As DEMO 08 Executive Producer Chris Shipley dryly noted today, "service and support is still a complex area." During today's DEMO presentations, it became evident the lines between consumer and enterprise support are blurring. Business IT tools are becoming more granular, and consumers are realizing more transparent access to experts while gaining control over rules-based systems for the home. Given that the average household spends one weekend day per month fixing home computer issues (per Support.com), the need is compelling.
For consumers
- Support.com has an established call center in New York that helps consumers with everyday computer issues. Their new service, PC Health Check, is a download that helps consumers to not only identify where problems are, but also optimize performance and security. Ideally, use of the free service will stop problems before they happen. If problems do occur, then users can either follow recommended steps to address the problem, or hire Support.com if the consumer does not want to repair the problem herself. With this move, Support.com competes more directly with repair services such as GeekSquad.
- SupportSpace is a community-powered, tech support marketplace that wants to replace traditional call centers. Experts join the marketplace after going through certification. Users with problems come to the site, and submit their issue in order to receive a bid from experts that can solve it. Customers can then monitor their own case progress, and actually see the next steps and tech notes. (I've always wondered what my trouble ticket notes actually say.) If the chosen expert can't solve the problem, then he or she can transfer it to another expert. The platform has an open API, and so developers and experts can add applications into the system, or embed SupportSpace into their own Web sites.
- Symantec Research Labs has a new approach for parents that want to establish online protection for their Web-active children. Unlike current, more automated solutions, Symantec's new offering is based upon family collaboration. With both the parents and the children involved, understandable, rules-based permissions are established for the children's Internet activities. (This is very similar to the list of family rules that many households have taped to the fridge.) Trust levels can be assigned to people, accounts, sites, and so on. The highlights and red flags of social network activity get reported back to the parents, but not the harmless (yet private) details of the children's social life.
For the enterprise
- Aternity helps IT managers to manage user experience. Desktops on the system are self-monitoring, and data is analyzed and correlated in real time. Desktop performance, resource consumption, etc. can be dynamically managed from end-to-end within business processes.
- Businesses that don't want - or can't afford - to provide their own customer service can use Helpstream by Pathworks. Since most companies can't provide customer service cost-effectively, and most customers can't get helped fast enough, Helpstream provides free, white-labeled customer service portals focused on streamlining the customer service experience. An enterprise-class case management system sits behind new community collaboration functionality. When a customer comes to a vendor's site, he sees community Q&A, knowledge base, community answers, and web search. If the problem isn't solved by ready information, the customer can either submit a trouble ticket or ask a community question. When that question is answered, the answers are presented in a Yahoo! Answers-like interface. (In the future, the best answer will be presented in an editable, wiki-like interface.) Given that the engineers here came from Remedy, there's little doubt that they understand the needs of enterprise-level support.
- MANDIANT "finds evil and solves crime," usually when consulting to large businesses and government agencies. Intelligent Response is their new, device-based enterprise product to collect evidence of malware, rootkits, and other wrongdoing. (Apparently, they've even stopped a bank robbery in progress.) If evidence is discovered in one location, the system ferrets out where else those footprints have been so that problems can be beat out completely.
On the consumer end, I'm most likely to adopt the Symantec offering because I think the collaborative approach would work well with my precocious stepchildren. Existing solutions seem overly arbitrary, so we haven't bothered with them. On the enterprise side, I like Helpstream - it's the enterprise software complement to Get Satisfaction, whose community-based approach to service is proving to be effective. (Disclosure note: I've been working directly with Get Satisfaction.) In each case, the more transparent, collaborative approach is what makes it a winner.
