“At 51ˇçÁ÷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 SAP, the organization that supports human experience management (HXM) solutions from SAP, including 51ˇçÁ÷SuccessFactors solutions. “Putting the ‘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 “real” 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 “real” aspect?

A: Our approach offers an always-on support experience. This means that our customers can contact 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷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 “X” 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 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷solutions. This close collaboration lets us influence 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷solution. Both of these capabilities are pretty cool.

What do you feel is important to remember?

I encourage our customers to get “real” 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 SAP.

“The 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 SAP. “We 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 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷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 SAP. We initially started with 51ˇçÁ÷SuccessFactors solutions and recently expanded it to include some of our core enterprise resource planning (ERP) and 51ˇçÁ÷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 “,” the new single-entry point to 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷Support Portal or 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷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 SAP. 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 51ˇçÁ÷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.

51ˇçÁ÷users can now access the Incident, Schedule an Expert, and Expert Chat support channels via the “Report an Incident” single entry point, easily choosing their preferred support channel without having to navigate through different support channel tiles.

John Bowley, product owner of the 51ˇçÁ÷ONE Support Launchpad Incident Management in the Support Experience Process and Innovation Office of 51ˇçÁ÷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’s incident creation and incident management process. With the latest releases in September 2020, your team has been focusing on the “unified support experience.” 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 51ˇçÁ÷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’t 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 “Manage Incidents” tile in the 51ˇçÁ÷ONE Support Launchpad. It allows users to easily search, view, edit, or confirm their incidents. It’s also possible to customize the filtering and search options to save your own personalized views. The user-centric redesign of incident edit layout provides an intuitive workflow for customers to interact with 51ˇçÁ÷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’ve selected into consideration. This process is enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) 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 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷Mentors.

Another nice feature is the automated alerting of any 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷achieved its goals for the optimized incident management and creation? Or will there be more to come — 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 51ˇçÁ÷offering live support in Product Support and who can use it?

A: The way consumers use products, services, and technology in today’s 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’s why has brought traditional “ticket management” 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 51ˇçÁ÷product, the is the central point of contact.

How do they work?   

is a live chat function that connects customers to technical experts from 51ˇçÁ÷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’s appointment. Customers select from a defined list of calendar appointments at a time that suits them best. Talking directly to an 51ˇçÁ÷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, 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷SuccessFactors solutions, with additional 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷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 “lose” 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 51ˇçÁ÷has become more diverse. 51ˇçÁ÷is trying to offer new methods of interaction to meet our customers’ diverse needs so they can interact with us in the way that suits them best – anytime, anywhere, and from any device. Live businesses need live support, and as more and more customers become intelligent enterprises, 51ˇçÁ÷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 51ˇçÁ÷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 – 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 –helping 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 BĂśhme is an integrated communications manager for Customer Solution Support & Innovation at SAP.

The transformation of on-call, reactive customer support is fascinating to watch. Over the past few years, 51ˇçÁ÷has discovered new ways to simplify processes and automate them to optimize the value it brings to customers. Then the company brought in predictive analytics to detect and resolve issues early on.

At SAP, such optimization and predictive capabilities of customer support are setting the foundation for proactive services. This vision is created with the mindset of helping customers become more productive and profitable than ever while taking advantage of the latest intelligent technologies.

Outcome-Driven Support Experience for Customers, Built on Intelligence

Take the  service, SAP’s first step toward creating a predictive and proactive support model. With a combination of machine learning and AI, the company is expanding the ability to intelligently understand customer issues, quickly propose relevant solutions, and efficiently resolve problems without the need to submit an incident report.

Over time, the real power behind Incident Solution Matching has become increasingly effective as more customers use it to research solutions for technology challenges and rely on its intelligence to find the corrective action. Now, the service has grown from a whiteboard concept into a full-fledged crucial line of support for customers using all 51ˇçÁ÷and 51ˇçÁ÷Ariba solutions.

Customers using 51ˇçÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud will be the first group to benefit from the enhanced recommendation content. The Incident Solution Matching engine will provide recommended solutions not only from 51ˇçÁ÷Notes and 51ˇçÁ÷Knowledge Base Article services, but also from additional data sources such as 51ˇçÁ÷Help Portal, the road-map viewer tool, and 51ˇçÁ÷Fiori apps reference library.

The success of Incident Solution Matching inspired 51ˇçÁ÷to further evolve the Next-Generation Support approach with a clear road map based on data intelligence, rule-based automation, and predictive capabilities. With such a strategic plan, the company is effectively improving and simplifying the support experience to customers’ needs and expectations with through optimized business outcomes.

Quick Resolution with Personalized Customer Support Experiences

This strategic move toward intelligent services led to the creation of guided incident workflow and personalized support assistant capabilities. When initiating assistance in an 51ˇçÁ÷solution, customers can benefit from an efficient, convenient, and intuitive experience as they find a solution that resolves their issues immediately.

The support assistant workflow asks users targeted and relevant questions about the problems they encounter until they are narrowed down to a solution, such as knowledge base articles, updates, or patches. However, if a solution is not identified through the workflow wizard, the user is automatically prompted to submit relevant log or trace files.

In the background, parser engines analyze the information, pinpoint the issue, alert the customer about the criticality of its problem, and ultimately deliver the right solution. By the end of the interaction, 51ˇçÁ÷has documented the incident – complete with the underlying issue, lessons learned, and proven solution. This can be leveraged for future solution development and support interactions.

Additional innovation in 51ˇçÁ÷services also led to the introduction of the service. It provides customers with an easy way to engage directly with 51ˇçÁ÷support managers in order to bring management attention to a service exception or service dissatisfaction, complementing Ěý˛š˛ÔťĺĚý services. During a scheduled, live phone conversation, customers have a real-time channel for sharing their 51ˇçÁ÷solution concerns and demands with a qualified manager, reducing the effort and frustration of handling critical business needs.

SAP’s experimentation with neural machine translation is another benefit of its work with AI and machine learning. Doing so allows the company to from English to Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Korean, Italian, or German. 51ˇçÁ÷is already working on potentially making this technology available for translating incidents into those nine languages.

This automatic translation feature would enable customers to use information on documented incidents, best practices, and terminology. Like the company’s ever-evolving customer support services, this functionality is self-learning – continuously improving the quality of translations based on feedback and machine learning.

Product Training and Accreditation Focused on Customer Needs

The product support team at 51ˇçÁ÷has also created new services and tools to fulfill customers’ ever-evolving needs. Users can explore new ways to benefit from offerings through the  program at no additional cost.

The two-hour, guided learning experience includes short videos detailing the latest tools and capabilities of  support services, designed to optimize the value of their 51ˇçÁ÷solution investment. Customers can review the content at their convenience as often as they like to stay up to date.

An Evolution Toward Ultimate Customer Support Vision

As 51ˇçÁ÷continues to innovate with AI and machine learning, support processes will become more efficient and accurate. More importantly, it will bringing the company closer to its ultimate vision for predictive and proactive customer assistance.

51ˇçÁ÷will continue to design and deliver new tools, channels, and functionalities to give customers the predictive support experience they want. Just imagine how this experience will evolve as more cloud solutions are backed by analytics processing trillions of captured data points in the background. Customers may never again encounter issues with their technology because intelligent capabilities will reroute the user experience around a detected problem.

Milestone after milestone, 51ˇçÁ÷is taking the support experience in an entirely new direction as part of its desire to help customers succeed – always.

Stay in the conversation by following 51ˇçÁ÷on
, ,Ěý,Ěýand .

Mohammed Ajouz is senior vice president and global head of Product Support 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 – both in the way we’re internally organized and in how we’re 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’ 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 – and even those they don’t anticipate having. This involves flipping the engagement model and reaching out to our customers proactively before they even face a problem.

We’ve 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’ve 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’ve 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’ issues.

And while automation has played a huge role in customer support, it’s 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’ll 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’ experience?

While many of our support solutions already leverage AI and machine learning technologies, over the past year we’ve 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 51ˇçÁ÷Ariba customers, which will continue to allow the platform to improve as it collects more data on various incidents.

Our real-time support channels – and – 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’ve 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’ evolving needs and the future of their businesses, we want to make sure we’re one step ahead and can engage them in a way that is both meaningful and inspiring. I’m 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.

Based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies, 51ˇçÁ÷has further developed existing functionalities with new, automated capabilities such as the service and automatic translation.

“When it comes to customer support, we’ve seen great success in flipping the customer engagement model by leveraging AI and machine learning technologies across our product support functionalities and solutions,” said Andreas Heckmann, head of Customer Solution Support and Innovation and executive vice president, SAP. “To simplify and enhance the customer experience through our award-winning support channels, we’re making huge steps towards our goal of meeting customer’s needs by anticipating what they may need before it even occurs.”

AI and machine learning technologies are key to improving and simplifying the customer support experience. They continue to play an important role in expanding Next-Generation Support to help 51ˇçÁ÷deliver maximum business outcomes for customers. 51ˇçÁ÷has expanded its offerings by adding new features to existing services, for example:

• Incident Solution Matching service: With expanded AI-based functionalities, customers can see the impact on machine learning models and the impact on suggested results, making them more relevant. This enables customers to explore more relevant solutions for their incident in SAP’s knowledge base.
• Incident Solution Matching, now also available for 51ˇçÁ÷Ariba solutions: The Incident Solution Matching service is available to customers of 51ˇçÁ÷Ariba solutions and partners in the “” for 51ˇçÁ÷Ariba solutions and “” for 51ˇçÁ÷Ariba solutions. Through this extended service, 51ˇçÁ÷Ariba customers can find answers to technical questions faster, possibly solving a problem without having to record an incident.
• Automatic translation: With neural machine translation and AI technology to process entire sentences and phrases, this automatic translation feature for the 51ˇçÁ÷Notes and the 51ˇçÁ÷Knowledge Base Article services has been expanded to include nine major-market languages. They are Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, simplified Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Korean, Italian, and German. Intelligent technologies from 51ˇçÁ÷use machine learning and feedback to refine translations of 51ˇçÁ÷software and service documentation and terminology on an on-going basis.

Customers expect their issues to be resolved quickly, and 51ˇçÁ÷strives toward a consistent line of communication across all support channels, including real-time options. 51ˇçÁ÷continues to improve, innovate and extend live support for technical issues by connecting directly with customers to provide a personal customer experience. Building on top of live support services, such as and , 51ˇçÁ÷has made significant strides in upgrading its real-time support channels. For example, it now offers the Schedule a Manager service and a peer-to-peer collaboration channel through the Ask an Expert Peer service.

• Schedule a Manager: Following a successful pilot phase in 2019, 51ˇçÁ÷launched , available through the 51ˇçÁ÷ONE Support Launchpad. This new support channel allows customers to speak at no extra cost directly to the relevant product support manager to assist them with high-priority incidents that risk impeding the company’s ability to fulfill its business requirements. With the addition of Schedule a Manager, 51ˇçÁ÷has created a holistic approach to connect with customers through real-time channels.
• Ask an Expert Peer: After a successful pilot phase last year, Ask an Expert Peer has been made available for all customers of 51ˇçÁ÷SuccessFactors solutions. Ask an Expert Peer is a peer-to-peer collaboration platform that connects qualified 51ˇçÁ÷customer experts with other customers to help them resolve their issues.

By continuing to invest in AI and machine learning–based technologies, 51ˇçÁ÷enables more efficient support processes for customers while providing the foundation for predictive support functionalities and superior customer support experiences.

Customers can learn more about the Next-Generation Support approach through the program, available to 51ˇçÁ÷customers and partners at no additional cost. Customers can be empowered to get the best out of SAP’s product support tools and the Next-Generation Support approach.

Visit the 51ˇçÁ÷News Center. Follow 51ˇçÁ÷on Twitter at .

About SAP

As the Experience Company powered by the Intelligent Enterprise, 51ˇçÁ÷is the market leader in enterprise application software, helping companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: 77% of the world’s transaction revenue touches an 51ˇçÁ÷system. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. 51ˇçÁ÷helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want – without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables more than 440,000 business and public customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, 51ˇçÁ÷helps the world run better and improve people’s lives. For more information, visit .

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For customers interested in learning more about 51ˇçÁ÷products:
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
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For more information, press only:
Martin Gwisdalla, SAP, +49 (6227) 7-67275, martin.gwisdalla@sap.com, CET
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