[August 09, 2005] CRM That Works: The Proactive Service and Support Paradigm The proactive service and support approach is based on a new paradigm called the 'virtual support engineer,' enabling vendors to virtually 'be there' 24X7, constantly monitoring the systems they support, identifying and detecting problems.   By Adi Dulberg, NextNine   In the 21st century world of converged telecommunications, where subscribers are being added at an incredible rate and new services are constantly introduced, supporting increasingly complex networks and systems such as billing, messaging, broadband and video that are changing on an almost daily basis is an absolutely daunting challenge.   And with wireline and wireless operator revenues directly linked to their respective systems’ service availability, effective and rapid service and support, as well as immediate problem resolution, is not a luxury – it’s a necessity.   Most glaring among the many problems inherent in providing rapid, up-to-the-minute resolution to complex problems lies in the nature of the process – it’s purely reactive.   Think about it – today, when an operator encounters a problem in one of his complex systems, the only place to turn to for help is the vendor from whom the system was purchased. Unfortunately, in most cases, by the time the operator notices the problem, subscriber service has already been impacted, forcing the vendor to resolve a situation that has been rendered critical.   Moreover, this is still only square one of the resolution process. The lengthy, manual process of collecting data from different units of the system and analyzing it to understand what went wrong results in a burden on the operator, a huge toll on the vendor’s support team and its relationship with the operator, and more often than not, results in unnecessary SLA penalties.   To put it bluntly, when vendors continue to use an archaic, reactive method of support – addressing a problem only after it occurs – they hinder service availability, put a strain on revenues and actually rely on the customer for information and assistance.   The ugly truth is that many telecom and IT vendors are caught in a vicious cycle: the only way they can manage increased demand for service and support from their existing and new customers, support newly introduced, complex products and services, and provide best-in-class support, is by hiring new teams of support engineers and forcing them to work 24 hours a day. But organizations cannot continue to sustain themselves by hiring more and more support staff.   The current support process can no longer answer the needs of the 21st century.   It's all in the approach Some forward thinking organizations have realized that the solution to this problem lies in their antiquated service and support methodology. Instead of relying on an ineffective, slow, reactive model, they have adopted an innovative new tack – proactive support.   Proactive support implies taking initiative to locate, identify and diagnose problems at their most nascent stage, and having the means to deliver rapid problem resolution so that a customer's system can continue to run and be available 24X7.   This approach empowers vendors to provide rapid support and problem resolution, ensuring carriers constant system availability and revenue continuity, while simultaneously increasing system efficiency and lowering service costs.    The proactive service and support approach is based on a new paradigm called the "virtual support engineer," enabling vendors to virtually "be there" 24X7, constantly monitoring the systems they support, identifying and detecting problem symptoms. As this new service model enables early problem detection, resolution can be achieved at the root – before it manifests itself in the system.   Once the “virtual support engineer” detects a problem symptom, an advanced alarm, along with related configuration and log files, is sent to the tech support engineer who uses the information to diagnose the problem and fix it immediately at the root. Because the problem is detected at this early stage, it can be solved quickly, without any negative impacts in terms of service disruptions, downtime or revenue losses to the operator and SLA penalties for the vendor.   With proactive support, it is the vendor that notifies the carrier of a potential downtime that may have cost hundreds of thousand of dollars in revenues has been detected and prevented.   But being proactive doesn’t just stop at monitoring systems, it also means performing other tasks such as automated preventive maintenance, inventory updates, software distribution and more. Automating these tasks will not only increase system uptime, but also dramatically improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the support team, and allow the same team to support many more customers, thus enabling vendors to scale.   An additional integral component of proactively supporting customers is ensuring all aspects of security and confidentiality. A proactive support solution must guarantee complete security for both the carrier and the vendor, including a highly secure communication channel, workflows that can be fully controlled by both sides and complete visibility for the carrier on all functions being performed within their network.   The proactive approach to service and support of business critical systems is not a theory, it’s a reality. Organizations around the world have already deployed proactive support and are enjoying the benefits every day.   The choice is clear   For today’s telecom vendor, it is apparent that the proactive support model provides benefits.   But, is it a "nice to have" – something you can push back a while longer?   Absolutely not!   With the market racing towards convergence and triple play, vendors and their carrier customers need to ask themselves if they can sustain their business by letting technical customer support reside low on the priorities list – even though it’s the frontline of customer communications and directly related to customer satisfaction?   Can they justify the expenditure of hiring additional service staff, recurring travel expenses, or investment in new infrastructure to provide support that does not even guarantee SLA requirements?   And how will these expenditures affect their bottom line?   The answer is a simple change of approach that will not only help deliver truly superior support, but will also protect profitability, customer loyalty and dramatically improve customer satisfaction.   The choice is yours.   Mr. Dulberg co-founded NextNine in 1998 and has served as NextNine's CEO since June 2003. The company URL is www.nextnine.com.     [ Back To the Online Project Management Community's Homepage ]