Support.com Vendor Profile
Matt Healey http://www.idc.com/analysts/analysthome.jsp
IDC OPINION
As technology has advanced and become a more pervasive force in people's lives, most consumers and small businesses are finding they lack the ability to effectively support their technology. Further, the historical lack of adequate business models has made supporting technology in the consumer and small business space very difficult. As a result, as devices have grown more complex, essential, and prevalent, the means to service these devices have lagged. To serve the consumer and small business support services market, several services providers have begun to develop offerings to fill this need. Support.com is one of the new vendors in this market. IDC believes that to capitalize on this growing and still forming market, Support.com should do the following:
- Continue growing its customer base with leading providers in key verticals including retail, broadband, software, and hardware. The market for consumer and small business support is continuing to expand. However, among the main channels for consumer support — telcos/cable/ISP, retail chains, hardware vendors, and software vendors — there is no clear leader at this time. As a result, IDC believes that for Support.com to continue to grow, the company will need to expand its partner base to include vendors in all of these segments.
- Continue leveraging Six Sigma methodology to yield high customer satisfaction rates. One of the main challenges that IDC predicts in this market is the difficulty associated with scaling as this market grows. This can be addressed by rigorous process controls such as Six Sigma.
- Continue investing in technology platforms to enable delivery of services. IDC believes that, in addition to rigorous process control, services organizations need to continue to leverage technology to assist in the delivery of services.
IN THIS VENDOR PROFILE
This IDC Vendor Profile analyzes Support.com, a consumer and small business support services vendor. This document focuses on the company's market, service offerings, and strategy for the future.
http://www.idc.com/home.jsp
SITUATION OVERVIEW
Current State of the Technology Support Market
Over the past few years, technology has grown in terms of penetration and sophistication. More consumers and small businesses are using technology to accomplish mission-critical daily tasks. While individual technology products have generally improved in quality and functionality, the proliferation of interconnected devices, applications, and online threats has resulted in an overall technology landscape that is actually more difficult to navigate. When everything is running smoothly, consumers and businesses accomplish more tasks easily and quickly, thus raising the importance of the technology. However, when things are not running smoothly, the increased reliance on technology and the lack of clear support options from traditional providers make paid support services imperative to both consumers and small businesses.
Consumer Technology Support Market
According to IDC research, in 2009, the market size for U.S. consumer support services was $1,394.8 million. This market was segmented into four categories: support for computing devices (PCs, laptops, printers, routers and networking equipment, and external storage), entertainment devices (TVs, DVD players, DVRs, gaming consoles, and VCRs), mobile devices (mobile phones, smartphones, digital cameras, and iPod/MP3 players) and, finally, monthly or annual subscription plans. Subscription plans have been broken out as they tend to cover multiple devices. The largest segment of the current market is the "per incident" market for computing devices, representing almost 65% of the total. Figure 1 shows the breakdown of the total market into these segments.
In addition, the consumer market for support services is unsaturated and highly fractured. This open space needs to be filled to serve the essential and prevalent devices used by consumers. Consumers have many devices that they rely on every day to keep their lives running smoothly. When such devices break down, the support to fix them or keep them functioning at optimum levels becomes indispensable. These devices and their corresponding support stand to become more prevalent and more essential in the next few years.
Figure 1
Small Business Market
The small business market spans a heterogeneous group of businesses with 1–99 employees. Many of these businesses employ technology to accomplish business processes on a daily basis. However, the type of technology and the complexity of their systems vary greatly, based on their respective size. Businesses with 1–20 employees tend to have needs similar to those of a consumer. Generally, once a small business customer hires a dedicated IT employee, the customer's needs have a tendency to change and the resemblance to the consumer tends to dissipate. Most small business customers are defined by an increased expectation that their services provider must know their people, their business, and their existing technology environment. This set of market needs places an extra premium on technologies that enable the delivery of personalized and seamless customer experiences, such as customer relationship management and support automation — areas where Support.com invests heavily.
Remote Clientless Support
As technology has penetrated and evolved, the support for it has lagged. Consumers and small businesses face a myriad of options when choosing support, and building a comprehensive support system for all devices can be confusing and frustrating. There are solutions available from retail stores, manufacturers, local repair shops, ISPs, MSOs, family, and friends. Support can be garnered by phone, email, chat, Web sites, or remote technology. The newest of these technologies is remote technology.
The widespread proliferation of broadband in recent years has paved the way for high-bandwidth remote support sessions that bridge the physical distance between the customer and the support services provider. Remote clientless support enables a technician to remotely control a PC's keyboard and mouse to resolve the consumer or small business' issue at hand. This experience does not require preinstalled software, and the software does not remain on the client's PC after the support session. Remote support provides both convenience and security for the support consumer. In addition, for providers such as Support.com that invest heavily in an internal software R&D capability, many remote diagnostic and support activities can be automated to simplify and expedite the flow of service delivery, yielding further enhancements to efficiency, consistency, and quality levels.
These advances in support technology enable lower costs for support providers and a dramatically improved support experience for consumers. This lower cost for delivery has been pivotal in opening the new market of remote technology support to the consumer and small business market. Before remote support, this industry was unlikely to be profitable because of poor business models with fractured delivery channels spread across wide geographic regions.
Remote technology has given service providers a more convenient, less expensive way of delivering their services. Firms in this space are understandably interested in the new business models that make it possible to deliver support services. The new stumbling block lies in lack of consumer awareness about remote technology. Consumers need to be educated regarding the technology, security, required software, and access.
Company Overview
Support.com is a leading provider of remote technology support services for consumers and small businesses. Support.com supports PCs, Macs, and peripherals as well as most software packages for these devices and, more recently, added support for smartphones. Over the past year, Support.com has increased its market share by adding new channel partners, extending existing channel relationships, and purchasing Sammsoft, a provider of PC optimization software.
Company Strategy
Support.com's approach to the market is centered around the three topics discussed in the sections that follow.
Technology-Driven Approach to Support
Support.com began as a software company focused on support automation and has evolved into a services company. This history has resulted in Support.com bringing a reliance on technology to provide services to its customers. Support.com holds two patents related to its technology services platform.
Support.com has focused its technology investments in the areas discussed in the sections that follow.
Service Delivery Efficiency
This is Support.com's largest area of investment and includes several proprietary technologies. For its service agents, Support.com has developed an application that integrates CRM, ticketing, remote screen sharing, and telephony. In addition, Support.com has built a client application called the Solutions Toolkit that is deployed on the customer's machine during service delivery. The Solutions Toolkit ensures that Support.com's services are delivered by following predesigned "best practice" workflows and automates time-consuming steps such as tool downloads, system optimizations, and software checks.
For partners, Support.com's Service Delivery Management System (SDMS) simplifies the ordering and workflow of services, ensuring that the right delivery party takes the right next step at the right time. Support.com provides an online portal as part of SDMS for customers and partners to order and redeem services, view work order status, receive warranty support, manage subscriptions and service plans, and view service receipts. Integrations to the partner's existing billing, point of sale, and customer care systems are supported through standard Web services APIs.
Ongoing Customer Care and Subscription Management
Support.com's EasySupport desktop agent resides on the customer's computer and provides one-click access to a service agent, subscription management functions, and automated PC care. The EasySupport agent helps deliver ongoing value outside the context of live human interactions by automatically scanning and optimizing the customer’s computer. In addition, EasySupport simplifies access to service down to a one-click process. EasySupport's dashboard provides additional detail for specific areas that may be contributing to poor PC health. Scheduled and automated repair cycles are supported to fix most problems, and in cases where a repair may not be possible, partner-specific recommendations can be made.
Demand Generation
For partners, Support.com offers a white-label downloadable scanner tool called PC Health Check. This application diagnoses the computer's performance, security, and system characteristics and makes service recommendations based on a configurable recommendations map.
Six Sigma Approach to Service Delivery
The principles of Six Sigma involve constant measurement and improvement of those elements of an operation that are critical to customers and critical to quality. These elements must be defined through a thorough understanding of the processes that are used in delivering services and a system of statistically measuring the output of those processes.
Support.com views service delivery as a combination of process, technology, and people. Six Sigma tools are used to map processes, measure the quality and efficiency of the process output, and then design, test, and implement sustainable changes that improve both quality and efficiency.
Following the principles of Six Sigma, process mapping, measurement, and evaluation are utilized to identify areas in the process that need to be improved in order to increase customer satisfaction, improve efficiency, and deliver better results. As these areas are identified, changes in process, technology, required skills, and human behavior can be made. Tight measurement and feedback systems ensure that the changes are real, reinforced, and sustainable.
Partners in Key Verticals
Many organizations across multiple industry verticals are moving to establish programs that drive new revenue, enhance margins, and provide a way to handle traditionally "out of scope" technology issues for customers. IDC believes there are four key verticals that are entering this market: retail, broadband, software vendors, and hardware vendors. Given the large unmet consumer need, there are examples of early successes in each of these verticals, and multiple winners could emerge.
Retailers have moved most swiftly into the market over the past few years. Support.com is the remote provider behind the technology services programs for the top 3 office supply retailers in North America, specifically Staples with its EasyTech offering, Office Depot with the Tech Depot, and OfficeMax with Ctrlcenter. Cable providers, telcos, and other ISPs are also establishing support services programs. Support.com currently runs an active program with AOL. The AOL program combines traditional services offerings with new PC optimization software offerings recently acquired from Sammsoft, resulting in a more comprehensive suite of support options for customers.
Independent software vendors, particularly those in the antivirus space, find these services to be a natural extension of their existing software offerings. Malware and PC performance issues likely resulting from malware are the most common customer needs. IDC expects that Support.com will pursue partnerships with key ISV.
Finally, hardware and consumer electronics (CE) manufacturers are the first party that many customers contact when faced with a problem, regardless of whether the problem is directly related to the device they purchased. Through its program with Support.com, Sony provides its customers with options for support even when the device is out of warranty or the problem is out of scope.
FUTURE OUTLOOK
Traditionally, this market has been dominated by very small local providers. The main reason for this was providing a quality remote support experience was exceptionally difficult before the remote clientless support tools became prevalent and providers were forced to rely on phone or email/chat. As a result, consumers were reluctant to pay for remote support as the support experience was frustrating for both the provider and the customer. This led to the development of geographically fragmented market services by local providers, often students or other technologists who provided tech support to a limited client base on a part-time basis or small retailers that could provide in-store technical expertise.
Support.com is one of the independent consumer services vendors that has entered this market and is trying to expand nationally. IDC believes that the market is ready to grow over the coming years as consumer need for technical support has continued to grow, as technology has become more pervasive, and as the problems with technology have become more difficult to self-diagnose and fix. Further, IDC believes that the clientless remote support technology has enabled providers with the tools required to serve this market profitably at a price point that consumers are more willing to pay.
Future for Support.com
Support.com is in a growing industry with the potential to expand. However, this comes with a large deal of uncertainty about how best to approach the market as well as its competition and potential channel partners. Currently, there are several types of organizations that are trying to become the leading provider in this industry. Specifically, these include device manufacturers, telco/cable/ISPs, and retail chains. Each of these organizations has a different approach to providing support to the end customers and will put differing requests on its support services partner. Selecting and partnering with the right providers will be critical in determining Support.com's overall success.
Additionally, as the market grows, one key challenge will be to maintain the high satisfaction that its customers have come to expect from a paid support provider. In any services industry, this is one of the most difficult challenges, as scaling the business can be very difficult. IDC believes that it is very critical in the consumer support services market as the volume of customer interactions is generally considerably higher than the enterprise support market.
ESSENTIAL GUIDANCE
Advice for Support.com
For the past few years, technology for consumers has increased in terms of complexity, interoperability, and sheer volume. Support for these devices needs to be less expensive, more comprehensive, and easier for consumers to navigate. IDC believes that as the consumer technology market continues to evolve, support will need to change and grow as well. To take advantage of this growing and changing market, IDC advises Support.com to do the following:
- Continue growing its customer base with leading providers in key verticals including retail, broadband, and software and hardware providers. In the next few years, consumer support services will be done increasingly through the channel. However, to avoid being left behind, Support.com needs to focus on creating high-value relationships with a variety of partners that have an established brand name in the consumer space. This includes establishing additional relationships with retailers, telco/cable/ISPs, independent software vendors, and device manufacturers. IDC believes that by establishing these partnerships, Support.com will be in a better position as the market determines which channel will dominate this segment.
- Continue leveraging Six Sigma methodology to yield high satisfaction rates. A wave of new players with various business models have emerged in this market, and it is key that Support.com is able to ensure a high-quality customer experience. The partners that are reselling Support.com services are putting their brand name behind the services and will not react well to a wave of customer complaints. Support services is about fixing the issue at hand, but perhaps even more about making the customer happy with the results. The Six Sigma methodology should be employed rigorously to ensure continuous improvement as customer needs evolve.
- Continue enhancing its technology platform to enable delivery of new services. Support.com's heavy platform investments have been geared toward enhancing the customer experience, promoting consistent service delivery, and providing efficiency gains. The platform should be further extended to support additional innovative services that would not be technically or economically feasible without automation. This will maintain Support.com's position as an innovative provider in the space and fully leverage an area of strength and differentiation.
LEARN MORE
Related Research
- Overview of the Consumer and Small Business Support Market (IDC #222819, April 2010)
- U.S. Home Office 2010–2014 Forecast: In a Challenging Economy, Home Office Households Invest in Mobility and Connectivity for Greater Productivity (IDC #222354, March 2010)
- The Importance of Tech Support in the Consumer Market (IDC #lcUS22155210, January 2010)
- IDC Technology Enablement Index: Fall 2008 (IDC #216087, January 2009)
- IDC's Worldwide Consumer Support Services Taxonomy, 2009 (IDC #216050, January 2009)
Copyright Notice
This IDC research document was published as part of an IDC continuous intelligence service, providing written research, analyst interactions, telebriefings, and conferences. Visit www.idc.com to learn more about IDC subscription and consulting services. To view a list of IDC offices worldwide, visit www.idc.com/offices. Please contact the IDC Hotline at 800.343.4952, ext. 7988 (or +1.508.988.7988) or sales@idc.com for information on applying the price of this document toward the purchase of an IDC service or for information on additional copies or Web rights.
Copyright 2010 IDC. Reproduction is forbidden unless authorized. All rights reserved.
