Much has hap­pened around the inno­va­tion of prod­uct sup­port dur­ing our move into new and excit­ing sup­port ser­vices and tech­nolo­gies. How­ev­er, despite the biggest trans­for­ma­tion still ahead of us, we already see a usage gap between the sup­port capa­bil­i­ties we offer and the cus­tomers using them. Frankly speak­ing, I need to grab your atten­tion. Go fig­ure. Are you some­one who’s bare­ly using sup­port? I’ll tell you what I mean in a second.

Your Busi­ness Chal­lenges Are Our Sup­port Inno­va­tion Opportunities

I’ve been talk­ing a lot with cus­tomers around the globe, lis­ten­ing as you tell me what runs well and about the chal­lenges or pain points you see in sup­port. I see those chal­lenges as our oppor­tu­ni­ties to address and to fur­ther inno­vate and trans­form our sup­port cov­er­age. After all, sup­port inno­va­tion means lis­ten­ing and learn­ing from cus­tomers, and then trans­lat­ing their needs into future sup­port ser­vices. You want us to con­tin­u­ous­ly look for inno­v­a­tive ways to improve your sup­port experience.

What may sur­prise you is that SAP already has solu­tions in place for many of the pain points you are feel­ing. This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to remind you about what sup­port inno­va­tions could mean for you.

One of my favorite exam­ples is around an ever­green: ​“Support’s response time is too slow!”

We intro­duced real-time sup­port a few years ago, which was essen­tial­ly a choice for cus­tomers to imme­di­ate­ly reach out to our experts in a live chat. Or — maybe a bet­ter option for some — cus­tomers could make an appoint­ment with sup­port to work on your prob­lem (we call this ​“Sched­ule an Expert”).

We have cus­tomers who use these real-time chan­nels often. And we also have many cus­tomers who don’t use them at all.

Big-Pic­ture Perspective

But let’s look at the big pic­ture. I believe that sup­port inno­va­tion should be nei­ther a one-time event nor a big bang. For us, it means con­tin­u­ous opti­miza­tion and con­tin­u­ous transformation.

In sup­port, this result­ed in intro­duc­ing AI and ML as part of our main busi­ness process­es. While they already play a big role in our dai­ly work, they are poised to play a much big­ger one soon. AI and ML are key enablers for the type of future cus­tomer inter­ac­tion we are design­ing. Pre­dict­ing ques­tions our cus­tomers may have or prob­lems they may soon run into, and proac­tive­ly address­ing these, is the scope for our next-gen­er­a­tion AI/ML-infused processes.

But our ambi­tions don’t stop there. With the desire to have a much big­ger impact on the busi­ness val­ue you are get­ting from your SAP solu­tions, our vision becomes so far reach­ing that ​“trans­for­ma­tion” doesn’t feel like a big enough word to describe it. ​“Inflec­tion point” seems like a more fit­ting term. Let me point out some of the major changes com­ing your way.

Smooth Cloud Implementations

Sup­port will play a much big­ger role to safe­guard your imple­men­ta­tion project. SAP part­ners lead the largest share of cloud imple­men­ta­tions and SAP sup­port is often called to help ensure a suc­cess­ful go-live. We decid­ed to put all avail­able knowl­edge into our SAP Cloud ALM plat­form and make it acces­si­ble to all our cus­tomers and the part­ners they engage for their projects. Through our SAP Cloud ALM solu­tion and ​“Focused Build” fea­ture for man­ag­ing imple­men­ta­tions, we give part­ners and cus­tomers a struc­ture with best prac­tices and tools to help them real­ize imple­men­ta­tion con­sis­ten­cy in every project — and at the qual­i­ty they both should expect.

Bi-Direc­tion­al Sup­port from With­in the Product

Sup­port will move into the prod­uct and will become a bi-direc­tion­al means of inter­ac­tion between SAP and its cus­tomers. Built-In Sup­port gives you access to SAP-col­lect­ed knowl­edge, as well as the abil­i­ty to launch an Expert Chat, raise a tick­et, and more. Expect to receive proac­tive and per­son­al­ized infor­ma­tion that we con­sid­er to be crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant for you. (Think prob­lem avoid­ance, hav­ing impor­tant infor­ma­tion about upcom­ing new releas­es, etc.)

Quick­er Answers to Your Sup­port Questions

As men­tioned at the begin­ning, the speed of respond­ing to your ques­tions and prob­lems remains as much a pri­or­i­ty as it’s ever been. Every­one wants to have their tick­ets answered as quick­ly as possible.

And we want the same! It’s iron­ic that we still get so many com­plaints of slow pro­cess­ing when we’ve offered real-time sup­port for quite a few years now. These sup­port options, such as Expert Chat and Sched­ule an Expert, are avail­able at your fin­ger­tips to speed up your inci­dents — a time- and resource-sav­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for you. So, if you wor­ry about tick­et pro­cess­ing times, why open a tick­et in the first place?

As I’ll detail in my next arti­cle, var­i­ous real-time sup­port options are avail­able. You can direct­ly and quick­ly clar­i­fy a prob­lem with the same sup­port expert who’d solve a man­u­al­ly cre­at­ed tick­et inci­dent — but in real time. Enjoy the con­ve­nience of ask­ing your ques­tions right away; avoid tick­et ​”ping-pong” and time delays.

And best of all, you can choose a time that fits your sched­ule. You have noth­ing to lose with real-time sup­port, just lots to gain! Plus, your chat with the expert gets auto­mat­i­cal­ly logged in a tick­et so you can refer to it at any time.

Con­sid­er the fol­low­ing cus­tomer feedback:

• “We had a very pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence using the live sup­port chan­nels as part of [the SAP] Next-Gen­er­a­tion Sup­port approach. With the Sched­ule an Expert ser­vice, we were able to direct­ly con­tact an expert from SAP through a one-on-one ses­sion and receive tech­ni­cal prod­uct sup­port. The expert knowl­edge and fast sup­port we received were key to accel­er­at­ing prob­lem res­o­lu­tion, enhanc­ing our oper­a­tions, and enabling over­all suc­cess of the project for our cus­tomer, Energie Süd­bay­ern.” [Energie Süd­bay­ern (Ger­many)]
• “With proac­tive sup­port, ser­vices, and tools from SAP Enter­prise Sup­port, we were able to ensure a suc­cess­ful con­ver­sion to SAP S/4HANA. Dur­ing our project, we resolved 50% of crit­i­cal issues using real-time inter­ac­tive chat, mak­ing our jour­ney even smoother.” [CEAT (India)]
• Valvo­line Cum­mins real­ized decreased response times by 20% for sup­port inci­dents raised to SAP using the Expert Chat service.

Act Now and Watch for Upcom­ing Sup­port Innovation

Have I caught your atten­tion? All of this is includ­ed in your cloud sub­scrip­tion and on-premise SAP Enter­prise Sup­port cov­er­age. It’s avail­able for you to use right now. Our core prod­ucts, plus SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors and SAP Ari­ba are included.

Many excit­ing things are hap­pen­ing with SAP sup­port and there is more to come. Make sure we stay con­nect­ed so you’ll know how your sup­port expe­ri­ence fur­ther improves. Learn more about SAP Cloud ALM and real-time sup­port now.

This is the first of a two-part Guest Per­spec­tive series on the chang­ing face of SAP cus­tomer sup­port and ser­vices by Andreas Heck­mann. Heck­mann is Exec­u­tive VP of Prod­uct Engi­neer­ing and Head of Cus­tomer Solu­tion Sup­port and Inno­va­tion at SAP. Fol­low him on LinkedIn and Twit­ter.