HP Makes IT Support More Flexible With New Portal And Mobile Device Access

HP has added features to its HP Support Center for enterprise IT customers through an online portal that includes answers to questions, an online community of close to a million IT professionals and a mobile application that allows customers to get answers anytime, anywhere. The enhancements to the HP Support Center, announced Tuesday, are intended to address customer demands for HP Always-on Support for an always running IT infrastructure.

In the past, customer tech support was based on the call center and field engineer model, in which a customer would call HP with a problem and HP would send someone to fix it, says Michelle Weiss, VP of marketing for HP Technology Services. Today, customers want faster resolution of problems through a Web-based services model.

With the enhanced HP Support Center, expected to launch next month and free to anyone with an existing HP warranty or service contract, customers can diagnose problems through keyword searches of various products, follow a step-by-step troubleshooting process and access a library of support documents. In essence, customers can search through the Web portal for the same information call center operators use, says Sue Barsamian, VP of HP Technology Services Support.

"We have integrated this with the same [customer relationship management] CRM technology that runs all of our call centers," Barsamian says. HP is also rolling out  a feature called My Support Zone in the portal, at which customers can keep track of their own HP product warranties, service contracts and a record of trouble tickets.

Also, with a nod toward the demand for high reliability and uptime, customers can also access the support center via smartphones, though so far just devices running the Apple iOS and Google Android mobile operating systems. The smartphone app, for which HP has a patent pending, is the first from a vendor to offer a native mobile app for support as opposed to having the end user enter a URL in a smartphone browser.

This more robust customer support platform, part of HP's Critical Advantage support program, is particularly important for enterprises with converged infrastructures of virtualized, non-virtualized and cloud computing, says Rob Brothers, director of hardware and software support services at IDC.

"Since storage, servers, networks and virtualization software are so intricately tied, it can be difficult to get to the root cause of a support issue. Hence, providing a customer with a 'one-throat-to-choke' solution through an offering like Critical Advantage is very appealing," Brothers said in an e-mail interview. HP's advantage in the support space is that it took all of the information that was in its IT resource center and added help desk functionality, he said.

However, HP's competitors are developing similar automated resources to provide prompt product and technical support to their customers. Dell and EMC have Web portals that have the same capabilities as HP's, Brother said. And Oracle has some fairly sophisticated tools around its knowledge base in which it suggests possible resolutions to customer problems before a technician reviews their case.

In addition, Cisco Systems technical support includes access to an online community of tens of thousands of experts that marshals the process of crowdsourcing to solve problems. Like Cisco's, HP's online community is made up HP and non-HP experts.

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