WEB SUPPORT: A CUSTOMER-CENTRIC VIEW.

"Jupiter Media Metrix reports that [despite the current economic downturn] 74% of businesses will spend more money on customer relationship management (CRM) infrastructure in 2001 than they did in 2000--with a majority committing to increasing their spending by as much as 25% to 50%. [Jupiter also predicted that] the number of individuals seeking online customer service will jump from 33 million in 2001 to 67 million in 2005."

--Jupiter Media Metrix, 6/26/01

Especially in the technology world, there's been lots of talk lately about how to become more "customer-centric." In practice, customer- centric strategies usually focus on one-to-one marketing techniques, often tied closely to the creation of personalized profiles. When Amazon.com "remembers" that we like to cook and suggests we'd enjoy the latest collection of Julia Child recipes (or an outdoor grill from one of Amazon's new stores), that's classic customer-centric selling. And most of the time, even a touch of personalization yields response rates that are far better than old-fashioned one-size-fits-all campaigns.

But let's be honest: From the buyer's perspective, a personalized offer is still a sales pitch, just another way to convince us to buy more books, more barbecues, more software, more gizmos. The merchandise may be something we want, but most of the time we reject these "personalized" offers. Why? Because the seller never bothered to ask a fundamental question: What does the customer really want to buy?

In fact, the only way to become truly customer-centric is to look at the world through the customer's eyes, and then to develop solutions that address real points of pain. Most of the great classics of desktop software--VisiCalc, WordPerfect, Quicken, PageMaker, Act!, and others-- were the result of this kind of customer-centric thinking: The software solved problems that users believed were real and urgent, and did so in a way that "felt right" in terms of the way people worked.

When we look at the technology marketplace, it's clear that some very critical pain issues are being ignored. Yes, software products themselves often deliver valuable solutions. But these same products are also complex, fragile, and quirky, which in turn creates hefty problems of support and maintenance. Total cost of ownership (TCO) for corporate and enterprise applications is now typically two or three times the cost of the software itself (though it's not unusual to see TCO spending ten times greater than the basic software cost). And a vast infrastructure of IT managers, resellers, trainers, book authors, and content experts has emerged to make sure software actually does what it's supposed to do. If we use money as a rough measure of customer pain, what customers really seem to want is better support solutions--not just more products.

Until recently, technology companies have done their best to ignore the magnitude of this support and service problem, if only because delivering services over the phone (or worse, in person) is almost impossibly expensive. Ford doesn't offer driving lessons or replace worn-out mufflers, product developers argued, so why should we offer end-user training and resolve compatibility problems with other people's applications? (Of course, car makers do offer 50,000-mile, five-year warranties on their products, but product developers rarely seem to mention that part of the analogy.)

The good news, as Jupiter's latest research study underscores, is that the Internet finally changes the economic equation for service delivery. It's now possible to give users much of what they badly want- -access to support, tutorials, application development help, enhancements--with virtually none of the headcount overhead that services used to impose. To be sure, online services initially cost big bucks to develop, but thereafter they can be delivered over and over with almost no incremental expense.

More importantly, however, Web-based services have value far beyond the support dollars they save. They suggest a customer-centric view of the buyer-seller relationship, a view that focuses on the whole life-cycle of product ownership rather than on the sales transaction. Not surprisingly, customers tend to be extraordinarily loyal to companies that demonstrate this kind of customer commitment. Even better, customers increasingly see enough value in Web-based support services that they help turn online services into true profit-centers.

Who's on the cutting edge of delivering customer support services on the Web? For the past four years, Soft-letter and the Association of Support Professionals have hosted an awards competition for "The Year's Ten Best Web Support Sites." The ten award winners for 2001 (six large companies, four smaller ones) are all ahead of the pack in their understanding of Web-based customer support, and they offer a wealth of useful insights for companies that are still exploring Web support and service options:

* Greet visitors by name: One of the simplest and yet most powerful personalization techniques is to recognize Web site visitors by name. As part of a recent site makeover, icomXpress (support.icomxpress.com) developed a password system that checked each visitor against the company's master database of registered users. Using that password, the site automatically reads back the user's name and displays a personal greeting. Besides adding a nice personal touch, says Erik Bertrand, the password system uses customer e-mail addresses as usernames, so it's become easier to collect e-mail contact information. "And customers aren't able to log in with an essentially 'anonymous' username anymore --they have to identify themselves!"

Erik Bertrand, senior technical support engineer, icomXpress, 22 Cotton Rd., Nashua, N.H. 03063; 603/883-3800. E-mail: support@icomxpress.

* Offer an orientation tour: "When a customer comes to our Web site for the first time," says Steven Becker of think3 (customercare.think3.com), "we give them a very quick tour of the site and set expectations about what benefits customers can receive." In addition, new customers are invited to attend a "customer orientation seminar" on the Web, which is followed by a series of "proactive contacts" that introduce increasingly advanced educational and support tools. "We find that giving people specific steps to follow in solving their problems overcomes most of their reluctance to use our Web tools," Becker says.

Steven Becker, vice president/customer care, think3, 2880 Lakeside Dr., Santa Clara, Calif. 95054; 408/987-6811. E-mail: steve.becker@think3.com.

* Let users manage their own accounts: Customers may be hesitant to provide much data for a marketing profile, but they usually see the value of a fully-documented support profile. For its fee-based developer customers, 4D Inc. (www.4dpartnercentral.com) has created personalized account pages that let users track both open and closed support cases, update their contact information, customize the services they receive, and add new information to an open case. Says 4D's Greg Bergantz: "This creates an open dialog between the partner and the technical support engineer that is not possible with traditional telephone support."

Greg Bergantz, director of technical support, 4D Inc., 3031 Tisch Way, San Jose, Calif. 95128; 408/557-4647. E-mail: gbergantz@4d.com.

* Let customers manage information delivery: Users are also more likely to fill out profile forms if they gain control over the kind of support information they get. At Cognos (support.cognos.com/support), a "personal newsroom" page lets customers create customized weekly e-mail newsletters based on product ownership and types of information desired. "For example, a customer can choose to have only tips, techniques, and customer alerts pertaining to Cognos PowerPlay software," says Ed Shepherdson. "Customers tell us that they bookmark their Personal Newsroom and use it as a de facto home page for the Cognos support site."

Ed Shepherdson, vice president of worldwide customer support, Cognos, 3755 Riverside Dr., Ottawa, Ont. K1G 4K9; 613/738-1440. E-mail: ed.shepherdson@cognos.com.

* Offer a common point of contact: When National Instruments (www.ni.com) interviewed customers for its support site makeover, says John Lum, it became clear that the company's support channels were often perceived as fragmented. Customers saw the NI Web site as a logical place to find software drivers and patches and how-to information, but for other help they relied on live support services. The solution, Lum says, was to develop a single "global customer portal for all agent-assisted support options," including phone, e-mail, and user forums. "We put the customers' interests first: 'If you need to contact someone for help, here are all your options,'" he says. Even though customers

were free to ask for one-on-one answers, Lum notes, the number of requests for e-mail support actually dropped by 20%.

John Lum, Web support manager, National Instruments, 11500 N. Mopac Expy., Austin, Texas 78759; 512/683-5531. E-mail: john.lum@ni.com.

* Integrate Web and phone support: A common complaint about Web support is that it sometimes leaves users at a dead end, with no answer and nowhere to go. The Chancery-Misty City site (support.mistycity.com) offers a much more graceful solution: The system tracks each user's progress on the Web site and shows this information when a live analyst takes over on the phone. "The analyst immediately knows what items they've already viewed and understands the context of the support situation," says Devon Boorman. "This also minimizes the amount of time the user has to spend on the phone."

Devon Boorman, manager of support technologies, Chancery-Misty City Software, 3400-188th St. SW, Lynnwood, Wash. 98037; 604/294-1233. E- mail: dboorman@chancery.com.

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