Improving customer support and service is both a
business and technology priority for almost all
companies. Customer support falls under the general area
of customer care and involves call centers and help
desks.
This area raises several issues: how to provide customer service effectively, how to assign and manage cases to service reps, how to provide access to key customer data in real time, how to use cross-selling and up-selling through customer support, should customer support be outsourced, and how to hire and retain best customer support staff.
In most cases, a customer support center becomes the main entry point for all customer contacts (current and future) and can be viewed as a customer support portal (see figure). The purpose of this portal is to provide a common integrated view of a corporation that provides a diverse array of services. Different business units collectively provide the overall services of the corporation. The diagram shows example of a large portal with many business units. The customers access this portal through a wide range of devices (regular phone, web, cellular phones, PDAs, etc).