It's been a hectic month of August for me, which bucks against the trend of what should be a quiet time. But in these times we live in and with the frenetic pace of the 21st century, if you're involved with Customer Support, you're always busy. A good compliant :)
A colleague of mine Alan Walsh talked about the challenges he and his team mates face in meeting the challenges of Customer Support in the face of rapid IT Transformation :
" It is our role as service account professionals to make sure that we provide real-time information (now in an even more convenient manner) that allows our customers to run their businesses successfully – regardless of where they are geographically, and irrespective of the tool we use to communicate." See the whole post here: http://bit.ly/pj1ux4
Well Alan will be glad to know that the EMC eServices organization strive to do just that. And we are continually working to improve the Customer Support experience. We are working on opening up the Support Forums Communities. (we're nearing completion of this).
We're not resting on our laurels either. There is much to be done to improve the Support Forums experience and who better to consult on this than our own Community (Customers and Partners). Right now we have a survey on improving the user experience.
Find out more here: http://bit.ly/qCbQJX .
If you want to participate, get in quickly. The survey closes on August 30th at midnight (PDT). Which is some ungodly hour of a Monday morning (GMT) :).
As mentioned before we are going to provide Multi-Lingual Support Forums. We are very near to Asian Language ones to start with, which is cool.
And to Alan's point about which tools we use to communicate?
Well we have a Twitter account @EMCsupport which listens out for customers / potential customers requiring Customer Service / Technical Support. Just recently we have started sharing topics on Support Forums. These are discussions that are answered and trending as popular in the Support Forums.
Follow us on twitter and know this is yet another Support Channel for you which listens and shares.
Well as I said, hectic times. More on the ever improving Support Forums... when I get a minute :)
The Bayside Chronicle: Thoughts and musings on topics I like. Written in Bantry Bay, Ireland, mostly, or wherever I happen to be.
Wednesday, 24 August 2011
Friday, 5 August 2011
A shock to the System: Customer Support is Marketing
I've been doing some research relating to our eServices organization at EMC. It does not hurt to look around at what others might recommend. And I'm really glad I did. I found this http://bit.ly/OaCG5 on the Consortium for Service Innovation website. It was written back in 2006 and certainly it makes good reading from the perspective of what EMC did that this paper was recommending.
This really stood out to me from it: “The open society, the unrestricted access to knowledge, the unplanned and uninhibited association of "people" for its furtherance—these are what may make a vast, complex, ever-growing, ever-changing, evermore specialized and expert technological world, nevertheless a world of human community.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1954
It's an "duh, of course!" moment when you look at Community engagement and Support in general. Gone are the days where a Support organization does everything for the Customer or even knows all that can be done with it's own products. It's no secret that EMC has Customers who are highly knowledgeable about our products, even more so than our own Engineers. That's because they are on the front line, mixing our products in real production solutions. Luckily EMC eats it's own dog food, in that we use our own products and face similar challenges our Customers face in Production. So we share our Customers experiences. Our Support Forums and the ECN Community overall has the vibrancy of the "human community" that Oppenheimer was talking about. But what stands out about ECN is the Support centric engagement across it.
I was notified about this blog post by Jeremiah Owyang (via a colleague in Marketing :) ) : http://bit.ly/qLx8HN. It brilliantly covers the requirements we have today for Customer Support engagement, and offers a 5 tier strategy for Social Support.. Worth a read and a listen to the included video.One thing that Jeremiah said stuck out to me as horrifying, but is absolutely true: "Support is Marketing". I almost screamed and ran to the shower to scrub my self down :) .
I'll be honest in my past life as a support engineer I had no love of marketing. In my experience marketing and support were always at logger heads. Marketing made the pitch and got the glory while Support was left to pick up the pieces. And those of you who have had the experience of the "Marketing web site" that's marketing owned. Guess what, in nearly all cases of a Marketing website, 85% to 95% of it's traffic is related to seeking some type of Support! That's a fact when it comes to measuring EMC's Powerlink website traffic.
But Jeremiah is spot on, Support is Marketing today. It's a brand differentiation. EMC has it. Hell even Marketing people realizing this are horrified I am sure:) . But the tide is changing. And so are roles and our definition of ourselves. I'm quite happy to see myself in a marketing capacity, when it comes to talking about eServices Support and superior branding due to Support.
Marketing and Support have to engage with each other to move forward. Rest assured it's happening in EMC. Most times it's somewhat subconsciously. We are focused on our Customers. We have to keep the marketing and support relationship strong. Because no matter where marketing decides to engage, Facebook, Linked In, Twitter etc, they have to be ready for that customer complaint or query for help with the product. Without the support presence and the required processes the brand could suffer untold damage. That's my €0.2 cent anyway!
This really stood out to me from it: “The open society, the unrestricted access to knowledge, the unplanned and uninhibited association of "people" for its furtherance—these are what may make a vast, complex, ever-growing, ever-changing, evermore specialized and expert technological world, nevertheless a world of human community.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1954
It's an "duh, of course!" moment when you look at Community engagement and Support in general. Gone are the days where a Support organization does everything for the Customer or even knows all that can be done with it's own products. It's no secret that EMC has Customers who are highly knowledgeable about our products, even more so than our own Engineers. That's because they are on the front line, mixing our products in real production solutions. Luckily EMC eats it's own dog food, in that we use our own products and face similar challenges our Customers face in Production. So we share our Customers experiences. Our Support Forums and the ECN Community overall has the vibrancy of the "human community" that Oppenheimer was talking about. But what stands out about ECN is the Support centric engagement across it.
I was notified about this blog post by Jeremiah Owyang (via a colleague in Marketing :) ) : http://bit.ly/qLx8HN. It brilliantly covers the requirements we have today for Customer Support engagement, and offers a 5 tier strategy for Social Support.. Worth a read and a listen to the included video.One thing that Jeremiah said stuck out to me as horrifying, but is absolutely true: "Support is Marketing". I almost screamed and ran to the shower to scrub my self down :) .
I'll be honest in my past life as a support engineer I had no love of marketing. In my experience marketing and support were always at logger heads. Marketing made the pitch and got the glory while Support was left to pick up the pieces. And those of you who have had the experience of the "Marketing web site" that's marketing owned. Guess what, in nearly all cases of a Marketing website, 85% to 95% of it's traffic is related to seeking some type of Support! That's a fact when it comes to measuring EMC's Powerlink website traffic.
But Jeremiah is spot on, Support is Marketing today. It's a brand differentiation. EMC has it. Hell even Marketing people realizing this are horrified I am sure:) . But the tide is changing. And so are roles and our definition of ourselves. I'm quite happy to see myself in a marketing capacity, when it comes to talking about eServices Support and superior branding due to Support.
Marketing and Support have to engage with each other to move forward. Rest assured it's happening in EMC. Most times it's somewhat subconsciously. We are focused on our Customers. We have to keep the marketing and support relationship strong. Because no matter where marketing decides to engage, Facebook, Linked In, Twitter etc, they have to be ready for that customer complaint or query for help with the product. Without the support presence and the required processes the brand could suffer untold damage. That's my €0.2 cent anyway!
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