SafeHarbor advances online self-service support best practices in new white paper(email this article)

SATSOP, Wash. (September 24, 2003) -- Leading Web self-service support provider SafeHarbor Technology Corporation (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies) (www.safeharbor.com) today released a new white paper, "Best Practices for Online Self-Service Support," that describes expert processes in depth for successfully launching and managing an online self-service support environment.

The best practices document can help companies with high volumes of customer support requests understand how to improve user satisfaction while cutting the high cost of support. Most such companies now recognize the benefits of Web self-service. However, many have not yet achieved these savings or customer satisfaction gains, because building and managing an online support operation requires a significant investment in self-service expertise and best practices in order to be successful.

According to the white paper, which can be downloaded free from SafeHarbor's Web site at , a successful self-service support environment must include the following attributes:
- Easy to use and navigate
- Define the problem in order to design the correct solution
- Multiple navigation choices
- Show versus tell
- A personalized experience
- Integrated with assisted support channels
- Continually optimized for usability and relevance
- A central data repository for customers and agents
- Powerful analytics that track customer interactions
- Educate users on the Web support environment
- Measure user satisfaction and support environment performance
- Measure the total value of Web support

"SafeHarbor continues to achieve consistently high self-service adoption rates and significant call deflection for its customers," according to SafeHarbor CEO Brian Sterling. "When you deliver an online support experience that is faster, more convenient and more satisfying than the telephone or e-mail, you've not only saved the cost of an expensive support call, you've educated your customer on the value of self-service. And that kind of satisfaction can give you a powerful competitive differentiator."

It costs significantly less to deliver customer support via Web self-service compared to assisted support (telephone, e-mail or chat). But companies also offer online support because many customers demand it. "It takes more than technology to achieve self-service success," according to Sterling. "Often, significant organizational changes are necessary to deliver online support that's truly effective. New expertise is needed and new enterprise-wide processes must be developed and followed. These best practices, developed by SafeHarbor through more than 70 implementations of our complete, outsourced self-service support solution, have been tested and proven effective."

A free copy of the SafeHarbor white paper "Best Practices for Online Self-Service Support" can be obtained by going to the Resource Center on SafeHarbor's Web site: http://www.safeharbor.com/ul_white_papers.asp.

About SafeHarbor Technology Corp.
SafeHarbor is a leading provider of Web self-service customer technical support. A business process outsourcer, SafeHarbor delivers a complete support solution as an ongoing service, integrating self-service with assisted support, data warehousing and analytics. SafeHarbor Support Services 3.0 can be launched in as little as eight weeks, and is proven to reduce cost and time to market while improving satisfaction.

For a typical SafeHarbor client, self-service adoption rises 304% in the first 9 months after launching our support solution. SafeHarbor is the only company that creates, manages and continuously optimizes multiple Web self-service environments for companies that interact with customers, employees, customer service agents or partners online. The company's complete support solution delivers dramatic - and immediate - ROI for clients such as TiVo, Washington Mutual Bank, American Airlines, SunTrust Banks and NTT/Verio. SafeHarbor is an IBM Premier Business Partner under IBM's PartnerWorld xSP Prime for Service Providers initiative. For more information, go to www.safeharbor.com .