2023 was a momentous year for Technical Support! I wanted to share some of our achievements with you that demonstrate our commitment to providing you with excellent customer support.
Customer Portal
By far our biggest accomplishment was the launch of the new customer portal. To achieve this, Technical Support worked with divisions across SAS as well as vendors to do the following:
- define and clarify requirements for the diverse groups who would be using the software
- configure the initial release of the software application
- coordinate and conduct several rounds of testing
- provide training for agents
- investigate and report issues found during the testing and training phases
- communicate project status across SAS and to customers at regular intervals
After the customer portal launch in August of 2023, Technical Support’s priority has been focused on addressing software issues and implementing enhancements to improve the customer experience. Despite the expected issues during the first months of use, we are excited about the possibilities available with this new software. For more details, see my blog, Partnership: The SAS customer experience and you.
Phone System
We want it to be easy for you to engage with us via the channel of your choice—portal, chat, email, or phone. To this end, we unified all of Technical Support onto one global, cloud-based phone system. Although some training is required in order for everyone to be able to use the new system seamlessly, this is a big step toward our goal of providing you the phone support that you need when you need it.
Technical Support Policies Page
To clarify and streamline SAS product support policy information, we modernized the SAS Technical Support Policies with a landing page that links to more detailed subpages. This is the first step in our effort to improve your understanding of SAS support policies, so stay tuned for future enhancements to this information.
Model for Collaboration between Technical Support and Research and Development
To facilitate more efficient responses and resolutions in customer cases, we created a custom model for how Tech Support and R&D engage with one another on these issues. This model included making updates to internal tools to convey information easily and with transparency between the divisions. We have already seen some gains in efficiency since this model was implemented.
Internal Reporting Enhancements
To better enable Technical Support to analyze metrics related to case work, we enhanced our internal reporting software:
- upgraded the platform on which the software runs, which makes loading and creating visualizations of data easier and quicker
- selected and combined data from different SAS divisions to obtain a more robust view of cases/accounts
- created an algorithm that quickly consolidates this data into a management dashboard that helps Technical Support and other divisions understand the experience that you have with your SAS software products.
These enhancements provide insight that will help all of SAS collaborate to create better software that is easier to use.
2024 Plans
We have many things in the works for 2024 that we are excited about, including:
- optimizing the customer portal
- leveraging generative AI
- increasing efficiencies with our operating model
- building technical depth
- enhancing the phone system
As always, our goal is to bring a modern and methodical approach to providing world-class customer support, which we have done for over 40 years. We are committed to continuous improvement to give you the support needed to achieve the best outcomes for your business. I’ll give you updates throughout the year as we tackle our goals for 2024. Thanks again for being a SAS customer!
