(EMAILWIRE.COM, June 19, 2009 ) SAN DIEGO, June 19, 2009 - Findings from the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) member technology survey for 2009 have been published in the SSPA Executive Insight report, “2009 SSPA Member Technology Survey: Adoption, Satisfaction, and Planned Spending for Service and Support Technology.” This annual study, conducted by John Ragsdale, vice president of technology research for SSPA, tracks budgets for new technology, chronicles which functional components are finding adoption by SSPA members, which vendors’ technology is in place, and how satisfied members are with their technology purchases.

The 2009 results reveal that although tech spending is down overall, service and support continue to make investments in innovative technology to improve productivity, customer satisfaction, and create new sources of revenue.

According to the survey, SSPA members as a whole are spending an estimated $565 million to buy, customize, and maintain support technology in 2009; small and medium-size SSPA members have an average support technology budget of $569,000, compared to $5.6 million for members with revenues more than $1 billion. Satisfaction with existing technology is flat compared to 2008, with an average score of 3.55 on a five-point scale. In spite of the recession, member companies continue to make investments in key technology such as Web collaboration, self-service knowledgebases, intelligent search, and proactive Web chat—all areas with easy-to-document ROI.

“Technology plays a critical role in service excellence, and our members are very aggressive in adopting innovation technology that provides a competitive edge, said John Ragsdale, vice president of technology research for SSPA. “Fifty-seven percent of SSPA member companies now have an online discussion forum in place, and a third of members have a Wiki for collaborative content development with customers.”

A new technology category was added for the 2009 survey: proactive support. This technology allows companies to monitor remote customer equipment, detecting errors or potential error conditions before customers are impacted. The other technology categories covered by the survey are knowledgebases for agents and customers, incident or case management, e-mail response management, enterprise CRM, entitlement/warranty tracking, intelligent search/analytics, moderated forums, proactive Web chat, quality monitoring, remote control/diagnostics, upsell/cross-sell or offer management, voice self-service, Web collaboration, Wikis, and workforce optimization.

For more information on this report, visit the SSPA Web site at www.thesspa.com.

About SSPA
The Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) is a key resource for the information and best practices needed to make better business decisions. It brings together the best minds from across the industry—from established companies with successful track records to pioneering newcomers with out-of-the-box ideas. Visit www.thesspa.com.

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Suzanne Hite
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