Supportworks, which has also been implemented in the company’s IT department to support the staff IT help desk, has provided integration with other desktop applications and web technology and links to external databases for product and service centre details.

Hornbill’s Supportworks was selected after assessing systems from 20 vendors, and from a shortlist of three. Since installing the system all customer enquiries from the website are directed through the Supportworks SelfService portal to a Knowledge Base, enabling customers to find the information they require, and reducing the number of enquiries handled by support staff. Email communications are filtered by the Knowledge Base and where appropriate the customer is sent an automated reply – this has further reduced the number of calls by several thousand in the last year.

Calls handled by support staff now take at least half the time it previously took due to integration with other products and databases, and streamlining of processes. From just a postcode a customer's full addresses is quickly captured and validated by QuickAddress from QAS, and is automatically pasted into the underlying application. Integration with the Sharp product and Service Centre databases give support staff instant access to information about products, spares and Service Centre locations, which they are able to pass on to the customer.

The need for paper-based filing has been virtually eliminated. Letters are logged and scanned into Supportworks, slicing resolution times by two days in the case of postal enquiries. A ‘multi-clip’ facility allows standard letter templates to be stored, enabling support staff to select a relevant template and create a customer letter at the click of a button. The document is automatically stored against the support request, providing a full audit trail. Furthermore, all standard forms, such as warranty approvals and parts requests that previously had to be posted or faxed to the Service Centres are now processed electronically.

Paul Copley, Team Head at Sharp’s Customer Information Centre commented, “After only nine months, analysis of the call statistics provided the justification to redeploy two members of staff to other areas of the business without any impact on call handling or efficiency. In isolation, this justifies the investment in the Hornbill system, but this was only the tip of the iceberg. Sharp has seen a real and tangible return on investment since deploying Supportworks.”

Gerry Sweeney, Managing Director at Hornbill Systems commented, “I am delighted that this very successful project has demonstrated the true capabilities of our Supportworks solution. The degree of automation and integration possibilities have once again delivered real benefit. One often hears staggering ROI figures quoted at the start of IT projects, but this demonstrates it can be truly realised if based on resolving tangible business issues. It is testimony to the flexibility and strength of Supportworks that it could span such a diverse set of issues and systems to deliver a solution that truly transformed Sharp’s customer support environment.”