The Death of Email Support?

I’m endlessly fascinated by support volumes by channel, seeing which support channels customers prefer.  You’ve probably all seen the figures from the consumer survey I did with Lithium last year (white paper available here) on generational differences in attitudes towards support, showing that different age groups have different channel preferences.  But when you ask support managers about which channels they prefer to use when servicing customers, one thing is clear:  everybody hates email.  The numbers show why:

• First contact resolution.  The industry average for phone is 45%; email 27%.
• Resolved within 24 hours.  The industry average for phone is 59%; email 44%.
• Time to resolve.  The industry average for phone is 1 hour 29 minutes; email 4 hours and 3 minutes.

Best Practices for Talent Managment in India: Report Live 5/5

I’m thrilled to report that the long-awaited whitepaper, “Talent Managment in Emerging Markets: Best Practices for Attracting, Developing and Retaining Talent in India,” is now complete, and a press release dropped today announcing it.

A committee of SSPA members, many based in India, have been working on this project for nearly a year, including participants from Symantec, Cisco, Avaya, Microsoft, Oracle, MeritTrack, EMC, Sun and other companies.  The report will be released at the SSPA Spring Best Practices Conference on May 5th, and a presentation on the findings and recommendations will be given by Dheeraj Prasad, Director, Developer Support, Microsoft Global Technical Support Center, at 10:45am on the 5th.

Here are some findings of the study.