By working closely with customer service and support executives across high tech hardware and software, broadband, consumer electronics, retail, telecommunications and other technology-related industries, the Service and Support Professionals Association (SSPA) has identified 6 key business issues facing service and support managers today. These issues are:

• What are the support impacts of ever-increasing technical complexity on margins and customer satisfaction?
• Are we running out of margin-improvement opportunities?
• How do we defend against maintenance-contract price pressure to drive new service-revenue opportunities?
• How do we make good service translate into market-share advantage?
• What is the future as we move from fixing problems to driving product value?
• What are the challenges of offshoring support and how do we address them?

This paper will explore these issues and offer guidance to help companies successfully face these challenges to improve service levels and differentiate competitively based on quality of service.