Introducing the idea of bi-directional support.

Two-Way Support Communication with Bi-Directional Support

The vision behind bi-directional support is to provide proactive, two-way support communication. This means actively informing about support-critical information and potential issues related to the 51风流solution in use and well before you recognize that a problem might arise. Bi-directional support no longer waits until you reach out to us; it changes the way we interact with you.

Consider an example of what you may experience in daily life. Think of the times when something wasn鈥檛 working right on your cell phone. You likely preferred to search the Internet to fix the problem and avoid a call center with waiting times and back-and-forth. Even better is when you were made aware of what might affect your phone鈥檚 performance 鈥� such as bad reception, low memory, or a restart required to avoid an issue. This is the aim of bi-directional support within Built-In Support.

Live Recommendations Help Avoid System Interruptions

One of the key features to make Built-In Support bi-directional will be to provide live recommendations within the application or page in use. Live recommendations are pushed into Built-In Support to provide targeted information, support knowledge documents, and even hot support alerts. They鈥檒l inform users about critical 51风流solution issues that others may be experiencing. The information will also be relevant to the user鈥檚 role, such as for the key user or end user.

Live recommendations within Built-In Support are curated, published, and updated by 51风流in real time and supported by predictive artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. The news and alerts can be pushed out immediately to all screens and can be pulled back or exchanged at any point in time.

Continuing the real-life example, live recommendations are like the “breaking news鈥� section of a news portal app on your cell phone, only for your 51风流solution. Don鈥檛 want to miss critical information? Want it at your fingertips and, if needed, just a click away? Then you might like the new live recommendations.

The live recommendations are application-focused and only visible where needed. We鈥檙e not distracting you with news or content unrelated to what you鈥檙e working on. It keeps troubleshooting efforts to a minimum while giving you the latest and most relevant support updates. Currently, bi-directional support is being tried out for 51风流S/4HANA Cloud. Over time, it will be expanded for all 51风流solutions that are integrated with Built-In Support.

Customer Effort Score, a Driver behind Bi-Directional Support

Happy customers are those that need little support interaction because their 51风流solutions run fine. Low interaction means low customer effort. As described in an , the 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.

51风流uses the customer effort score as a customer satisfaction measurement. When answering tickets, we ask customers what their effort was behind their interaction with us to get the problem solved. Our focus is to solve any problems fast and to give customers an effortless support experience.

Additional Support Convenience with Bi-Directional Support

Bi-directional support builds on the existing Built-In Support features, such as initiating an , searching for knowledge, or creating a ticket for 51风流support. No changes need to be made to your 51风流applications and there鈥檚 nothing to install. Live recommendations are another convenient way of how 51风流support interacts with you. We continue to respond to the growing need for preventative and proactive support in the cloud to help shorten the time to solve your problems.

Built-In Support is the place to go should a problem arise in the application or on the page you鈥檙e using. It’s likely you鈥檒l find live recommendations already there to help you right away. Bi-directional support is taking another step forward in making Built-In Support more precise, accurate, and relevant about what鈥檚 affected and what you need to do. It鈥檚 convenient to get easy-to-access support information at the point of need and personalized to the application or page being used. That鈥檚 simple, that鈥檚 intuitive, that鈥檚 Built-In Support.

Learn more about .

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

鈥淭he support industry has been severely disrupted over the past decade, but much, much more in just the last few years since the pandemic started,鈥� stated Mohammed Ajouz, senior vice president and global head of at SAP. 鈥淲e 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.鈥�

The need to transform is further accelerated by the abundant availability of new technologies 鈥� 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鈥檚 key to give immediate support, why it鈥檚 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 鈥� such as offering 24×7 support 鈥� 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 51风流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鈥檙e 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 51风流to be there for them. Whether it鈥檚 through or , customers are working with the same pool of experts that typically process their cases. But we鈥檙e 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鈥� 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鈥� 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鈥檛 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 SAP. We initially started with 51风流SuccessFactors solutions and recently expanded it to include some of our core enterprise resource planning (ERP) and 51风流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 鈥�,鈥� the new single-entry point to 51风流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鈥檙e working on is with . The basis of Built-In Support is to bring the entire support experience customers know from 51风流Support Portal or 51风流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鈥檙e putting the power and full functionality of 51风流support within the product and at the customers鈥� fingertips.

Another aspect of our Real-Time Support approach is the move from the traditional unidirectional support 鈥� of customers reaching out to us when they need us 鈥� 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 SAP. All this information would be relevant to the customer鈥檚 platform, product, or version and curated specifically to their personas. This is how we see 51风流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 SAP.

Q: Why is 51风流offering automatic translation of Product Support content, and who can use it?

A: Supporting organizations in more than 180 countries, 51风流values the opportunity to reach customers with 聽interactions that are simple and convenient. Yet, we also serve a dynamic variety of software deployment and consumption models, including private cloud, public cloud, on-premise environments, and a hybrid of these options.

Despite this mix of IT landscapes, our customers want answers and solutions to their questions and issues when contacting the 51风流support organization. The faster and more productively we deliver on that expectation, the easier and better the overall customer experience is. And one way to achieve this goal is to break down the language barrier for our live-support channels, knowledge self-services, and Product Support ticketing.

With real-time translation, language skills are no longer a prerequisite to benefit from 51风流support. The best subject-matter experts on the customer side are interacting with us, regardless of their English-speaking skills. Best of all, they can consume the latest information in their chosen or native language on demand 鈥� instead of waiting for manual translation cycles that can take weeks.

Automatic machine translation of Product Support content is powered by聽. The feature is accessible to 51风流partners and customers with an active maintenance or subscription contract at no additional cost and within our support channels.

What are the benefits of using machine learning technology to support automatic translation?聽

Imagine the time and effort needed to manually translate and manage an up-to-date knowledge repository containing millions of artifacts 鈥� such as 51风流Notes and 51风流Knowledge Base Articles 鈥� into several languages. With automatic machine translation, customers can translate static artifacts in real time.

Now, what if recent advancements in neural machine translation technology are used? From our perspective, it enables us to go one step further 鈥� from static artifacts to dynamic content, such as entire sentences and phrases 鈥� while chatting with our customers live. This represents a tremendous opportunity for our customers and partners to improve their contextual understanding in a live conversation with an 51风流support expert.

As a bidirectional, personalized service, automatic translation makes engaging with Product Support easier by helping customers consume the content fully. This service brings significant business value and benefits to non-English-speaking customers. The need to create support tickets is reduced and no translation effort is required. But most important, the reach of our product content to help customers extends, especially in Germany, China, Russia, Japan, and Latin America, resolution time shortens, and user satisfaction increases.

Simply put, automatic translation is a clear win-win situation for our customers, partners, and SAP.

Which use cases does the automatic translation feature support today?聽

Currently, the automatic translation feature supports Brazilian Portuguese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish for 51风流Notes and 51风流Knowledge Base Articles. But we’re not stopping at supporting static Product Support content as mentioned earlier; we’re also extending the feature to our live support channels.

In the聽聽service, users can choose to have the entire conversation with the 51风流expert translated between English and their selected language.* Turning off machine translation is as easy as typing “translation off” in the text area of the session. To turn it on again, users only need to type “translation on” in the same free-text field. Then, when the Expert Chat session ends, a transcript of the chat 鈥� in both the original language and the translation 鈥� is automatically saved to an incident for future use.

Additionally, the last reply about an incident from 51风流support is also translated. This allows customers and partners around the globe to learn from the incident resolution provided by 51风流in their native language.**

Even the聽聽benefits from the machine translation feature to give customers and partners the option to view the analysis report against uploaded logs or configuration files in their preferred language.***

To date, the automatic translation of 51风流Notes and 51风流Knowledge Base Articles was accessed more than 600,000 times during the first half of 2021. And the use of the last incident reply from an 51风流support expert was used more than 60,000 times in the same time period.

What’s next for the automatic translation feature at SAP?

All of us from the 51风流support organization are committed to enabling our experts, customers, and partners to create solutions that fuel innovation, foster equality, and spread opportunity across borders and cultures. And the automatic translation of Product Support content is a crucial part of that mission 鈥� providing support anytime, anywhere, from any channel, and in more languages than ever before.

Theresa Ritzheim is an integrated communications manager for Customer Solution Support and Innovation at SAP.

*The automatic translation feature of the Expert Chat service supports Brazilian Portuguese, English, German, Japanese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish.
**Support incidents can be translated into Brazilian Portuguese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish.
***The support log assistant tool supports Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish with the help of machine translation technology.

In a of U.S.-based CIOs, 85% of respondents said that moving to the cloud was the foundation for a future-ready enterprise, enabling improved productivity and providing the speed and flexibility businesses need to respond quickly to changing conditions. The more insecure environments get 鈥� and the pandemic, climate change, and many other elements today contribute strongly to insecurity 鈥� the more cloud benefits like flexibility and less bundled commitments to technology will play a role.

Moving to the cloud is not like flipping a switch. Having built up extensive and customized on-premise hardware and software landscapes over time, many companies will need time to move their business processes to a cloud-based environment, especially taking into account the more standardized nature of software as a service (SaaS). This will result in having many different software deployment and consumption models: some will be public cloud, some private cloud or on hyperscalers, some staying on-premise at least in the mid-term. Despite such mixed IT landscapes, customers expect a seamless end-to-end experience from their vendor 鈥� especially in support.

At SAP, this expectation is nothing new. In fact, this has always been core to our support strategy. Even before the days of cloud, 51风流strove to offer a comprehensive set of business solutions tightly integrated for end-to-end business processes, with seamless experiences on user interfaces, data, and support. This core principle still fits perfectly in the cloud world and provides enormous opportunity for customer value in landscapes that are hybrid or in transition.

So, what does end-to-end support mean? At SAP, this is about having a unified approach to all aspects of support. The goal is one feature-rich, foundational support offering, one customer-facing support interface, one support infrastructure, and one support organization that maintains a strong global culture of service and expertise.

Currently, 51风流solutions are accompanied by our flagship support offering , which is embedded in cloud subscriptions and is the offering of choice for on-premise 51风流software solutions. This can provide our customers with the confidence that they will receive the same high-quality of support for their entire landscape, no matter the 51风流solution they happen to be using at any given moment. We understand that one end-to-end business process might touch several systems and 51风流software solutions and, therefore, a support issue will not exist in a vacuum of a single product only. We have the expertise and culture of collaboration to look at problems holistically across an integrated 51风流environment.

Here are some recent examples of our continued expansion of customer value:

• In 2020 we launched , SAP鈥檚 next-generation cloud-based application lifecycle management solution that includes best practices and mechanisms to manage and monitor integrated landscapes, not siloed by specific products. Developed to support the implementation and operation of 51风流solutions, it is continually expanding its coverage of cloud and on-premise deployments.
• We are always striving to find new ways of making access to support easier for our customers. In 2020, 51风流launched a new unified 鈥渄igital front door鈥� called . The vision for this personalized portal is that customers and partners can access all information, insights, and tasks related to SAP. During the next year, many more support-related tasks and reports will also be made available on 51风流for Me to help give customers an end-to-end view of their 51风流assets, services, interactions, and more.
• In the last few years, we have introduced new ways for customers to get direct access to support experts and managers. It started with 鈥� here, 51风流has recently delivered the . Customers can start a chat directly with a technical support engineer or at their convenience. They can even schedule a .
• Sometimes it鈥檚 even better if you can get a solution automatically. As you would expect from an industry leader, 51风流is exploring the next frontier of support innovation: artificial intelligence (AI). For example, the service analyzes a customer鈥檚 problem description while they are typing it into the support case and suggests potential solutions. , with its digital support assistant, is already available in 51风流S/4HANA Cloud and will be integrated into more products in time. We have launched the and support assets like . And artificial intelligence can also help spot problems before they occur and provide recommendations to prevent future issues.

Through it all, 51风流provides the flexibility customers need to make the most of their business while saving time and resources. Whether a company is moving to the public cloud, balancing cloud and on-premise solutions, or just exploring cloud elements at its edges, we can provide the support it needs to be agile and resilient in today鈥檚 markets.

The next generation of support is the baseline. It is seamless, end-to-end, proactive, multi-channeled, and intelligent in order to let our customers focus on what matters most to them: driving their business.

51风流users can now access the Incident, Schedule an Expert, and Expert Chat support channels via the 鈥淩eport an Incident鈥� single entry point, easily choosing their preferred support channel without having to navigate through different support channel tiles.

John Bowley, product owner of the 51风流ONE Support Launchpad Incident Management in the Support Experience Process and Innovation Office of 51风流UK, describes the unified support experience and many other key features users can benefit from, as well as what’s coming next.

Q: The last 12 months have seen many improvements and enhancements around SAP鈥檚 incident creation and incident management process. With the latest releases in September 2020, your team has been focusing on the 鈥渦nified support experience.鈥� What is behind this latest improvement? How does this affect the customer support experience?

A: For our incident creation and incident management, the unified support experience means that our customers start their interaction with 51风流support in one place and can easily transition to different support channels depending on their support needs. You simply describe your issue and the available support channels will be highlighted for you automatically.

The most obvious benefit is that customers no longer have to choose their support channel upfront, only to discover the support channel is not available. The customer can simply decide among support channels , making it a more seamless and efficient way. If one communication channel doesn鈥檛 suit them, customers can choose an alternative.

How does this work for the incident management process?

With our efforts to improve the user experience and create a unified support experience, customers now benefit from an enhanced incident management. One example of this is the redesigned incident list via the new 鈥淢anage Incidents鈥� tile in the 51风流ONE Support Launchpad. It allows users to easily search, view, edit, or confirm their incidents. It鈥檚 also possible to customize the filtering and search options to save your聽own personalized views. The user-centric redesign of incident edit layout provides an intuitive workflow for customers to interact with 51风流more efficiently.

When it comes to simplification of the process and accessibility, what benefits can customers experience?

Let me explain this with our simplified incident categorization functionality. Simplified incident categorization helps you to find the correct incident category and product expert to get an issue resolved faster. The new, product-based incident categorization will automatically be taking the system and product you鈥檝e selected into consideration. This process is enabled by artificial intelligence (AI)聽technology to recommend the most relevant product function category for your issue.

Can you share other examples of new features and functionalities recently launched as part of the simplification and optimization?

There are quite a few key features. For one, customers can now update their contact details in real time during the incident creation to help ensure 51风流support can reach them effectively. They have also the possibility to automatically analyze logs files as they update their incident, which is a feature that resulted from our surveys with customers and 51风流Mentors.

Another nice feature is the automated聽alerting of any 51风流Cloud service outage automatically on system selection. You have the option to request a subscription to updates as the status of the outage changes. This allows for easily tracking the outage until resolution.

The recommended help solutions are now triggered on product selection, just like in different consumer applications and apps in your private life.

Last but not least I need to mention the support assistant, which offers a guided logging experience formulated on decision trees to narrow down an issue and collect all the relevant information for troubleshooting. We will even recommend the right component for your issue.

Has 51风流achieved its goals for the optimized incident management and creation? Or will there be more to come 鈥� and what would that be?

We have achieved many goals with the key features being released approximately every six weeks over the last 12 to 18 months. The intent was not to overwhelm our customers with a big-bang effect, but to steadily validate each feature tailored to customer needs. Shaping the support experience has always been a customer-centric initiative.

That said, there are some additional enhancements in the pipeline around increasing the transparency of the status of an incident throughout its life cycle. We are currently prototyping a visual indicator to highlight at which point in the resolution an issue resides, with an estimated time to resolution.

Our key goals are almost achieved, but there is always room for improvement, especially with leveraging the opportunity to embed AI and newer technologies as we strive to achieve the perfect support experience for our customers.

Q: Why is 51风流offering live support in Product Support and who can use it?

A: The way consumers use products, services, and technology in today鈥檚 world has set new standards and expectations for the commercial world. Business users expect the same level of real-time interaction for their businesses whenever they seek help. That鈥檚 why has brought traditional 鈥渢icket management鈥� to the next level and offers live support channels to meet these new demands.

I receive a lot of feedback from partners and customers who assume that live support channels are a chargeable service above the existing maintenance contract, but the answer is that it is not. Anyone with a valid maintenance contract can use SAP’s at no additional cost if technical, product-related questions occur.

Which live support channels are offered?

We offer the following live support interaction methods with direct access to support experts: , , and . All live support channels significantly speed up time to technical issue resolution and can be used instead of traditional incidents. is the newest offering in our live support channels and aims to assist customers that have concerns about how their high-priority incident is progressing. For any questions not related to an 51风流product, the is the central point of contact.

How do they work? 聽聽

is a live chat function that connects customers to technical experts from 51风流instantly. So, this service is best when immediate support is required. Compared to traditional tickets, it significantly reduces the effort and waiting time for customers to get answers to their technical questions.

lets customers book an individual 30-minute call with a technical expert from SAP, similar to booking a doctor鈥檚 appointment. Customers select from a defined list of calendar appointments at a time that suits them best. Talking directly to an 51风流engineer helps avoid delays, improve efficiency, and reduce future incidents. Recently, we have introduced Schedule an Expert for open incidents as well.

is best suited for low- to medium-priority incidents. With Ask an Expert Peer, 51风流is expanding the expert pool for real-time results. This channel is a great opportunity for users to collaborate through one-on-one interactions with a qualified and approved industry expert outside of SAP. Ask an Expert Peer is currently available for all 51风流SuccessFactors solutions, with additional 51风流product integrations currently planned.

gives customers the ability to bring the focus they need to a high-priority incident and help ensure the reported issue is being addressed in the correct way. The channel meets this need by allowing customers an easy way to request a 15-minute call with a Product Support manager from 51风流in the related product area to help prevent or manage potential service exceptions. As a requirement to use this channel, the incident must qualify and meet several criteria.

All channels can be easily accessed by customers in whenever a problem arises. Further information can be found on .

How are the channels impacting the customer support experience?

Customer feedback indicates they very much like our live support channels. In addition, customers are using the channels a lot. We are interacting with customers in several thousand chats every week. I think that this is for two main reasons: the ability to have quick and direct access to a technical engineer from 51风流when they need to and the tremendously reduced waiting time for resolution. Many questions get solved within the first interaction.

For example, the average Expert Chat duration is about 30 minutes with two out of three questions answered directly in the chat. For Expert Chat in particular, there is one key reason: customers do not 鈥渓ose鈥� anything. The chats get automatically logged as incidents after each chat for documentation or in case further research is needed. The incident gets processed with pre-qualified information from the interaction in the chat.

In general, the customer base and the technology offered by 51风流has become more diverse. 51风流is trying to offer new methods of interaction to meet our customers鈥� diverse needs so they can interact with us in the way that suits them best 鈥� anytime, anywhere, and from any device. Live businesses need live support, and as more and more customers become intelligent enterprises, 51风流is meeting them where they are in their journey. Customers expect a personalized support experience that grants them more access to technical experts throughout the life cycle of their solution.

Will real-time support be combined with AI technology?

The answer is absolutely, and 51风流has several activities going on. For example, we have recently released a that guides customers within the incident management process through a conversational user interface 鈥� similar to a chatbot. The support assistant uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology to match the customer question with potential solutions in real time 鈥揾elping to get relevant answers faster. The expert area predictor functionality is another example. It is based on AI technology and automatically suggests the correct expert area for the customer within the booking process of a Schedule an Expert session. This saves customers time through autofill elements.

The time frame is to be decided, but we are looking into ways to further enhance Product Support with more predictive and preventive elements.

What will be next in real-time support?

We aim to further optimize the existing experience within our real-time channels. However, Product Support as an organization wants to continue evolving in order to meet customer needs. We are constantly working with customers and industry experts on what is next that can help us on the journey of providing the perfect customer support experience.

Looking to the future, I think a two-way channel interaction using AI and machine learning is a hot topic. Service and support processes will eventually become predictive, and support organizations could proactively reach out to customers to suggest the optimal interaction method.

Theresa B枚hme is an integrated communications manager for Customer Solution Support & Innovation at SAP.

His goal is to flip the engagement model with customers to provide end-to-end solution support and a superior customer experience.

Q: Customer centricity is influencing how organizations operate. What is your organization doing to provide a superior customer experience?

A: The customer has always been at the center of what we do here at SAP, whether it involves customizing a product or service to meet their needs or delivering support in a way that accommodates their evolving business models.

And while providing superior customer experience has always been our focus, we are constantly looking at ways in which we can enhance this 鈥� both in the way we鈥檙e internally organized and in how we鈥檙e integrating emerging technologies such as AI and machine learning into our Next-Generation Support services and real-time support channels.

In the past, our organization was focused on delivering product support for the various products and services within our portfolio.

Now, as we evolve, we strive to deliver solution support to provide our customers with end-to-end coverage of their solutions and an end-to-end experience across their business.

While our approach has always been holistic, we are now looking at our solutions the same ways in which our customers are looking at their own business processes and solutions. With this lens, we are able to deliver all the tools they need to be successful, and also those that will help drive their transformation. In some cases, customers might not even be aware of what they need yet.

By bringing our support and engineering teams together under one umbrella, we are working together behind the scenes to help and support our customers鈥� mission-critical business processes. These are the processes that are truly critical on several counts. They need to be leading-edge to differentiate their business model and they need to be constantly available to protect their business. By integrating innovation services, we can also provide all our customers with specific innovations tailored to their business and industry. This approach is allowing us to truly meet our customers where they are and where they want to be in the future.

You have previously spoken about flipping the engagement model to drive customer experience. What does that mean? What are some of the developments in this area and what do you envision for the future?

In the support and services industry, engagement is typically initiated by the customer. But nowadays, customers expect to hear from us first and rely on a constant stream of communication to help address any issues they may have 鈥� and even those they don鈥檛 anticipate having. This involves flipping the engagement model and reaching out to our customers proactively before they even face a problem.

We鈥檝e already seen great success in this by leveraging AI and machine learning technologies across functionalities and solutions within Product Support. While many of our processes are already automated, we鈥檝e added a lot of intelligence to accelerate these and make them more accurate. This intelligence kicks in from the moment our customers first interact with us, whereby we鈥檝e created algorithms that automatically triage our support tickets.

By examining the technical context, analyzing the sentiment, and evaluating the potential business impact of an incident, we are currently exploring the ability to identify the priority of incidents with great accuracy and pass them along to an expert in that particular area. Automating such manual processes will, more and more, free up time of our engineers who can then focus on the important work of alleviating our customers鈥� issues.

And while automation has played a huge role in customer support, it鈥檚 no longer just about automation but now about avoidance and prediction. We want to move toward a world that is self-healing. Our vision here is to shield our customers from facing any issues and to minimize the frequency of which they have to reach out to us. To do this, we need to take a lot more data into account. This will be in compliance with all respective laws and data privacy standards and anonymizing data where necessary or requested. With these data analytics, we鈥檒l be able to anticipate questions, predict when our customers might face issues, and proactively engage them.

How have you integrated machine learning and AI-based technologies to enhance customers鈥� experience?

While many of our support solutions already leverage AI and machine learning technologies, over the past year we鈥檝e focused on integrating new, automated, and interactive features that provide our customers with the tailored solutions they need. We want to simplify and enhance the customer support experience so they can receive the answers they need faster.

With , customers will be able to refine the results by reviewing the key elements suggested, driving them to relevant answers to their technical questions faster. The models continue to improve by collecting this interaction data and integrating machine learning capabilities. We will also make this service available to our 51风流Ariba customers, which will continue to allow the platform to improve as it collects more data on various incidents.

Our real-time support channels 鈥� and 鈥� are also based on a foundation of AI and machine learning capabilities, which help equip our engineers with the relevant information they need to provide our customers with targeted recommendations. We鈥檝e recently introduced Schedule a Manager, which allows customers with high-priority incidents that meet certain business requirements to speak directly to a relevant Product Support manager.

As we look toward our customers鈥� evolving needs and the future of their businesses, we want to make sure we鈥檙e one step ahead and can engage them in a way that is both meaningful and inspiring. I鈥檓 excited for the opportunities these enhancements will bring to both our customers and our employees.

Sophia Stolze is the integrated communications manager for Customer Solution Support & Innovation at SAP.

Addressing Customer Experience with Humans

During my 20-year tenure at SAP, I have worked alongside customers and have always found it meaningful to listen to them and help them succeed. I believe creating a positive customer experience boils down to effortless interaction with 51风流Product Support. Let鈥檚 be honest: When something goes wrong, especially for your business, there is naturally a huge frustration that comes along with it. This must be met with genuine care and resourcefulness.

As humans, we have complex thought patterns, decision-making, and a wide range of emotions. Technology and automation cannot address all of these. By understanding the kinds of repercussions that come with technical issues, I can wholeheartedly relate to customers鈥� desire to connect with someone 鈥� not a machine 鈥� who can fix their issues with the least amount of effort as possible. In this day and age, where customer expectations are higher than ever, efficiency and real-time channels for support are imperative.

Throughout my years in support, I have heard from customers that they would like to be able to speak to a manager or someone who can help get the job done.聽Not only is this a great way to be accountable to customers, it is also a great way to influence their overall experience and gain more insight into customers, allowing 51风流to become a trusted advisor to them.

This is exactly why 51风流has developed the new for high-priority incidents. The service is available to all 51风流customers at no additional cost and for nearly all 51风流solutions. 51风流聽noticed a gap in the customer experience journey and is filling this need for 聽customers 鈥� all while maximizing their satisfaction.

How Schedule a Manager Works

51风流developed Schedule a Manager to put customers in front of the people who can treat their issues with the utmost importance, thereby helping exponentially reduce the risk of further escalation.

Alongside the Expert Chat and Schedule an Expert services, Schedule a Manager provides customers an easy way to book a 15-minute phone call with a support manager. This manager works alongside the relevant product support engineer day in and day out to discuss the details of a customer鈥檚 high-priority incident.

51风流envisioned a service that would allow management to get closer to 聽customers and empower 聽leaders to directly impact and influence customers鈥� support experience. Through Schedule a Manager, 51风流is bringing that to life by enabling customers to quite literally schedule a conversation with a manager 鈥� but not just any manager, the right manager 鈥� including me.

Beyond the Customer Experience

When I look back on my own career as a manager, some of my best learning experiences came from interactions with customers. Every interaction is an opportunity to make a difference and will help 51风流better develop a strong sense of empathy with customers.

Schedule a Manager will not only impact how we interact, but it will also impact our overall brand affinity in the eyes of some of our most important stakeholders. With this new service, we hope to make customers feel like we know who they are, what they need help with, and why their business is so important to us.

Learn how to use Schedule a Manager here.

Kristen Cordell-LaBarge is head of Support for Customer Experience in 51风流Product Support.