Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co.
SOS enables real-time learning and exceeds customer expectations with Microsoft .NET
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Company Overview
Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co., established in Montréal, Québec in 1961, is a wholly owned subsidiary of California-based Hewlett-Packard Co. – a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions around the world.
Business Challenge
Among the company’s products is its line of digital cameras. Digital photography, a relatively young market, is one that is often perceived by many consumers as complex. HP Canada wanted to increase its existing lines of customer service to make it easier than ever for mainstream consumers to enter the world of digital photography, and enjoy more from their digital photography experience.
“HP has innovative, easy-to-use digital photography products that enable consumers to create and share quality images,” says Chris Fudge, marketing manager, HP Canada. “We’re also extremely passionate about finding new ways to increase customer satisfaction. One of the areas that we saw tremendous potential for improvement was around digital photography. Our research told us that a big barrier to digital camera adoption was a lack of familiarity with the technology.”
HP Canada needed a service that would help take the intimidation factor out of digital photography; provide its camera resellers with a value-added selling tool; and provide its customers with personalized support as they learned to use a new and sophisticated product. The company considered several options, but found a unique and compelling solution from SOS, a Toronto-based Microsoft® Certified Partner.
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Solution
SOS is a leading supplier of personal learning software and solutions. It enables live, one-on-one Internet video conferencing, instantly connecting SOS users to productivity coaches who use proactive coaching techniques and proprietary learning methodologies to ensure people adopt the features and services pertinent to them in the right way, and quickly, the first time. The SOS platform is content agnostic and can be used to support any product, service or process.
“People really learn when they are coached along – they become far more engaged. We wanted to develop software that was relevant to what the customers’ needs were, make it quick and easy to use, and deliver it all in an environment the average consumer is familiar with,” says Dejan Slokar, director of product development, SOS. “So instead of telling them, ‘here are all the functions of the product’ like manuals and online help systems do, we enable coaches to learn who the person is first, why they bought the product and what their goals are, advise them on some key features they were unaware of but would likely love to use, and then support delivery of a personalized adoption curriculum which delivers on those needs. A nice consequence of our approach is that by ensuring customers learn, we reduce our client’s overall support costs.”
With these goals in mind, SOS developed the first version of the SOS platform using Microsoft technology and a mix of packaged and custom applications. SOS, however, saw other opportunities for its platform that it was technically unable to take advantage of. That’s when SOS decided to re-build its platform, this time relying entirely on Microsoft technology.
“We have had very positive experiences with Microsoft development tools, and we saw their potential to help us create this type of collaborative application,” says Slokar.
In early 2004, SOS developers went to work, building the core SOS platform components using the Visual Studio™ development system and ASP.NET. They quickly designed a new smart client interface for SOS that incorporated Web services to be used and modified by call centres anywhere. The ease-of-use and integration of the Microsoft development tools was a key to meeting project costs and deadlines. Specifically, the ability to rapidly build Web services based on industry standards gave SOS the edge it needed for quick delivery of the re-vamped platform.
“Our timeline for re-building the SOS platform was aggressive, and we needed to deliver a sophisticated application in a short period of time. We were able to put a new product out fairly quickly in no small part because of the power of the Microsoft development tools,” says Slokar.
The new SOS platform consists of three tiers, the first being the new smart client interface. The second tier consists of an application server running Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 software, which stores customer information. The third tier, a back office layer, consists of a Web server running Microsoft Internet Information Service (IIS), which enables coaches using the client interface at SOS or a customer site to send and collect data to and from customers using Web services. The power of the Microsoft .NET Framework helps users of the SOS platform easily design customized, Web-based applications to interface with IIS and scale them according to their individual needs.
At the centre of the system is a real-time routing engine, which facilitates assignment of incoming calls from multiple communications channels and routes them to the appropriate coach based on a configured set of business rules. Upon selection of the appropriate coach, an instant communication session is established between the end-user and the coach delivering the service. Depending on the communication method used, this session could occur within a collaborative, Web-based environment that includes full duplex audio, video stream, text chat, screen sharing and content push, or within a regular telephone conversation.
The SOS platform supports full localization, separating the program logic source code from the user interface elements by storing displayed text and images in external English and French language files. It has been certified as a Microsoft® .NET connected platform, and the smart client interface has been certified as Designed for Microsoft® Windows® XP.
“Because of the smart client interface communication with the middle tier of Web services, there is no limitation on where we can install this client, which gives us the flexibility to have services where we need them - at home, in the office or remotely,” says Slokar.
To facilitate collaboration between users and coaches, the SOS platform is also closely integrated with the Microsoft Real-Time Communication application programming interface embedded in Windows XP. This supports MS Live conferencing, enabling the SOS platform to offer video, audio and other conferencing capabilities to its clients, crucial to the mutual learning process and overall customer experience.
Impressed by the SOS platform’s capabilities, HP Canada bought the SOS Live Coach service and bundled it as a complimentary learning and support package offered to customers by HP’s retail service and channel technology partners.
Today, select HP digital camera customers register for the SOS offering via a Web service generated by the registration CD that comes bundled with their purchase. They answer a series of profile-based questions presented by the SOS platform, designed to help SOS productivity coaches learn exactly what problems or concerns customers might have. Customers are than connected in a live session with an appropriately skilled coach at SOS, who offers them personal coaching based on an initial needs assessment and consultation that result in a personal curriculum for the caller.
The coach can also schedule follow-up appointments for the customers that wish to continue exploring more features of the product. Along the way, coaches advise callers on camera features they may not be aware of but that will add value to their experience, and gather more data about the customer and products to help facilitate even better service for future engagements.
Business Benefits
After 18 months, HP saw dramatic improvements in customer satisfaction with SOS. Ninety-one per cent of HP digital camera users rated SOS Live Coach Service between an eight and a 10 on a 10-point satisfaction scale, and 100 per cent of those polled said they would recommend the service to a friend.
As well, nearly three-quarters of digital camera customers said SOS was influential in their decision to buy an HP camera, and 90 per cent have requested to receive ongoing product information and ongoing e-mail notifications from HP to keep them informed on digital photography, product updates and promotions.
“We’re extremely pleased with the results from SOS,” says Fudge. “The feedback from our customers has been very positive and the number of registrants to the service echoes that.”
Improved brand recognition
Using the information that the SOS platform and its coaches help gather, and the deeper inter-personal relationship with users that it enables, SOS has helped HP Canada build and maintain a personal and potentially longer-term relationship with its customers.
“SOS gives HP the ability to engage each customer the service touches in after market sales” says Doug Deeks, senior account manager, SOS. “The full value of the Microsoft .NET-based version of the SOS platform is that we can potentially use it to convert the HP help desk from a cost centre into a profit centre.”
A more stable and attractive platform
By re-building the SOS platform entirely with Microsoft technology, SOS has been able to offer HP Canada a reliable, scalable and easy-to-use platform that is able to interact seamlessly with thousands of customers in real-time via Web services.
“With the .NET Framework and all the underlying methods that are included, our partner data exchange is much more effective” says Slokar. “We have Web services that expose the entire business process between SOS and HP, providing details about customer requests - when they were opened, who the client is, what information they’re looking for and what information they were provided. And because that information is available as a Web service, clients can pull that data on demand into other applications like Microsoft Excel, for example.”
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
The Microsoft .NET Framework is an integral Windows® component for building and running the next generation of applications and XML Web services.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET is the rapid application development (RAD) tool for building next-generation Web applications and XML Web services. Visual Studio .NET empowers developers to rapidly design broad-reach Web applications for any device and any platform. In addition, Visual Studio .NET is fully integrated with the Microsoft .NET Framework, providing support for multiple programming languages and automatically handling many common programming tasks, freeing developers to rapidly create Web applications using their language of choice.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/
Acquire Visual Studio .NET: htp://shop.microsoft.com/devtools/default.asp
MSDN® Subscriptions: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-ca/vstudio/aa718656.aspx
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about SOS Personal Learning Solutions Inc., call 1-877-633-3707 or visit the Web site at: www.SOSLiveCoach.com
For more information about Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co., call (905) 206-4725 or visit the Web site at: www.hp.com/country/ca
