β€œAt ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ and our Real-Time Support channels, support engineers are in the driver’s seat to provide this experience,” states Becky Doyle, global vice president and head of Product Support – People at ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄, the organization that supports human experience management (HXM) solutions from ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄, including ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ SuccessFactors solutions. β€œPutting the β€˜real’ in Real-Time Support is key as we continue to move into the future of how we help our customers, especially in the cloud solution world.”

In this interview, Doyle explains the β€œreal” aspect of Real-Time Support and how it influences the possibilities behind always-on.

Q: Can you tell us a bit more about what you mean by the β€œreal” aspect?

A: Our approach offers an always-on support experience. This means that our customers can contact ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ support experts for any problem they have. Sure, we use some cool technology to help make sure we have the answers in the best possible way. But at the heart, it’s a real and human interaction. Anytime a customer gets to work with a real person to solve an issue it creates a feeling of connection. This interaction could be a live voice call with the service, through a , or any other Real-Time Support channel. Embedded into the ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ solution with , this real-time interaction can create a fantastic connection between customers and our support experts.

This connection is important and is sometimes a missed opportunity. We need to think of both our customers and support experts as people who work together to solve any problems and make sure the customer’s business runs as smoothly as possible. This feeling of connection through the live channels is valuable for both. My colleague, Mohammed Ajouz, described the criticality of in a Forbes article.

Partnering in real time gives our support experts an increased sense of purpose. It also connects them to what the customer wants to get accomplished. It’s different from having to submit a ticket to then walk through the problem and get the questions answered. The support experts can help a person, a human, with whatever they need to get done and the process can be faster as it solves the problem within a conversation. This is really powerful.

You mentioned the human side of the Real-Time Support approach. Is there data to show its benefits to the customer experience?

There’s a significant story to tell when we look at the experience our customers have with Real-Time Support. I already talked about the human aspect and the human element of it. When we look at the data, our customers typically get their cases solved faster through Real-Time Support and have a better overall experience. These also often get solved in a single interaction.

Imagine you have an issue and get your interaction solved as soon as you reach out to somebody. You get your answer in real time, when you need it. We can, of course, tie this time to money. Real-Time Support helps make sure our customers’ business continues to transact and flow the way they need it to. We believe the time-to-value of getting a problem solved helps reduce costs for the customer.

One key indicator we look at is the overall customer effort. As described in an , customer effort score is defined as the ease with which customers can use a product or service, resolve a support issue, or find the information they need. When we talk about Real-Time Support, we typically see the customer effort score really improve overall. Customers feel they need to put less effort into their overall support experience or work with our solutions to meet their business needs. This is a powerful human connection to the way we measure how good we are as an organization.

Real-Time Support holds particular importance for our customers in the HR world. What does this human interaction mean from a human experience management perspective?

I am excited about where things are headed for HXM customers. That β€œX” in the abbreviation really brings out that experience – our human experience management. This is such a powerful shift in the HR space. As our HR solution suite becomes more digital and customers submit cases, more often it’s HR professionals that submit them. These are business users and not necessarily technical contacts. The experience goes beyond fixing the product from a technical perspective; it gets down to how customers use our ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ solutions and what they need to best run their business. Real-Time Support can play a perfect part in bringing that experience home for our customers and our support experts. Being able to support them in real time helps make the overall experience simpler and more personal.

Real-Time Support helps us be more effective and helps our customers with that human and real interaction. When I talk about it from an HXM perspective, our ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ products and solutions are interconnected to the world’s most important resources – the people using them. We help people get hired faster, trained better, and help them more effectively manage their performance. More importantly, we help provide for their families when our ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ solutions facilitate their pay or can help them make smart decisions on their own career path. When it comes to support, there’s nothing more real than to enable our people to help our customers help their people.

Where do you see the future direction of Real-Time Support?

In the cloud space, support can’t simply be an island of helping customers when they come to us. We have the responsibility to work with product management, development, and operations teams across ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ solutions. This close collaboration lets us influence ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ product innovations to make our support more real and to provide that seamless support experience.

One focus of Real-Time Support is to embed artificial intelligence-driven self-service knowledge capabilities into our ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ products as part of Built-In Support. Not only will customers have that true human interaction, they’ll also be able to receive support information relevant to the ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ solution in use.

Another future direction in our support transformation goals is to make support more personal for customers and to open a two-way channel of communication from within the ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ product. The goal is to implement resolutions before business disruption can occur and proactively make customers aware of things before they happen. We want to directly connect them with information that’s relevant to the application in use or provide access to a real-time channel directly from within the ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ solution. Both of these capabilities are pretty cool.

What do you feel is important to remember?

I encourage our customers to get β€œreal” with us through Real-Time Support. Try out Real-Time Support channels, especially when the topic could use that human touch. See how it feels to connect with us. Get real information and immediate answers to help you on your way faster.

Learn more about .

Regina Postman is part of Customer Support and Innovation Communications at ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄.

β€œThe support industry has been severely disrupted over the past decade, but much, much more in just the last few years since the pandemic started,” stated Mohammed Ajouz, senior vice president and global head of at ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄. β€œWe have experienced more change in the last two years than we’ve had probably in two decades. We have watched support go from an afterthought to top of mind for CIOs, as they have seen how vulnerable their business could be with unforeseen or unpredicted crises.”

The need to transform is further accelerated by the abundant availability of new technologies – such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, Big Data, in-memory computing, and hyperconnectivity, to name just a few. All these changes also have an impact on customer support. Having an outdated support model is no longer an option. In this interview, Ajouz describes why it’s key to give immediate support, why it’s important to predict potential issues before they could occur, and why an enterprise support organization needs to be more proactive in providing bidirectional support.

Q: Why is Real-Time Support valuable for customers?

A: Let me first provide some context around the disruption in the support industry. Technology is more complex and integrated. In the past, customers used to have a single mission-critical application. Today, most processes are mission critical and everything needs to be made available around the clock. What was once considered a luxury – such as offering 24×7 support – is now an expectation and customers are demanding their vendors take more responsibility for delivering business outcomes.

Customers today have much higher expectations of support, especially when it comes to real-time. Because expectations have changed so dramatically, creating a support case and waiting one or two days for a response is no longer an option. This is why ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ created and fine-tuned with the basic objective of being available when the customer needs us most. That, in its simplest form, is the premise of what we’re doing with Real-Time Support.

Why is it important to strike the right balance between proactive and preventative versus real-time?

When a customer faces a problem, they expect ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ to be there for them. Whether it’s through or , customers are working with the same pool of experts that typically process their cases. But we’re taking this one step further. What if we contacted customers before they even became aware of their problem? We are not only there in real time, but we are also pivoting from reactive support models to predictive and proactive support. The true value of those services lies in our ability to predict and solve customer problems before they cause any business interruption. This is the evolution of our Real-Time Support approach toward delivering better business outcomes.

We can tap into our vast repositories of information to analyze and understand the trends and patterns behind our customers’ system and software usage and drive differentiated customer experiences. The vast amounts of data about customer behavior and preferences previously collected but not effectively utilized is the foundation of our . The power behind the data lake, powered with AI, is our ability to incorporate this information into highly personalized customer experiences and learn from the past to predict the future. With access to this valuable knowledge, we will transform the support experience into one where support prevents an issue from becoming a business-impacting event.

Being proactive and preventative is our ultimate vision with Real-Time Support: not only to be there when you need us, but to be there before you even know you need us.

What will be the long-term impact of investing in real-time channels and in proactive, preventative support?

We expect our investments in Real-Time Support to improve our ability to better support the needs of our customers. Many market and industry studies have shown a direct correlation between customer loyalty and customer effort. As we reduce the amount of effort a customer experiences, the more loyal that customer is going to be. This relates to the as described by Gartner. This balance between effort and value becomes more critical with cloud customers. The reason? Cloud customers, unlike traditional IT departments, are business users and end users. We have simplified the interaction and made it easier and simpler for them to interact with support.

In the days of on-premise software, we communicated with IT power users who understood the technology and complications behind it. Those power users knew that a support case could take a few days to resolve. Our cloud customers’ expectations are significantly different and, as a result, our services have evolved to cater for these needs in the cloud. This is why Real-Time Support is so critical. It increases the value of solutions by lowering cloud customer effort to obtain them.

The premise of predictive and preventative support is a reduction in customer effort. And if there isn’t a problem because we resolved it ahead of time, that is the ultimate effortless experience we strive to deliver to our customers. Value and effort are directly correlated: more effort means less value, less effort means more value.

What are some recent enhancements of Real-Time Support?

Adding to the existing portfolio of Real-Time Support channels, we recently introduced . This service is supported by certified, external peers. This is ideal for asking non-critical questions and getting insights from experts outside of ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄. We initially started with ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ SuccessFactors solutions and recently expanded it to include some of our core enterprise resource planning (ERP) and ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ Business Technology Platform products. We are seeing a lot of momentum building among our customers.

Another enhancement is with . It has been expanded to also include medium-priority tickets for those times where customers need to speak with a manager. And finally, with our migration from our to β€œ,” the new single-entry point to ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ support, the support case creation process can be much easier and powered by cutting-edge technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. This helps reduce the effort of our customers and ultimately provides them with an almost effortless experience.

Can you give us a sneak peek of what we can expect in the future of Real-Time Support?

Let me come back to the point that cloud customers expect a simpler, faster, and effortless experience in interacting with support. One of the key initiatives we’re working on is with . The basis of Built-In Support is to bring the entire support experience customers know from ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ Support Portal or ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ ONE Support Launchpad directly into the product. Rather than going to a portal to log a support case, query an existing case, initiate a chat, or search our knowledge base, we’re putting the power and full functionality of ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ support within the product and at the customers’ fingertips.

Another aspect of our Real-Time Support approach is the move from the traditional unidirectional support – of customers reaching out to us when they need us – to bidirectional support. Not only can we communicate directly with customers, we can give them timely and relevant information about product issues or alerts, upcoming releases, product trainings, or any other information that enhances their experience with support at ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄. All this information would be relevant to the customer’s platform, product, or version and curated specifically to their personas. This is how we see ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄ support in the future: bidirectional, predictive, and effortless.

Follow Mohammed Ajouz on and .
Regina Postman is part of Customer Solution Support and Innovation Communications at ΒιΆΉΤ­΄΄.