The changing face of software support: the impact of the Internet on customer support and support personnel

ABSTRACT

The site used to collect the data for this study (Beta Inc.) is a U.S.-based, international computing company with over 3000 support personnel employed world-wide. During the 12 month period from August 1999 to July 2000, the company moved the customer support operation from a telephone-based system to a mix of telephone and Internet-based support. The data presented in this paper was collected between January and July 2000 and shows the impact of this change on customer support and support personnel.

Prior to the implementation of the Internet-based, iNet Customer Support System, the quantity of customer support, as a measure of operational performance for Beta Inc., was based on Telephone Support Request (SR) volume. Between January and July, 2000, there was a 52% decrease in telephone SRs across the company. This followed a three-year trend of increasing telephone SRs. This study shows that the decrease in telephone SRs has been made up through customer self-service using the iNet Customer Support System. As a result of this trend toward customer self-service using the Internet, 15% of the Beta Inc. customer support personnel were RIFed in June 2000.

The change in the customer support service model at Beta Inc. impacts the required number of support personnel, the level of expertise required of customer support personnel, and the type of support which customers may expect in the future.

Several conclusions are presented:

• The effort to move Beta Inc. customers to a self-service mode was very successful.

• Average resolution time of Internet-based SRs exceeded average resolution time of telephone SRs, suggesting that iNET provides customer solutions to simpler problems with the submission of more difficult support problems to support personnel.

• A measure of the quality of customer support self-service is needed.

• As more support questions are answered through customer searches of the iNET system, the number of support personnel required to answer support questions will continue to decrease. At the same time, since only the more difficult support questions are left unanswered by the iNET system the level of support personnel expertise required to answer customer questions will increase.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS

General Terms:
Documentation, Management

Keywords:
Internet support, support personnel, technical support