Built-In Support is known for the convenience of being able to report any problems about an application without needing to leave the page where the issue appeared. Now, SAP is expanding on its Real-Time Support approach to give tailored, proactive support content within an SAP solution in real time.
Introducing the idea of bi-directional support.
Two-Way Support Communication with Bi-Directional Support
The vision behind bi-directional support is to provide proactive, two-way support communication. This means actively informing about support-critical information and potential issues related to the SAP solution in use and well before you recognize that a problem might arise. Bi-directional support no longer waits until you reach out to us; it changes the way we interact with you.
Consider an example of what you may experience in daily life. Think of the times when something wasn’t working right on your cell phone. You likely preferred to search the Internet to fix the problem and avoid a call center with waiting times and back-and-forth. Even better is when you were made aware of what might affect your phone’s performance – such as bad reception, low memory, or a restart required to avoid an issue. This is the aim of bi-directional support within Built-In Support.
Live Recommendations Help Avoid System Interruptions
One of the key features to make Built-In Support bi-directional will be to provide live recommendations within the application or page in use. Live recommendations are pushed into Built-In Support to provide targeted information, support knowledge documents, and even hot support alerts. They’ll inform users about critical SAP solution issues that others may be experiencing. The information will also be relevant to the user’s role, such as for the key user or end user.
Live recommendations within Built-In Support are curated, published, and updated by SAP in real time and supported by predictive artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. The news and alerts can be pushed out immediately to all screens and can be pulled back or exchanged at any point in time.
Continuing the real-life example, live recommendations are like the “breaking news” section of a news portal app on your cell phone, only for your SAP solution. Don’t want to miss critical information? Want it at your fingertips and, if needed, just a click away? Then you might like the new live recommendations.
The live recommendations are application-focused and only visible where needed. We’re not distracting you with news or content unrelated to what you’re working on. It keeps troubleshooting efforts to a minimum while giving you the latest and most relevant support updates. Currently, bi-directional support is being tried out for SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Over time, it will be expanded for all SAP solutions that are integrated with Built-In Support.
Customer Effort Score, a Driver behind Bi-Directional Support
Happy customers are those that need little support interaction because their SAP solutions run fine. Low interaction means low customer effort. As described in an article by Gartner, the customer effort score is defined as the ease with which customers can use a product or service, resolve a support issue, or find the information they need.
SAP uses the customer effort score as a customer satisfaction measurement. When answering tickets, we ask customers what their effort was behind their interaction with us to get the problem solved. Our focus is to solve any problems fast and to give customers an effortless support experience.
Additional Support Convenience with Bi-Directional Support
Bi-directional support builds on the existing Built-In Support features, such as initiating an Expert Chat, searching for knowledge, or creating a ticket for SAP support. No changes need to be made to your SAP applications and there’s nothing to install. Live recommendations are another convenient way of how SAP support interacts with you. We continue to respond to the growing need for preventative and proactive support in the cloud to help shorten the time to solve your problems.
Built-In Support is the place to go should a problem arise in the application or on the page you’re using. It’s likely you’ll find live recommendations already there to help you right away. Bi-directional support is taking another step forward in making Built-In Support more precise, accurate, and relevant about what’s affected and what you need to do. It’s convenient to get easy-to-access support information at the point of need and personalized to the application or page being used. That’s simple, that’s intuitive, that’s Built-In Support.
Learn more about Built-In Support.
Regina Postman is part of Customer Support and Innovation Communications at SAP.