Executive Thought Leadership

Technical Support, Creating Value

The business of technical support is evolving. Support has long been an integral part of the overall customer experience, providing a vital human link between a company and its customers. Now, across the marketplace, companies are seeking new ways to increase customer value and strengthen customer relationships. This need creates an unprecedented opportunity for technical support organizations to extend beyond their traditional reactive function, and become responsible leaders in customer value creation.

At Cisco, Technical Support is a vital part of our overall value delivery. While we've long been dedicated to customer satisfaction, increasing customer needs keep us ever more mindful of the pivotal role Support plays in delivering a successful customer experience. To truly provide the level of value customers need and expect, we believe a successful support structure has five key components.

The first component is a strong foundational infrastructure, built with current technologies that can deliver the best possible service offerings today's customers expect. For example, enabling a meaningful Issue to Resolution process requires a broad set of sub-processes (i.e. problem identification, solution development, closed loop feedback systems) driven by a strong, technological foundation. When properly implemented, I2R data analysis can reveal potential issues in upstream operations such as engineering, manufacturing, finance and sales, which can then be proactively addressed. The ultimate outcome is improved products, available when and where customers need them, and which produce a more satisfactory customer experience.

Advanced technologies, the second component, are necessary for the service level customers will demand tomorrow. Transcending the traditional reactive support model which relies on a human-to-human or human-to-web interface, we are fast approaching a new era of proactive support, driven by machine-to-web interaction. Cisco's vision for Advanced Support Tools is a model where service needs can be identified, service actions initiated, and even some problems resolved, without waiting for human detection and reaction.

As a result, customers will enjoy benefits like an immediate ability to identify non-standard network software, increased network inventory knowledge, increased effectiveness and focus of operations teams, and faster problem resolution through shared network knowledge.

A robust knowledge management architecture is critical to realizing the potential of Advanced Support Tools. Captured, readily usable data, complemented by automated, repeatable best practices, will form the foundation for an advanced solution that ultimately yields faster customer service, easier customer self help, and lower total cost of ownership.

Segmentation is the third component of our successful support structure. Once the proper systems infrastructure is in place, support offerings can be readily tailored and delivered according to the differing needs of unique customer sets. At Cisco, we're implementing a Support delivery model that directs tiered service offerings according to specific customer needs and capabilities. In this way, customers across all geographies can receive the right level of support through the best support channel for them.

A strong partner ecosystem is the fourth component. Today more than ever, customers require choices that can help them address urgent issues such as outsourcing for one-stop multi-vendor support, obtaining a needed capability in a specific region, or satisfying a particular brand preference. An ecosystem of quality partners means customers can enjoy value-based choice and benefit from the chosen partner's core expertise to complement their Cisco solution. To this end, Cisco Support maintains a global network of partners carefully chosen for their top notch capabilities.

Finally, the fifth component and a long-time hallmark of successful service organizations is a service-oriented culture. The Support culture absolutely must embrace certain fundamental values - a strong focus on the customer, personal accountability, and an innate service attitude. Without these, the Support organization is destined to disappoint both its customers and the company.

Even with this five component structure, measurement is the key indicator of success. Cisco Support continually measures and tracks our customers' experience of our service delivery, to understand how we're meeting customer needs and where we need to adjust.

With this focus, we believe we're preparing a support solution that will provide our customers the flexibility, choice and confidence needed to meet their long term networking requirements.