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...

Until recently in the UK there was a saying which meant ‘never ending’, ‘eternal’ and ‘a thankless task’. Thanks to new technology, ‘Painting the Forth Bridge’ has now changed its meaning forever. Using a new paint formulation, the job of protecting this remarkable 220 year old engineering marvel from the Scottish wind and rain, will need no more applications (of paint) for the next quarter of a century.

At November’s HP Discover in Vienna, I also noticed a real difference compared to previous years. It was a very good event, the venue looked great and once again I got to meet with a lot of attending software customers. However, the feedback from the customers I met with this time was very different.  

Early signs, from the day that US retailers call Black Friday, are that this year will see bumper sales of hot gadgets such as the iPad, Kindle Fire and Galaxy S. Some of these devices will inevitably stay on the shelf for most of 2012, unappreciated and under-used. Importantly though, many will be brought to work. 

For those of us supporting enterprise applications, the amazing usability of these products will have several knock-on effects as the world of consumerism becomes a growing part of the world of enterprise IT. Sometimes our role is not to ask why, our role is just to support.

In a previous blog I mentioned how proud we were as a team to achieve an ‘Outstanding’ accreditation from the TSIA. But behind any accolade worth having is a lot of hard work and dedication.

Having acknowledged experts from the world of customer service pore over your procedures, processes, tools and then evaluate your people too can be a nerve-wracking experience, but of course it is also a chance to learn from the best. 

None of us in the Software support community take any pleasure from outages – even to competitors. As a profession, we are all diminished a little when a team of fellow professionals is hit by unforeseen events whether a tsunami or a hardware failure and the spotlight falls on the difficulties of our profession.

However, being support engineers at heart, we all do have a detached professional interest, in fact a duty, to learn what we can from the travails of others. The technical details of the two day outage for some Blackberry services are not something I could or would comment on.

Part of HP Software Support’s Exceed Expectations philosophy is to quietly and continuously improve the way we support you. We hope the effect is that customers will realise, almost without noticing, that our service levels have risen to be the best in the industry.

One of the key process improvements we introduced in the last 12 months though was a working practice for our support engineers that we call ‘Touch and Hold’...

There are few things I find as useful as catching up live with customers. As a wise man once said ‘Sunlight is the best disinfectant’ and there is nothing quite like undiluted customer feedback to concentrate the mind.

Earlier this year, HP Software Support achieved “TSIA RATED OUTSTANDING” rating. This certification is one of the highest forms of recognition available in the service industry, but what does it mean to you?

For those of you who I have not yet met, I’m Aileen Allkins and I head up HP Software Support. Today I want to welcome you to Exceeding Expectations, the first of several new channels of communication with the HP Software Support team I am introducing to help us maintain a dialogue, even if you have never had to call on our services.