NEXT-GENERATION

TECHNICAL SUPPORT
1 Next-Generation Technical Support
The Multi-Tier Support Model
The classic multi-tier support model was developed in an era
when the pace of technology change was slow; when teams of
rst-level support analysts handled most initial requests. The
rst-level analysts were trained to handle simple problems and
solve basic usage issues. Increasingly complex problems were
escalated up the chain to level-2 and level-3 analysts.
This multi-tier structure ensures that the best resourcess are
used to handle the most challenging problems. It works best
with product lines that have a long life cycle, for customers from
similar backgrounds operating in similar environments.
Present-day commmunciation, network and application
providers operate in a dynamic and highly competitive environment,
characterized by very short product/solutions life cycles, and a
customer base of small to large businesses operating in multiple
industries, from entertainment to emergency services.
This evolving industry environment is putting a strain on the
classic support model in many ways, including:
> Shorter product life cycles and rapidly evolving technologies
requires continual retraining and up-skilling of support
engineers
> Regional/follow the sun model makes the multi-tier model
expensive.
Introduction
Technical support services play a critical role in enhancing customer
satisfaction and ensuring customer loyalty. In todays highly
competitive business environment, developing innovative, high-
quality products is simply not enough. To gain a competitive
advantage, companies must also enable customers to derive
maximum value from their products. A growing number of large
technology companies have come to realize that the key to winning
future market share will be determined not only by products and
features, but by the post-sales support and services wrapped
around them. Hence, Technical Support services are increasingly
Technical support services have evolved considerably in the last
few decades with the introduction of next-generation technologies
that call for complex and expensive deployment and maintenance.
Businesses are under tremendous pressure to drive down the
cost of support services, improve operational e ncy, and
increase customer satisfaction. The evolution from reactive to
proactive and predictive services makes it possible for vendors to
increase network availability, reduce the number of faults, and
eliminate services outages. Through on-demand, personalized
support, evolved support dynamics help enhance the customer
experience, to maximize return on investment.
NEXT-GENERATION
TECHNICAL SUPPORT
Best in the class Technical support is key to driving customer success and loyalty.
2 Next-Generation Technical Support
Beyond the Multi-Tier Model
Rising costs, and increasing customer frustration with traditional
support structure, are forcing many companies to explore new
models, including online support forums, social media, and
partnerships with third-party vendors.
SOCIAL MEDIA: In many ways, technical support through social
media is not new; it has existed for many years in the form of
moderated chats and discussion forums. What makes social
media such a powerful double-edged sword is its buzz factor.
For example, social media can ruin a companys reputation by
exposing a serious bug that might otherwise have gone largely
unnoticed. At the same time, a single technical support analyst
can simply post a solution and the social buzz will multiply its
efectiveness by reaching a multitude of other customers facing
similar problems.
Social media, though useful in its own way, cannot be used as
the primary, or even secondary, channel for technical support.
ONLINE & MODERATED COMMUNITIES: These communities
display the positive, problem-solving aspects of social media
without the negative publicity generated in unmoderated forums.
Support communities not only provide an additional medium
of support but also enable customers to use and contribute
to a self-sustaining support mechanism with accelerated
resolution time.
> Enables quick training of new recruits and makes them
productive faster
> Standardizes responses to common bugs and failures
> Creates an efective resource base that customers can
access 24/7 (when integrated with moderated online
support communities)
> Focuses on HV/LC drives operational efciencies
Targeted knowledge creation works best for problems that are
large enough in scale to potentially overwhelm technical support
centers, but are simple to solve. More difficult and complex
problems are best handled by multi-tier support systems.
Tier 1
Customers
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
WEB
L1 L2 L3
SOCIAL
MEDIA
Regular
Customers
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: Knowledge management focusses
on high volume low complexity issues that drastically improves
productivity and operational efficiency, thus enabling the
organization to respond faster and more efectively to customer
needs. Some of the other advantages of knowledge management
include:
Ticket Volume
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Focus Area
High Volume
Low Complexity
High Volume
High Complexity
Low Volume
Low Complexity
Low Volume
High Complexity
Although the strategies previously discussed certainly do
increase efficiency, response time, etc., they still fall under
the category of reactive support, emphasizing problem
resolution over problem prevention.
Communication is the backbone of todays society, and the whole
world is now connected, thus the impact of downtime is not only
exceptionally high but also has a ripple effect. As systems
become more powerful and markets become more global, the
number of customers affected by failures continues to grow.
Real-time, fault-tolerant, and fully redundant systems systems
go a long way in avoiding complete system shutdown, and provide
an excellent solution for avoiding catastrophic failures.
Many of these issues can only be solved with active involvement
from the technical support department. For instance, in the
telecom world, the shutting down of single TRXs in a base station,
or failure of calls due to high levels of interference, will not
trigger the failover mechanism but will still have an impact on
the service. To deal with multiple things that can possibly go
wrong, a proactive approach to technical support is required.
3 Next-Generation Technical Support
Smart analytic combined with automatic collection of data on
software-enabled, proactive platforms that collect and correlate
data to provide insights into networks for actionable results which
enables signicant improvement in operational efciency and
reduction in costs and risks. Key components for implementation
include established intellectual capital repository, and real-time
analysis and correlation.
Smart analytic enabled technical support services also act as an
important diferentiatorfor OEMs, thus enabling them to penetrate
new markets.
SELF ORGANIZING NETWORKS (SON): Telecom operators,
faced with increasing competition and declining ARPU, are
increasingly demanding predictive support models to reduce
downtime and increase customer loyaltyespecially with
the high value business customers. The complexity of mobile
telecommunication systems has increased exponentially with
the rollout of multiple technologies (like GSM, 3G, LTE, and soon,
LTE Advanced) using multiple frequency bands.
OEMs are now focussing on SON to achieve higher product/
solution stability and to drive down end consumers support
cost. It elevates technical support from an activity that is
performed as the nal step in the process, to one that is tightly
integrated within each phase, from planning and deployment
to support.
SON has built in intelligence that enables self-optimizing and
self-healing. These predictive features improve user experience
by mitigating quality degradations that result from inaccuracies
in planning or equipment faults. Being an integral part of the whole
process ensures that potential faults are predicted and eliminated
in real time, under real network interference and overload
conditions.
Next-Generation Technical Support
Communications, network and application providers are moving
away from simple network monitoring and break-x modes of
operation, to service-quality and service-level management.
Next-generation Technical support services that provide a more
proactive and predictive approach to support are an essential
part of this transition to service quality management.
Planning Deployment
Support &
Maintenance
Linked to existing
knowledge
systems, SON
automates many of
the planning tasks
Self conguration,
reduce faults
arising from
wrong frequency
assignments
Improves customer
experience by
predicting capacity
bottlenecks.
Self-optimizing and
healing functions
help reduce load on
technical support
centers
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Assisted
Existing Support
Center
Enhanced Assisted
Collaboration-driven for
e2e case handling
Self-Service
Web portal and
knowledge base
Communities
User-initiated web groups driving
community conversations and
knowledge base
Predictive Smart Support
Data Analytics, Business Intelligence,
and Vulnerability Assessment
Predictive support services present a win-win scenario for the
communication, network and Application providers as well
as the customer. Customer satisfaction can be significantly
enhanced by anticipating problems and addressing them before
they actually occur, which reduces the total number of disruptions
faced by them. it also helps companies optimize and increase
efciency of their technical support centers.
Implementation of predictive support systems is made possible
by new developments in the field of data analytics, business
intelligence, and vulnerability assessments.
SMART ANALYTICS: With smart analytic (real-time monitoring
and notication, periodic health check and reports, fault/ capacity/
availability/performance management and tuning, device/
network/service/application reporting and analytic), there is an
attempt to identify potential sources of disruption, improve
stability for more efective deployment of advance technologies,
and manage complexity to deliver optimal, predictable
performance and benchmark performance against industry
peers and competition.
4 Next-Generation Technical Support
new service channels and delivering consistent support to each
of them. Innovations currently being considered to improve mode
of service delivery include:
> New communication channels
- Social media
- Web and mobile computing
- Retail stores
- Contact centres
> Tailored & personalized services
> Self-support portals and communities
EVOLVING INTERNAL DYNAMICS: Internal support platforms,
such as tools and applications, are continuously evolving with
business processes, and are being integrated to optimize the
support teams productivity. Examples of advanced tools and
applications include:
> Customized user interface integrating customer service
process ows
> Proactive display of customer personalization data
> Knowledge nuggets matched with problem description/
symptoms
Technical Support Strategies
Compared
Technical support has come a long way from the days of contact
centers addressing customer issues. A combination of powerful
internal and external changes has elevated technical support,
from a mundane back-ofce department, to a dynamic customer-
facing department, that is charged with ensuring customer
satisfaction and loyalty.
The tools and infrastructure required to provide both the service
and mode of delivery have evolved considerably to not only
minimize costs, but maximize customer satisfaction.
EVOLVING EXTERNAL DYNAMICS: New communication
channels are being introduced to provide exibility to customers.
Personalized support experience can be delivered by enabling
support personnel to have access to a customers business data,
individual data, infrastructure-related data (equipment, application,
services), and engagement history, along with a universal customer
history record, by mapping multiple social identities into one. The
key to providing a highly tailored service experience is integrating
1
Support
Emerging
Trends
Knowledge Management
Smart Services
Infrastructure Evolution - SON etc.
New Communication Channels E2E Case Handling
Tailored & Personalized Services
Support Communities
Mobile Solutions
4
3
2
1
4
3
2
1
Systems & Processes (internal) End user-facing (external)
5 Next-Generation Technical Support
Is this the End of Multi-Tier
Technical Support?
Despite several advancements that we discussed earlier, technical
support still remains a people business, where customers (people)
interact with support staf, albeit through modern technologies.
In the business of technical support, the multi-tier approach
still remains relevant.
Predictive and proactive technical support does not eliminate
the need for the traditional support system; it merely improves
the productivity and performance. To provide the best service
to the customer, one has to adopt a hybrid approach that
combines the best of both traditional and modern methods.
The various parameters to be considered while choosing a
hybrid approach are:
1 EFFICIENCY: The ability to reach out to a larger audience in a
cost efective manner
2 COST: The cost incurred, both in terms of both capital and
operational expenses
3 DEAL WITH COMPLEXITY: The ability of the channel to deal
with complex and critical technical issues
4 OPERATE STANDALONE: Ability to work as a standalone
channel
The biggest cost in the technical support business stems from
the large number of competent resources used to handle
customer issues. Channels like web and social media, when
integrated with a knowledge management system effectively
reduce the load on the support analysts. Self-help offered
through web and social media can be very efective in dealing
with common problems.
Relegating the more mundane and commonly occurring faults
to the web and social media has allowed the traditional tiered
model to focus on providing proactive and predictive support.
The capabilities and resourcing of these centers are augmented
to fully capitalize on tools such as knowledge management, SON,
and business analytics.
Aricents Next-Generation Technical
Assistance Center
Aricents Next-Generation Technical Assistance Center (NGTAC)
services portfolio ofers exceptional technical skills and mature
technical support processes.
We are a specialist provider of remote technical Technical support
services with a focus on new communication channels, knowledge
management, tailored and personalized services and predictive
and preemptive support models. We deliver best in class technical
support services which are customized as per our client needs
which aim to improve overall end-user experience and satisfaction.
Our experience with providing global technical support across
complex telecom technologies helps us understand the prevalent
issues that occur in product deployments across heterogeneous,
distributed environments.
Aricent has been formally recognized by the Technology Services
Industry Organization (TSIA) for Assisted Support provided to a
TSIA Founding Member for the Excellence in Service Operations
certication. TSIAs industry certication recognizes outstanding
service operations across various aspects of a customer support
business. This certification was developed by 50 leading
technology companies and includes over 300 technical support
operations best-practice criteria. It involved in-depth audits
of all relevant support functions and locations for the TSIA
founding member.
ASSISTED SUPPORT
FOR A TSIA FOUNDING MEMBER
2014 Aricent. All rights reserved.
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The companys key investors are Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Sequoia Capital.
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