Parature and Supportindustry.com have announced the release of a free white paper outlining the results of the 2008 Service & Support Metrics Survey.
This annual survey, conducted in February 2008 by Parature and SupportIndustry.com, was designed to explore the state of enterprise service and support – current industry trends, future plans, technology adoption, workforce issues, benchmarking strategies, metrics and other areas. Respondents were comprised of high-level executives responsible for a range of internal help desk and external customer-facing functions and representing vertical sectors across industry.
The survey reveals that, while support organizations are evolving processes and adopting technologies to improve service delivery, they continue to face significant challenges.
Some of the highlights from this year’s survey include:
Everyone Wants a Piece: Every year that the service and support metrics survey has been conducted, there has been an overarching theme. For support teams, whether they are serving customers or their own company’s employees, the pressure is constant. They continue to report that the demand for their services increased over what they experienced the previous year. In this survey, three quarters of executives (74.1%) said they have seen increased demand and use of their services.
Multi-Talented and Multi-Tasking: More than ever, everyone expects to be able to choose their means of interaction with support agents. Approximately 43 percent of respondents said that more than three quarters of their agents handle multiple channels of support including, phone, email, live chat, and co-browsing to meet the needs of their customers.
Getting it Together: In this year’s survey, more than half the respondents (56.8%) said they have managed to integrate at least some of their channels, whether it be at the level of multichannel queuing, through a single view into multichannel interactions, or via a common knowledgebase for interactions across channels.
Helping Others Help Themselves: Numerous incentives such as, cost reduction, customer demand, and the need for a more rounded services portfolio have driven organizations to fund self-service projects and strengthen existing offerings over the last few years. Nearly three quarters (72.6%) of responding executives said they offer access to a searchable knowledgebase or dynamic FAQ. Nearly 44 percent now offer clients the ability to submit cases electronically via the Web if they can’t find their answers in a searchable knowledgebase.
Your Place or Mine: Nearly 40% of the respondents have entrusted their support technology implementations to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) models. The research shows that CRM and other sales and service-related technologies lead the types of applications driving the on-demand software market. Of the respondents who don’t currently use a hosted solution, a third say they likely will within the next year.
More information on the service and support industry can be found at www.SupportIndustry.com
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