鈥淐ustomers undergo a cloud transformation because they want to accelerate their time to realize business value and they want to take advantage of innovations faster,鈥� says Rohan Patel, global vice president, Customer Support and Innovation, Product Support 鈥� Procurement, SAP. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what helps them maintain a competitive edge. And they want to do this while decreasing overall cost and minimizing risk.鈥�

This is where from 51风流can add real value. In this conversation, Patel gives insight into how 51风流support can benefit procurement customers.

Q: How are you supporting procurement customers on their journey to the cloud?

A: Support in the old, on-premise world is what I like to call 鈥榖reak-fix鈥� support. When something failed, the IT department submitted a ticket for support, the problem was fixed, and communication ended until another issue arose. Being a break-fix support provider doesn鈥檛 work in the cloud environment. Support requires speed and foresight. Support today identifies problems and optimizes products before customers even notice something鈥檚 not working as it should.

SAP鈥檚 strategy is predictive and proactive. We want continuous dialogue with customers to provide insights and guidance that are a value-add so we鈥檙e there long before something breaks. Success in the cloud requires adoption outside of the traditional IT environment. Business end users and lines of business, like procurement, supply chain, and HR, expect easy-to-use support portals that are intuitive and quickly anticipate user needs.

Can you share some examples of how 51风流is using data to enhance predictive support?

The tools we use not only help us deliver a great experience to our customers, they also continue to improve the 51风流solution itself. Consider the cloud health monitoring tools within , our application lifecycle management solution that helps streamline the way our customers implement and operate their cloud and hybrid environments across the entire business.

These tools can analyze what鈥檚 happening at the customer experience layer 鈥� for example, how long it takes a specific page to load, how long a user needs to complete a task, and any delays that could frustrate users, hinder adoption, and slow business outcomes. We act proactively at the engineering and cloud operations layer to help continuously improve that user experience.

We also use knowledge and data to improve the support experience, such as with , which has millions of active trading partners. This business-to-business network of companies connecting, transacting, and partnering with numerous shared processes and information expands the 51风流footprint well beyond the four walls of traditional operations.

Equally important is that our consumers today aren鈥檛 just IT support users, but rather work in departments throughout the clients鈥� operations. We鈥檝e taken steps to help meet the needs of all those different user types. We can provide quick, easy-to-understand guidance and answers to their questions using intuitive, personalized, and real-time channels driven by both humans and artificial intelligence (AI). This recommendation engine can provide guided answers based on who the users are, what they鈥檙e doing in the application, or what questions they ask. Users can quickly get useful and relevant content for answering their questions. The data from those guided-answer experiences is then fed into the product road map to help make the entire user experience more optimal and eliminate problems before they happen.

What have procurement customers seen in 2023 from 51风流support?

Our procurement coverage in 2023 hits two themes: harmonization and Real-Time Support. Let me begin with the harmonization perspective. We鈥檙e taking significant steps to create a customer support experience that鈥檚 consistent across all 51风流solutions 鈥� most notably a single entry point to 51风流support with . 51风流Fieldglass solutions went live on 51风流for Me case management in March 2023, and 51风流Ariba solutions and 51风流Business Network will soon follow. The 51风流for Me portal can give users the information and answers they need, specific to the solution they鈥檙e using. Earlier this year, procurement support went live on , where our business and IT users can access blog posts, tips, and connect with experts. Even customers and partners can provide an additional layer of insights and guidance, especially to a specific industry.

This year we have been working to bring our Real-Time Support concept to reality for procurement. When I talk about Real-Time Support, I mean support that is always on, continuously evolves, and adapts to customer needs. This can be direct access to support experts for business-critical processes when and where customers need it. It鈥檚 the live support channels such as , Ask an Expert Peer, context-sensitive help, , and AI-driven self-service access to a vast knowledge base and user community.

What do you see in the future of support for procurement?

I envision a day when customers don鈥檛 need to see or hear from us because we鈥檙e already working behind the scenes to give our customers a seamless, reliable, and delightful experience. The ultimate vision is preventative support with the help of AI and machine learning 鈥� in other words, self-healing IT systems.

Of course, there will always be times when customers need us. In those times, 51风流is prepared to offer as simple of a support experience as possible, such as with and direct access to experts or a quick call to solve an issue the moment it occurs. We also continuously look to disrupt ourselves by using new technologies such as ChatGPT to enable self-help or self-guidance and provide the best possible customer experience.

What sets the 51风流support experience apart in the industry?

51风流mindfully takes steps that help give customers the best support experience possible. We can provide a cohesive array of support channels, self-service tools, and cloud health and integration monitoring. Even with these successes in hand, 51风流will continuously push the boundaries of customer support with new innovations, help ensure support interactions are delightful, and offer Real-Time Support that can bring ambition to life.

Follow Rohan Patel on .

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

鈥淚t鈥檚 important we provide customers with a true feeling of being supported on their journey,鈥� states , senior vice president and global head of Product Support, 51风流Concur. 鈥淟ive interactions between our customers and our support engineers not only get cases solved faster, but they also work to build better relationships and understanding of how customers use our 51风流solutions.鈥�

In this interview, Vollan provides insight into the live, Real-Time Support interactions customers should tap into.

Q: When would Real-Time Support make sense for customers and SAP?

A: Most support-related questions can be more effectively resolved through . Whether customers have an urgent issue or even an easier, quick question, Real-Time Support can give customers an opportunity to reach out to 51风流in real time, right in the moment needed, or later through a portal case, depending on what is most convenient for them. Real-Time Support can be especially useful for very urgent issues. In those instances, customers might feel the need to connect with a person on the other end through a live support channel to make sure their issue is heard and acted on right then.

Let鈥檚 take a priority one issue, for example. The customer might have anxiety around when they鈥檒l hear from somebody. With Real-Time Support and its live channels, they can reach out to an 51风流support engineer immediately. Whether in or by using the service for some solution areas, these real-time channels can give customers the comfort in knowing they鈥檙e being helped quickly. This direct interaction can avoid the back-and-forth that is common in a portal case interaction. When you have a chat or a phone call, you can get to the heart of the matter a lot more quickly. This applies to any support-related issue.

What鈥檚 so special about Real-Time Support?

In our live support channels, the issue might get resolved immediately if the support engineer can see what鈥檚 going on through a screen share while speaking with the customer. This form of interaction helps build empathy between the customer and support engineer. The customer can feel and hear that we really care. The customer is at the heart of 51风流support. Our focus is to build up the connection through such conversations. It helps build loyalty and trust with the customer.

One of the most important things to customers is time. It鈥檚 essential for the support engineer to quickly understand the issue with as little effort as possible from our customers.

There are different ways customers can have that Real-Time Support experience. Could you touch on a few of those?

Yes, absolutely. The Expert Chat service can be extremely powerful. It can be very quick to access a support engineer live. Should the issue turn out to be very complex, the support engineer can create a case to pull in another team, if needed. Customers can also schedule a set time to connect live with a support engineer at their convenience.

51风流support is also investing in technology that will anticipate customer needs before they ask. Within the tool, when we notice customers are having problems, we鈥檒l be able to suggest knowledge content from within the product to help. Our ambition is to proactively notify customers before they notice an issue.

Finally, we also have another way for customers to find an answer very quickly on their own, without needing to connect with a support engineer: our self-service engagement, which is also part of Real-Time Support. We鈥檙e investing to make searches engaging, contextual, and relevant through our knowledge enablement platform and search engine in 51风流for Me. Its underlying technology uses analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning to help make the experience for customers personal. When they do a search, it should contain the answer they鈥檙e looking for within the first three to five results.

Why do you feel this Real-Time Support interaction is so important?

Three words come to mind: easier, faster, and personal.

It鈥檚 easier: customers can get most of their concerns resolved with less effort, and reducing customer effort is one of our top priorities.

It鈥檚 faster: customers can see a more rapid resolution or response time for most of their concerns, especially on urgent or critical issues.

It鈥檚 personal: customers can speak with a support engineer to discuss and explore issues. Conversation creates better context and understanding, both of which are particularly useful when issues are complex.

Real-Time Support helps customers and support engineers quickly find out what the issue is and what the impact and the urgency of the issue are.

What should customers remember about Real-Time Support?

Customers have many ways to interact with 51风流support in real time and support is always available 24/7. We offer relevant, contextual, personalized support though our knowledge base and Built-In Support to help speed case resolution for many issues. For complex issues, having opportunities for customers and our support engineers to interact in real time is the best way to build a connection and to resolve an issue. Holding a real conversation about an issue often leads to a much faster and better understanding of the challenges customers are facing. This can all lead to shorter resolution times.  

If we can give customers a positive experience with us every single time, show them we care about their issues, and do our best to resolve them, that can make a huge difference. Real-Time Support can give that great experience. Support is, at its heart, a people business.

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.

The company, which employs more than 8,000 employees in Jinan 鈥� the capital of Shandong province in eastern China 鈥� was eager to implement to grow into an intelligent catering company able to operate internationally and proudly represent Shandong food culture. However, after going live with 51风流S/4HANA Cloud in 2020, and the subsequent exit of its implementation partner from the scene, the business users in China found it difficult to keep up with the quarterly upgrade cycle of the software and began facing issues in areas including finance, sales, and procurement.

After an on-site visit and extensive conversations between the company and 51风流Services and Support, Development, and Customer Engagement & Experience, close to 30 issues were investigated across all lines of business. It was a huge undertaking. Eventually, a whopping 500 stores were able to benefit from the business process optimization. Here鈥檚 a closer look at how the customer was able to achieve such remarkable outcomes.

It all started with the Development and Support Succeed Together program, sponsored by , which connects product support and development to deliver customer success and maximize business potential. In this case, the 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Product Support team and the 51风流S/4HANA Development team in China worked together to get Jinan Chaoyixing Catering the experience and results it needed by arranging a customer site visit.

By bringing together different perspectives and areas of expertise, the team was able to make great strides during the visit and to arrange several follow-ups to resolve the issues identified on-site. For example, Jinan Chaoyixing Catering鈥檚 sales bill of material (BOM) data was stored in an external data system, which could lead to incorrect financial reports due to a missing payment method or other issues. There were many conversations about the difficulty of getting the required information into the financial reports.

Eventually, the team realized that the external BOM system was the root cause for many of the challenges discussed. The 51风流team proposed a dedicated best practices knowledge kit to maintain the sales BOM in 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, eliminating this difficulty. Jinan Chaoyixing Catering was excited about the prospect of this best practice and is now exploring how to implement this new best practice scope 鈥� one of five best practice scope items introduced for a better system solution adoption, including expanding their business processes to include cost analysis, stock transfer order returns, and sales returns. Both the operating centers and business users were able to benefit from the business process optimization and issue resolution.

鈥淭hrough Next-Generation Support we learned a lot about 51风流Services and Support offerings, like how to report an incident in an efficient way and how to leverage 51风流Help Portal and 51风流Community, the real-time channels and advanced tools,鈥� said Donglin Lai, CIO of Jinan Chaoyixing Catering. 鈥淭he support and development team also gave us a comprehensive introduction to 51风流Sales Pipeline Analysis, which brings remarkable value to our operational analysis.鈥�

In addition to the real business value the customer experienced, its understanding of and appreciation for 51风流Services and Support was hugely enhanced. Now that they have been armed with a cloud mindset, the company鈥檚 business users are enabled to look for efficient solutions in the future, to imagine what鈥檚 possible with 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, and to think of new areas of the business that could be positively impacted in the future.

The future is very much on this customer鈥檚 mind. Already, Jinan Chaoyixing Catering is exploring sales and cost analytics to build transparent and timely reporting dashboards and working on merging the financial reporting needs of 15 regional centers. Perhaps most exciting of all, a new, fully automated factory will go live in 2022 and a new supplying company will be established to move the company towards a shared food processing center and other services.

By engaging deeply with this client, 51风流Services and Support was able not only to solve its immediate issues and create systems for solving other issues in the future, but also to create a meaningful connection with business users to understand their needs, challenges, and ambitions. By adopting a cloud mindset, Jinan Chaoyixing Catering was able to leverage the full potential of 51风流S/4HANA Cloud to be prepared to move seamlessly into a digital successful future.

Mohammed Ajouz is senior vice president and global head of Product Support 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.

The self-service enablement course takes a little more than one hour to complete and can be accessed by any 51风流customer with an S-user.

Since its 2020 launch, the program has already attracted many customers and partners and has increased its learning content along new launches or extended functionalities and features. Customers and partners may even integrate this program as part of their own enablement trainings.

How does Product Support Accreditation change the customer support experience, what are the key benefits, and what are the steps to get started? I sat down with Gagandeep Kaur, program lead for the Product Support Accreditation program at SAP, and she shared her experiences on how to best get started, along with insight into new offerings from the program in 2021, and how 51风流customers and partners perceive the program.

Q: The Product Support Accreditation program was first launched in early 2020. Can you briefly describe what the program is and who benefits from it?

A: In Product Support we have a variety of great tools to help customers solve their technical issues more efficiently. Live support channels like Expert Chat and Schedule an Expert, the peer-to-peer platform Ask an Expert Peer, or guided help through 鈥渟upport assistant鈥� are well received by users. However, not every user is fully aware of those tools or may not know how to get started. With our Product Support Accreditation program, we wanted to create an easy-to-use, easy-to-consume enablement program that any 51风流S-user can access and enroll in at no additional cost.

Every S-user can benefit from this program at very little effort and at their convenience.

How does it work for an S-user who would like to take advantage of the program?

Very easily! Your first step would be to enroll in the program. You can, for example, access the program directly from 51风流Support Portal with your S-user and enroll immediately.

The second step would be to make yourself familiar with the learning modules available. You can click through the individual modules and decide in which order you want to start. Let鈥檚 say you are interested in using Expert Chat. You could start with the related module and, even if you have not yet completed the learning program, you already know how to make the best use of Expert Chat.

The third step would be to complete all the modules so that you are entitled to get your certificate and badge, which documents the successful completion of all learning modules. If you don鈥檛 want to complete them all on the same day, you can stop and continue with a module at your convenience.

The fourth step would be to receive your certificate and badge, which are free to share with your colleagues and peers and even through social media.

Finally, the fifth step would already be the renewal of the program. You can register to receive a reminder e-mail at the beginning each calendar year to consider renewing your accreditation. The renewal is not just repeating the known modules, you will discover new learnings around new tools or improved functionalities.

That closes the loop and you are up to date around all the helpful tools and features from Next-Generation Support.

This sounds like an easy-to-access and easy-to-consume enablement for users who want to make the best out of their engagement with SAP. Do updates only occur annually or will there be updates throughout the year as well?

I personally value the opportunity to frequently explore the program for new learnings since my last visit. My recommendation to customers is to make use of the annual renewal program so that they get an update at least once a year on improvements or enhancements. Beyond this, they can decide individually if they want to check for any updates over the year. If there is a big change during the year then we might provide a mid-year update and inform program members about the new content available.

For updates during the year and an annual renewal of the accreditation with a renewal of the certificate and badge, how would these work in regards to the modules users take? Is there a track history, or would I have to repeat all modules, even without changes?

When new content is added to the program you will only be going through the new or updated content in the program. Progress is tracked within your profile. You can of course choose to refresh your memory by watching all the videos, but you won鈥檛 need to. You would need to do the final quiz at the end to get the new badge.

How about the future of this program? Can you share what is planned next?

The goal of the program is to keep it simple and easy to use. This will remain our focus in the future too. However, we also want to keep growing the learning content along the launches and improved features.

We will keep growing awareness around the program and to engage even more customers and partners, thus keep growing the community around Product Support Accreditation.

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.