We’re constantly hearing about all the big, new changes in technology and the support of that technology. And, yes, some things have changed rather dramatically. “Tweeting” for customer technical support? Who’d have thought of that even five years ago? However, some things really haven’t changed; we at ASP have long noted that service is often the forgotten element in a company’s profitability. Way back in the “good old days” when technical support still largely meant on-site “break/fix” of hardware and even software, the actual service (properly negotiated and priced) was (and continues to be) often the more profitable component of the business mix, shoring up the rapidly disappearing margins of product sales. These days, while service still often doesn’t seem get the respect it deserves from CEOs, CFOs and marketers, an increasing number of companies recognize that service can be a key competitive differentiator, with smaller companies able to move more quickly and effectively to respond to and even anticipate service opportunities. This is why the “conventional wisdom” that larger companies should have an inherent advantage to marketing services isn’t always so wise.- This year Tricentis was one of our Top Ten Best Web Support Sites, an annual competition that has been going on for 18 years now. They were the only winner in the small company (under $100 million in total corporate revenues) category. There were, however, only two small companies entered, so that does not seem to be too great an achievement, unless you look at the scores. Tricentis score beat over half of the large companies (over $1 billion) and those companies have many times the resources of Tricentis. The company has around 240-250 employees total and approximately 40 in support. This information makes their achievement remarkable.
- ASP has an annual competition for the Top Ten best Support Websites. This approximately 120-130 page report has essays from each of the Top Ten about their websites, average scores, a trends analysis, names of the many independent judges, explanation of the 25 different categories that are scored, and more. The report effectively defines the state-of-the-art in self-support websites each year. We receive many requests for back copies. If you want to get some insight in to how to design an effective self-support website, this is the authoritative source.
- ASP has an annual competition for the Top Ten best Support Websites. This approximately 120-130 page report has essays from each of the Top Ten about their websites, average scores, a trends analysis, names of the many independent judges, explanation of the 25 different categories that are scored, and more. The report effectively defines the state-of-the-art in self-support websites each year. We receive many requests for back copies. If you want to get some insight in to how to design an effective self-support website, this is the authoritative source
- How does a company set appropriate salaries for the jobs it has to fill? The conventional answer is that HR managers are supposed to offer “market-based” pay—that is, high enough to attract (or retain) talented people, but not more generous than is necessary to fill those jobs. But that answer doesn’t tell us where “market-based” benchmarks come from. In actual practice, companies typically look at salaries at peer-level companies, to get apples-to-apples alignment with the pay levels that their most direct counterparts are currently offering.
- Over the years, we’ve noticed that the site developers who enter each year’s Best Sites competition often focus on an ever-changing short list of common challenges that have shaped their current upgrade strategies. This year, clearly, one high-priority concern has been how to create bigger and better online communities—and that’s a trend with big implications.
- Technology pundits are always on the lookout for “disruptive” changes in the software world, but they’ve consistently missed one of the biggest transformations of the last few years—the greatly expanded role of services. Though there are still major companies (notably Microsoft) that remain almost exclusively product-centric, most successful software vendors these days have adopted a business model that depends heavily on services. Among larger companies, services typically generate more than half of all corporate revenues; for powerhouse vendors like SAP and Oracle, the services ratio often exceeds two-thirds of revenues and a substantially larger share of profits. That shift in emphasis from products to services has happened quietly, but it’s definitely the new economic reality of the software business.
- This is the twentieth year for ASP’s Top Ten Best Support Websites competition. We are privileged to say that many of the world’s best-known companies still compete regularly. These include such brands as Cisco, Dell, Intel, IBM, Oracle, Red Hat, and Microsoft. While not all of these competed this year, they all have competed many times during the past twenty years. However, not all of our competitors are well-known. There are many mid-size and small companies as well. We have always maintained that those who benefit the most are not the ten winners, but those who entered without much chance of winning and gained valuable insights into how to improve their sites.
- When we held our conference at Red Hat in Raleigh this March, the buzz in the room was around a new generation of Artificial Intelligence (AI). So much so that we felt compelled to research and write this report. We will be the first to admit that it is not as definitive as we would like. That’s because the new generation of AI tools are still evolving very rapidly and any attempt to report definitively at this point would be doomed before it started. We still believe that this report will be helpful, but our own standards won’t allow us to say that it is anything more than an interim report of a fast-moving target.
- In the Association of Support Professionals 2017 report on the changing expectations of support, Al Hahn highlighted how Millennial behavior was changing the way we must think about delivering service and support. Millennials, born in the connected world, viewed our messy and siloed offerings – our disconnectedness – as barriers to trade to be avoided. The idea of having to call someone to resolve a problem or answer a question, once considered the gold standard of support for which many of us still charge, clashes with their idea of suitable support. Having to identify themselves, explain their issue multiple times, or interact with multiple departments is intolerable to Millennials.
