Archives for April, 2012
by Rob Addy | April 27, 2012 | Submit a Comment
Premium support offerings should deliver, and be seen to deliver, premium value. Unfortunately, many don’t. The product support service value proposition is based on 4 foundational elements: Mitigation of the impact of failures i.e. productivity loss minimization Increased availability, improved stability and reliability i.e. reduced risk Achieving a greater return from the technology investment i.e. [...]
Category: Support Strategy Support Value Tags: Gartner Product Support Maturity Scale, Support Value Chain, TRKFAM, Value Proposition
by Rob Addy | April 18, 2012 | Submit a Comment
Products are lifeless inanimate things. How they are used determines the amount of business value that they deliver. Helping customers to use their products better is essential if they are to appreciate them and the organizations that manufacture and/or support them fully. Support providers have historically shied away from product usage related guidance and focused [...]
Category: Support Processes Support Value Tags: Customer Perceptions, Customer Service, Gartner Product Support Maturity Scale, Processes and Methodologies, Support Quality, Support Value Chain, TRKFAM, Value Proposition
by Rob Addy | April 13, 2012 | 1 Comment
Mobile support apps aren’t necessarily bad or pointless; it’s just that we haven’t seen any examples of good ones yet. Many support providers have put the need to “go mobile” at the top of their investment list for 2012. And this is why I have an issue with them (mobile support apps and the providers [...]
Category: Customer Experience Technologies Underpinning Support Tags: Customer Experience, mobile apps, mobility, Product Support, support apps, TRKFAM, Value Proposition
by Rob Addy | April 10, 2012 | 1 Comment
Tomorrow, IBM will be launching their response to the HP Gen8 Server launch of last month. Or are they? If one watches their pre-announcement video one might be forgiven for thinking that it is in fact an infomercial for Oracle’s app-to-disk engineered stack (And to be frank if you were to overlay a heavy (or [...]
Category: Support Operations Support Value Tags: Supporting Smart Systems
by Rob Addy | April 6, 2012 | 5 Comments
I had a call last week with an organization that is spending 20 times as much as the support premium they are paying to their software provider for a full-time team of 18 sub-contractors to operate and manage the solution on a day to day basis. This 2000% cost uplift isn’t intended to cover incremental [...]
Category: Support Strategy Support Value Tags: Processes and Methodologies, Support Value Chain, TCoS, Total Cost of Support, TRKFAM, Value Proposition
by Rob Addy | April 2, 2012 | 2 Comments
Dr Seuss’s story of “Sam I am” and his reluctant friend’s aversion to trying new things is a cautionary tale for the support industry. In it, Sam attempts to convince his “friend” of the merits of Green Eggs and Ham over and over again. Eventually, after the friend has tried everything they can to avoid [...]
Category: Customer Experience Support Operations Support Processes Support Strategy Tags: Customer Constituencies, Internal perception, Processes and Methodologies, Product Support, Strategic Planning, support as a weapon, TRKFAM
