 era of support, Infolink’s Product Support Environment (PSE) leverages community support tools, such as wikis, blogs and discussion forums, as great ways for user communities to self-support, but also for the company to nurture those users and learn from them. Moreover, the power of social networks for support is becoming more evident…they’re a great way to engage in user conversations and anticipate or even deactivate potential problems, which could damage a product’s or company’s reputation…How it’s all coming together: support is more integral to CRM than ever.
So What is Product Support and why is it important?
One of the best definitions for Product Support out there was published by Microsoft’s Product Support Services unit in Wikipedia. Although it relates to the role of PSS within Microsoft, it makes for a perfect generalization:
“Product Support is a company’s business unit with primary responsibility for responding to end-user and partner requests for assistance with the company’s products and services.
PS must also give feedback to development groups for use in the development of future products or product features. PS identifies major issues with products, and works with the responsible product teams in order to create “hotfixes” for these issues, and/or make sure that the issues are addressed in service packs or future product versions.”
Additionally, at Infolink we believe that PS should also collaborate closely and even be part of professional services teams to assist end-users during product installation and deployment.
The support options in the Microsoft Wikipedia posting are also accurate for most technology companies: “PS usually offers a wide variety of support options, which may be free of charge to the user or may have varying prices. Options include assistance with:
- Basic usage
- “Break-fix” support
- Upgrades/patch installation
- Onsite and offsite consulting”
Infolink’s Product Support Environment puts all the elements in place: technology, people and processes that a company’s needs to meet its Product Support responsibility to its users. Responding to end-user and partner requests for assistance with a company’s products and services is a key part of the “extended” product the company sells. It is expected by users, and when lacking it represents a major risk to a company’s reputation and growth.
See more at http://www.productsupportenvironment.com