As a software and services company, SAS has been providing technical support to customers for over 40 years—decades longer than most software companies have been in existence. We are proud of the high customer satisfaction ratings and valuable relationships that customers have formed with our support engineers.
My background
I am fairly new to SAS and am excited to start my first full year leading Technical Support. I have 24 years of experience working in the software field, primarily in support, which has made me truly value customers and providing exceptional support. That is why I wanted to connect with you and let you know about some improvements coming in 2023.
One of the things that drew me to SAS was data analytics, which is a central part of my vision for providing excellent support. In my leadership role, I analyze data to understand what works and what needs to be improved. I have a special interest in creating efficiency for the support team by using tools, reducing case volume by leveraging self-help resources and ensuring customer satisfaction by providing processes that work well. See my LinkedIn profile for more details.
New ServiceNow Customer Service Management (CSM) system
Our biggest plan for 2023 is to move our key Tech Support applications to a new CSM. This project contains many aspects and will be accomplished in a phased approach. Internally, our engineers will adopt an advanced issue-tracking system and a new knowledge-management tool with improved functionality. Externally, the application that you use to access your tracks (soon to be called “cases”) with SAS Technical Support will be replaced.
Right now, we are in the initial stages of the project. We anticipate that all our systems will be moved by the end of the third quarter. I will update you about our progress over the next several months.
3 ways your experience will be better
This transition is going to greatly improve your customer experience in the following ways:
- Your interactions with Technical Support will be much easier to manage.
- Once the new system is launched on the SAS Support site, self-help resources that are related to your issue will be automatically suggested by the CSM when you open a case with SAS Tech Support. As we use the CSM more, the suggestions will improve because the CSM uses machine learning behind-the-scenes to match queries to results.
- You’ll also experience an improved portal interface to communicate with Tech Support engineers who are assigned to your case.
New global cloud-based phone system: call us anytime
In the first quarter, we are moving about half of our engineers to a cloud-based phone system. It’s the same system that we have been using on-premises for the past few years, so it won’t be completely new. Then, by the end of the second quarter, we plan to have all of our engineers using this system. Since we have over 500 global TS engineers, this is a big project.
You shouldn’t experience any interruption in service as a result of this new global, cloud-based phone system. We’ll start to leverage this system later this year so that no matter which phone number you use to call SAS or what time you call, you’ll be routed to an engineer who can assist*. By the end of the second quarter of 2023, you will no longer have to call only during certain hours. Support calls will be accepted 24/7.
*Note that this change to how we route calls does not mean that we are changing our support hours; it just means that we will be able to route calls to a Tech Support office that is open.
Behind-the-scenes work
These are some of the projects that we are working on that will directly affect you. Inside Tech Support, we are working on many projects that are aimed at helping our engineers to provide better and more efficient service to you. We are leveraging SAS® software to analyze data across SAS to identify and close information gaps, which will help us improve our software and our customer support. We want you to be able to effectively use our software to accomplish your goals. Be sure to look for future updates from me!
