Learning the customer environment

[#1]

Our Exceed Expectations plan though bold, is much more about evolution from a now globally recognized level of outstanding customer service, than revolution. The team is constantly making lots of little changes which add up to a significant uplift in our services. For this post, I asked Greg Zlatunich, Program Manager, HP Software Support, to explain important upcoming enhancements which we hope our customers will see as positively as they did last year at Discover Building Bridges Article. Over to Greg:

When we talk to our customers we hear two common themes; “I’m a long time customer and you still don’t know what products, versions or equipment I have in my environment” and secondly, “I just answered those questions yesterday on another case.  Why are you asking me again when I open another case?”

It’s frustrating for you and it delays our ability to deliver a solution. This spring though we will be releasing several new enhancements to our Software Support Online (SSO) portal that will help eliminate these problems.

A new feature called My Environment will allow you to configure and store information about your environment as a part ofyour HP Passport.  Central to My Environment are Configuration Items (CIs).  Within these CIs you can tell us about yourservers, the products that run on those servers, what versions, what patch levels and several other types of informationabout your environment.   You can create any number of CIs and make them a part of your HP profile.

Once you have these CIs configured you can and use them to pre-fill standard fields when opening an incident with HPSoftware Support and that information is passed to the engineer  when an incident is opened.  During the course of anincident, if information changes, you or the engineer can make a change to your CI and that information will be there fornext time you need assistance.

By working together and building the support relationship with HP Software we can better meet your needs and get youback to what you do best, server your customers!

                                                                                   Greg Zlatunich, HP Program Manager

Greg and I would love to get your feedback on our My Environment plans and of course, once it is live, your comments on how it is working and how we can improve it further.

[#2]

Hi,

Having customers environment information in a database is a good idea. That can save time and trouble in getting that kind of information. If the data is accurate and up to date it is a valuable resource to have.


There is another part of customer support that is more important. The most important part is the technical support people themselves.

What usually determines how customers issues are resolved are the support person's training, experience, and knowledge.

In certain cases some of these items are lacking.

Number one would be for a support person to have real-world experience with whatever products they are supporting.

Number two would be training. Having support people work with consultants, etc. would go a long way to getting real product know how.

Using a KB as a main point of reference is fine but it can be and often is a respository of very limited information. Some issues do not fit neatly into a KB because the resolution can depend on many factors, internal and external.

Another approach is to give the customers as much information as possible so that they can be self-sufficient which reduces calls to the Support Center. If the customer can resolve their own issues themselves that saves a lot of time and trouble.

I have suggested in the past (ER) that HP follows what other Vendors do and create "field-guides" that contain real world experience with practical knowledge and tips and tricks. IBM's Redbooks are a good example. I have noticed that many Vendors have books from O'Reilly and other publishers but there seems to be nothing really from HP.

I think customers would really like to see something like this especially since BSM products have gone through a lot of updates recently. It would signal that HP wants to do more for its loyal customers and would also help customers in resolving their support issues as well.

Also publishing all hotfixes online like other Vendors do would be a big help too.

Thank you 

[#3]

I would like to see a blog that allows HP Arcsight customers to post all the issues and frusrtration we are having using the SSO for arcsight. If you look at the protec 724 site you will see hundreds of complaints on how bad the SSO Arcisght portal conversion has been for the users.

Personally ( and many others if you read the posts) this whole process has been horrendous and frustrating to the point i feel bad for having purchasd arcsight. Even as of today i cant even download the right files and update my arcsight systems. The SSO Portal is wrong, has wrong documents, has wrong downloadable files, has wrong SAID's... i can go on and on and im sure HP management knows about this and does nothing!

Please i emplore you to go to protect 724 and read the posts of the  hundreds of frustrated customer that has to deal with this horrible SSO portal for their Arcsight products. Go onto the discussion boards there and see what your customers are saying about this SSO portal.

thanks

[#4]

Otto

Thank you for your feedback.  The concerns Arcsight customers have about the transition to the HP SSO have been heard and the Arcight support leaders are working on how to improve the customer experience.  In the meantime customers can always provide their feedback to the following email software.satisfaction@hp.com  and this will find its way to the responsible person within HP.  If you have specific issues that you need someone to help you with let me know and I will get the right person to engage with you (need your contact details).

Aileen

[#5]

Could "My Environment" include expertise level ? This way, support could match the expertise level of the customer.

[#6]

Hi Jas1,

Thank you for your question - I have forwarded this on to the relvant team. I will come back to you very soon with an answer.

Regards,

Aileen

[#7]

Hi Jas1,

Here is the response from the relevant team:

Thank you for your feedback regarding the new feature due to be released later this summer.  My Environments will be an excellent way for you to describe your environment and save that information as a part of your HP Passport profile.  This information will be transferred to HP Support when you open a new service request, it will reduce the amount of redundant information you enter each time you open a service request, it will aid you in searching our knowledge base and it will reduce the repeated questions during the support process.

The initial release of this feature will include information about your hardware and software environment only and will not contain any information about the profile or expertise of the caller.  We will take your valuable feedback into consideration as we are always working to improve the support experience.

I hope this answers your question.

Best Regards. 

[#8]

Adding a CMDB for each customer for Support?  MyEnvironment is a great accomplishment.  You had to overcome some pretty huge design challenges!  Like, how many updates a day do you envision coming from the average customer?  Manually it would be overwhelming for the customer to keep their MyEnvironment current so I'm excited to see what kind of loading or interface you have.  We have automated discovery that keeps exactly this kind of up to date thing in our actual CMDB product, Universal CMDB.  Its discovery component, DDM, automates much of the putting CIs in the database.  A  medium-sized, say, 1000 server, environment could get something on the scale of hundreds, or even thousands of updates per day, with some fraction of those being servers and other core configuration items.  Will there be anything like change control for entry of these CIs, like real configuration management?  Changes about CIs for changes, as it were.

Equally exciting are your comments about having Support engineers acting on items reported in your forums.  This will be a great resource for my UCMDB/DDM community. 

 This is very interesting, I have so many questions.  What more can you tell us Aileen?  Please keep the great articles coming!