Customer Support Solutions for the High Tech Industry:
Making Complex Support Simple for You and Your Customers

The Challenge of High Tech Support
Supporting the high tech industry is a difficult task. Products are complex blends of hardware, software, and firmware, whether they’re premise-based or software as a service. They include multiple components, modules, and assemblies that run on top of, underneath, and along side many other software products, each of which introduces subtle variations in the environment. New versions and modules are released frequently, each with its own defects and idiosyncrasies. Customization, configuration, data dependencies, integrations, and use cases may all vary from customer to customer. Correctly identifying and resolving issues can take hours, days, or even weeks.

Applications designed for generic customer service scenarios simply won’t do the job. FAQ lists and keyword search don’t scale to the complexity of the situations handled by analysts and support engineers. Simple contact/organization customer records can’t keep track of the sophisticated entitlement schemes used by high tech companies. Basic case tracking workflows don’t support the expert collaboration required to solve deeply complex problems. And knowledge capture, search, and reuse that isn’t completely integrated into the case workflow requires too much extra work.

A Comprehensive Solution for High Tech Support Centers
Consona’s tech industry solution is built on Consona Knowledge Driven Support, a full-featured support suite that integrates case management and knowledge management. Consona Knowledge Driven Support is augmented with pre-built templates that implement best practices for high tech support, including Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS^sm).

Because the Consona high tech industry solution is inspired by KCS, knowledge and case management functionality are combined into a single workbench—not scattered across multiple tabs or screens. Support staffers will resolve issues faster and more consistently with knowledge from all relevant sources at their fingertips. Analytics will leverage the linkages among cases, defects, and knowledge to understand the primary support drivers, helping to perform root cause failure analysis while unlocking the voice of the customer. And self-service will deliver knowledge created in the customer’s context—captured immediately in the moment of resolution.

Out of the Box Solutions for the Tech Industry
The Consona high tech industry solutions include:

• Consona Case Management, a case tracking, bug tracking, and incident management solution with support for scripting and business rules that optimize the cross-channel customer experience.
• Consona Knowledge Central, an integrated resolution workbench that provides technicians and engineers with the tools and knowledge they need to quickly resolve issues while sharing what they learn with their colleagues and customers.
• Consona Self-Service, a comprehensive support portal and support community application that guides customers to the knowledge they need from any repository, creating a service and support experience that customers prefer to use.
• Solution templates that include resolution flows and wizards, knowledge source adapters, user interface elements, document templates, workflows, and business rules designed to jump-start implementations for the high tech industry.

Key Features

Full-featured case management

Tracks complex cases and customer records with support for subtasks, sites, groups, and highly-configurable workflow. Links cases and knowledgebase articles to support root cause analysis and drive structured feedback to product development organizations. Integrates easily with telephony systems, chat, systems, e-mail, and other customer communication channels.

Integrated resolution workbench

Streamlines the technician or engineer experience by providing a single screen for all needed tools and information. Captures case notes and knowledge contributions in a unified workflow—no duplicate entry.

Comprehensive self-service portal

Easily configured to deliver a personalized experience to customers based on their products, versions, preferences, or customer segments. Support communities make it easy for customers to help each other. Integrated with Consona Case Management to create a seamless cross-channel experience.

Analytics for insight and action

Integrated web and support center analytics provide Voice-of-the-Customer reporting. Linkages among cases, knowledge, and defects drives actionable root cause analysis. Reports quantify the ROI for KM.

Out-of-the-box software industry template

KCS Verifiedsm to enable Knowledge-Centered Support—the first commercial product designed specifically for KCS, a high-tech industry best practice. Shortens time to value with pre-built rules, components, and interfaces that can be quickly tailored to the specific needs of any systems or hardware company.