A smooth support experience and efficient support teams work together to delight and retain customers when it comes to customer support.

Stefan Steinle, executive vice president and head of Customer Support, SAP SE, shares more about how the Customer Support organization at SAP is harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to help bring innovative improvements and deliver value to businesses.

Q: What are your views on the idea that businesses need to look beyond the customer to deliver outstanding customer support? 

A: Customer support is a differentiating factor in the success of any business, as it directly impacts customer satisfaction and in turn customer retention.  

While the primary role of customer support is to fix customer issues promptly and effectively, it is equally important to address the needs of support engineers. I would even go one step further and say that customer support is not just about customers. Yes, you heard that right. It may seem counterintuitive, but there’s another side to the story of retaining customers. The customer’s support experience and the engineer’s support efficiency are two sides of the same coin.

Support engineers are responsible for resolving complex issues and ensuring customer satisfaction. They are the first line of defense in protecting the company’s reputation. By investing in the well-being of support engineers, customer support can significantly elevate the customer support experience. 

Q: What constitutes a great support experience for customers? 

A: I can’t emphasize this enough: customers love self-help. They find satisfaction in testing workarounds, playing around with tips and tricks, and arriving at a solution without raising a ticket. What does this mean for us? It is our job to provide comprehensive SAP Knowledge Base Articles, guided tutorials, and other self-service options. 

Next, we need to accept that customer preferences are diverse. Not everybody has the same choice when it comes to interacting with support teams. Some like tickets, some prefer live agents to bots, and some like talking on the phone. We address this by offering multichannel support. 

Time is always a huge factor in a customer’s support experience. Maybe the issue they are facing is a minor speedbump or a major showstopper. Our job is to get them back on track. This includes personalization and the sharing of engagement history across support channels, to help ensure the customer is not forced to repeat its complaint at every desk. 

There are many more, but if you asked me to pick one – I would think proactively addressing customers’ issues, even before they realize there is a problem, constitutes a great support experience.   

Q: What can improve support efficiency among support teams and engineers? 

A: Any business that takes pride in offering exceptional customer support would address three areas and ask the following questions to ensure that their support teams are fully empowered:  

• People: Are your teams well-trained? How is the culture? Are employees collaborating and sharing knowledge? Are your systems set up to spotlight engineers who handle complex tickets with high quality solutions? 
• Processes: How well do you minimize manual efforts and automate repetitive tasks? Do you have clear protocols and escalation paths?  
• Technology and infrastructure: How robust is your ITSM system in managing and tracking customer queries? What productivity improvements have you implemented?  

Q: How has SAP elevated support experiences among customers?  

A: While we are invested in fine-tuning our Customer Support systems and processes regularly across multiple criteria, I would like to focus on our AI-powered solutions. 

When it comes to elevating support experiences among customers, our efforts are toward providing a smooth journey – right from when they encounter a problem down to its successful resolution. 

Those familiar with SAP systems know that our products are mapped to product functions, which you select when you create a new ticket. Now with AI, the system can predict the product function related to your case, and you can have the option to narrow your selection down very quickly. The system can also automatically suggest products when you try to select a product in the case creation form in SAP for Me. Similarly, the system can automatically route your ticket to the right queue by suggesting application components sorted by relevance for your new case. 

Another valuable AI-powered service is customer solution matching, where the system displays solutions provided to other customers that match your customer profile. With Incident Solution Matching, the system provides suggestions in the side panel of the get support app on SAP for Me. You can also see the top content suggestions related to your issue description. Our predictors and categorization machine learning models help enhance Incident Solution Matching recommendations by providing the correct contexts for a given issue description. 

SAP for Me helps bring together important alerts, metrics, and insights about your SAP product portfolio with a single access point. Built-In Support can embed the support experience into the product experience, offering context-aware guidance integrated into the user interface of cloud solutions from SAP. 

At the end of the day, all of these translate to a smooth and effortless experience for end users trying to log a support request. 

Q: How has SAP improved support efficiency among support teams and engineers? 

A: When it comes to improving the efficiency of support engineers, we lean on minimizing tedious, manual efforts and automating what can be automated. 

For example, with the expert finder, engineers can view a list of relevant experts who can handle the topic best. When intelligent swarming is applicable, the system can sort relevant swarming areas and experts by relevance, considering historical data. Given a case assigned to a category, the system can propose the most granular application component to which the ticket can be assigned. 

Support engineers can view top SAP Notes and SAP Knowledge Base Articles matching the topic of the issues they’re handling. The system can detect outbreaks by matching a case with other cases where the same issue was reported. The system can also predict outbreaks by reviewing customers with similar profiles.

Other services include automatic translation, communication assistants, text extractors, channel recommenders, and solution recommenders. These are just a few examples of how AI is making the day-to-day of a support engineer a little bit better. And SAP is fully on board to explore exciting options in this area. For a detailed showcase of our AI-powered solutions, check out Your Ultimate Guide for SAP Sapphire Orlando in 2024. 

Renuka Abraham is part of Customer Support at SAP.

WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that Alexandra Steiger will join SAP as new global head of Investor Relations on July 1, 2024, reporting to Dominik Asam, member of the Executive Board and CFO of SAP SE.

With over a decade of experience in the finance industry, Steiger has held roles at renowned institutions such as Goldman Sachs and UBS. She currently serves as executive director within Global Investment Research at Goldman Sachs, focusing on the U.S. Internet sector, including companies such as Alphabet, Meta and Amazon.

“I am very happy Alexandra is joining SAP,” said Asam. “We will benefit from her leadership and the wealth of expertise she brings from her previous responsibilities. In her new role, she can build on the strong foundation laid by Anthony Coletta and the entire Investor Relations team.”

Prior to her assignment at Goldman Sachs, Steiger was an executive director within UBS Equity Research, covering select U.S. Internet and Interactive Entertainment companies. She received a bachelor’s degree in International Business Administration from the University of Maastricht and a master’s degree in International Management CEMS from the Erasmus University Rotterdam and University of St. Gallen.

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On April 1, 2024, SAP formed Customer Services & Delivery – a new Board area that will focus on maximizing innovation adoption and customer value in the cloud.

This is good news – not just for customers but also for the ecosystem. In recent months, SAP had already identified that when engineering teams deliver innovations, there is a corresponding need to provide customers with guidance on how they can swiftly adopt and consume innovation. Customer Services & Delivery was created to bring together the offerings that help customers tap the value of SAP’s integrated portfolio.

By virtue of its function, the Customer Support organization fits into this strategic setup quite naturally. To learn more about how Customer Support is owning and driving end-to-end customer support experiences powered by AI, I met with Stefan Steinle, executive vice president and head of Customer Support, SAP SE. 

Q: How would you describe the role of Customer Support in SAP’s success?

A: Customer support is a differentiating factor among companies that are equally positioned in functional richness, usability, quality, deployability, or configurability. While signing up a new customer is considered a huge win, being able to delight and retain the customer is equally important.

Support at SAP has been singularly impactful in advancing SAP’s customer success stories by proactively responding to customer needs and building long-term relationships. In addition to helping customers solve day-to-day problems, we are business partners who proactively work with customers toward achieving their business goals.

The Customer Support group encompasses much more than bug fixes. In addition to regular ticket resolutions, we use SAP Cloud ALM to help guide customers in application lifecycle management by enabling their transformation to the cloud and the operation of hybrid environments. We help customers help themselves through self-services and we proactively consult with our engineering teams to improve SAP products based on support-related feedback and learnings. Thanks to our support engineers, SAP has delivered over 1,000 improvements in the last 12 months. 

Q: How is SAP’s AI story shaping up when it comes to Customer Support? What is the AI strategy for Customer Support?

A: With our focus on value realization, the push to enhance support with AI has never been higher. To start with, we have invested in digitalizing mission-critical business processes with AI.

There are three parts toward bringing these business processes into the fold of AI-powered offerings. With the help of SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite, we can measure metrics around the customer’s business processes to gauge efficiency, bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement. Alternatively, customers can use this as a blueprint to review these metrics themselves. The next layer delivers business transformational AI services. And finally, we have a platform that provides tools to support a closed-loop approach for AI innovation in services and support.

Coming to the AI strategy for Customer Support, we believe that any innovations in AI must be in lockstep with application integration, meaning AI developments can only bring business value when they are infused and integrated into the applications used in a business process or scenario.

Q: In the context of Customer Support, could you give some examples of how AI brings business value?

A: While the real-world applications are countless, we could broadly classify them into three groups.

We use AI to correct – this means we use AI for the support experience, for personalization, and for data-driven decisions. We use AI to connect – here you find the platform, tools, and applications along customer touchpoints. We use AI to catalyze – this covers self-service, issue resolutions, and predictive and preventative support.

Q: How does SAP realize this?

A: We do this by taking advantage of our AI development platform that can bring all the data of services and support into one place. This platform helps bring endless possibilities based on the unique needs of customers’ businesses. On our part, we ensure that we explore the power of AI across business contexts.

By building AI models, we have the power to transform business in the way we want. We can plug these models into support systems and portals to extract the full value of AI in support. By collecting data and events from support systems and portals, we can even train AI models that can deliver value later. By processing the context and history of the customer, we can provide highly personalized support experiences – at runtime.

I could go on, but at this point I would urge you to follow the Customer Support tracks at SAP Sapphire & ASUG Annual Conference Orlando on June 3–5, 2024, to learn about the technologies and strategies that are shaping the future of Customer Support and business transformation. Be sure to bookmark your favorite topics from this guide: Your Ultimate Guide for SAP Sapphire Orlando in 2024.

Renuka Abraham is part of Customer Support at SAP.

At SAP SuccessFactors, our partners play a pivotal role in extending our reach and enhancing our solutions, ensuring that customers can best leverage innovative technologies that help them tackle the business challenges of today and tomorrow while making every employee a success story.  

This year, the SAP Global Line of Business Partner Excellence Awards have once again spotlighted our partners’ outstanding contributions to customer success. The following partners have showcased their expertise and unwavering commitment to excellence, leading the way with groundbreaking initiatives and exceptional customer service. 

• Accenture has been recognized as the winner for Sales Success in Large Enterprises. This award illustrates Accenture’s success bringing exceptional results to the largest and most complex HR transformations. With a long-standing SAP partnership, Accenture has built expertise across multiple industries, and, with this deep knowledge, it delivers innovative solutions and services to help our customers drive operational efficiency and enhance the employee experience.  
• NTT DATA Business Solutions stands out for winning awards in two categories: Customer Success Management and Intelligent Enterprise Value Realization. It was also a finalist in the Sales Success in Large Enterprises category. The combination of these awards highlights NTT DATA’s relentless determination to deliver throughout the customer value journey, as well as its breadth of offerings across human capital management (HCM) and SAP’s broader cloud ERP suite. NTT DATA’s consistent recognition demonstrates its leading innovation, adaptability to changing market needs, and commitment to customer satisfaction.  
• Empleox GmbH has been named the winner in the Sales Success in Midmarket category. Empleox GmbH helps us meet the needs of our midsize customers by continuously innovating and designing solutions to help them grow, scale, and stay agile. Specializing in implementing and optimizing SAP SuccessFactors solutions, Empleox GmbH empowers organizations to transform HR operations, enhance employee engagement, and achieve their business objectives.  
• OpenText has been recognized for its exceptional performance throughout 2023, alongside SAP, to bring cutting-edge solutions to the market. As the winner in the Partner Solution Success category, this recognition reflects the OpenText team’s ongoing commitment to growth and innovation. Its integration with SAP SuccessFactors solutions provides customers with enhanced document management capabilities, helping to streamline HR processes and reduce administrative costs.  
• EPI-USE has won the Delivery Quality category, which is awarded to partners for consistent excellence in project delivery across a number of metrics. This award speaks to the EPI-USE team’s commitment to customer delivery. With over 30 years of experience, EPI-USE has developed deep expertise in the SAP SuccessFactors portfolio and has become a trusted advisor for organizations looking to optimize their HCM solutions.  

“We are proud to be recognized for our commitment to Customer Success and Intelligent Enterprise Value Realization. These awards underscore our dedication to delivering innovative HR solutions to our customers worldwide. We help them to optimize their HR processes and improve their employee experience. Being a finalist in the Sales Success in Large Enterprise category further validates our strategic approach to supporting a broad spectrum in the market.”

Norbert Rotter, CEO, NTT DATA Business Solutions, and EVP, NTT DATA, Inc.

These partners have surpassed the high standard expected in our industry. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to all winners and finalists in the SAP Global LoB Partner Excellence Awards.  

We are incredibly grateful for our entire SAP SuccessFactors partner ecosystem, whose efforts are critical to our success. Your relentless pursuit of excellence ensures that, together, we can help our customers make every employee a success story.  

Get a detailed look at all the winners and more information about the awards. 

Aaron Green is chief marketing & solutions officer for SAP SuccessFactors.
Nick Holmes is vice president of Ecosystem for SAP SuccessFactors.