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Global Customer Support at SAP supports more than 42,000 customer organisations that use over 320,000 systems worldwide. To effectively support the customers in a timely and cost-efficient manner, SAP decided to augment the collaboration functions in SAP Solution Manager with Web collaboration tools from Netviewer. When a customer needs assistance, Netviewer enables rapid interaction with the customer by making Web conferences as natural as picking up the telephone.
Situations include user error, problems with response times, and the need for rapid support when launching a new application. Whenever an SAP customer sends a message that does not clearly specify the problem, employees from the SAP Active Global Support organization (SAP AGS) first analyze the situation with diagnostic tools included in SAP Solution Manager and then start a Web conference with Netviewer. This approach resolves inquiries much faster and more efficiently than before. "It is a tremendous advantage to basically be able to look over the customer's shoulder no matter where he or she is in the world”, according to Helmut Fieres, Vice President of Service and Support Infrastructure AGS at SAP. By combining the diagnostic capabilities of SAP Solution Manager (which is integrated into SAP support systems) with the communication capabilities of the Netviewer solution, tedious technical analyses are now a thing of the past, just like repeated exchanges of messages or the wasteful practice of experts flying to the customer's location. According to Mr. Fieres, without exception customers have reacted positively to conference-based support.
More than 2200 employees at SAP Global Customer Support use Netviewer every day. They turn to the Web collaboration tools particularly when asynchronous handling of a customer inquiry would take too much time and result in a large amount of nonproductive communications. "Sometimes customers even specifically request a Web conference as an alternative to speaking on the telephone when they want to discuss the problems they're experiencing”, explains Mr. Fieres.
German-based SAP runs Netviewer one2one and Netviewer one2meet on servers that are part of its own service and support landscape. All support employees around the world have direct access to the Netviewer solutions. The same applies to partners who provide customer service. In fact, using a Web conference has become as natural as making a telephone call. The number of Netviewer sessions totals several hundred each month.
In Mr. Fieres' view, the greatest benefit lies in direct interactivity and the fact that – thanks to customized adaptation – the session is established through the same pathway that SAP uses to access the customers' systems. "Netviewer is the ideal tool for easily and intuitively augmenting how we communicate with our customers”, according to Helmut Fieres.
About Netviewer
Founded 2001 in Karlsruhe, Netviewer (netviewer.com) is Europe's leading provider of real-time collaboration software with currently over 280 employees worldwide. The Netviewer service enables users to view each other's PC screen simultaneously in order to work on all kinds of documents, calculations or graphs together - regardless of where the participants are located. Real-time collaboration and communication via the internet significantly reduce the time and cost of travel and thus increase productivity.
More than 13,000 corporations and SMEs from over 55 countries, including Daimler Chrysler, SAP, Espresso Education, Capita, Admiral Insurance, British Horseracing Board, and Fidelity Investments all rely on the ease of use the Netviewer tools offer. With headquarters in Germany, Netviewer has subsidiaries in Switzerland, France, The United Kingdom, The United States, The Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Italy and Sweden.
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