Tech Support Agents Team Up to Tackle Industry Challenges with Citrix GoToAssist

As technology adoption rates increase and new products penetrate the marketplace, the technical support industry is experiencing sky-rocketing demand while struggling to keep up with service challenges. John Ragsdale, vice president of research for the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), recently cited compelling findings concerning the future of the support industry. Ragsdale identified exploding incident volumes, increased issue complexity, high levels of agent turnover, declining service levels and rising customer expectations as potential threats to the industry. But threats for some mean opportunities for others. ReSource Inc., a Colorado-based technology provider to retail businesses, uses Citrix® GoToAssist® from Citrix Online, a division of Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), to deliver support to customers across the U.S. "In many ways, it’s revolutionized our customer service,” said Doug Wells, vice president of ReSource. "Call durations are down significantly, and frustration levels have been reduced for our agents as well as our customers.” GoToAssist is the first remote tech support solution to enable technical support teams, help desks and customer support centers to "invisibly” collaborate as a team to resolve issues without placing customers on hold, transferring them to multiple agents or following up hours – or days – later. Using GoToAssist, a frontline agent speaking with a customer can invite more experienced experts into the session to view the customer’s screen and help solve the problem. GoToAssist allows the "cloaked” experts to collaborate transparently, so customers experience uninterrupted end-to-end contact with just one representative. These in-house mentors transfer knowledge to less-experienced frontline agents in "over-the-shoulder” support – a form of on-the-job training. For managers like ReSource’s Wells, GoToAssist offers "manager silent monitoring,” which allows him to view support sessions remotely. "I’m able at any given time to ‘drop in’ and see how many active session are in progress, and how they’re going,” says Wells, who is based in Colorado and oversees a team of geographically dispersed support agents. Leveraging remote support services like GoToAssist, many support providers are finding ways to turn customer service into a differentiator. "With GoToAssist collaboration, the expertise, collected wisdom and experience of an entire organization can be focused on the customer – all behind the scenes,” said Elizabeth Cholawsky, vice president of products and services at Citrix Online. "The all-important first-contact relationship with a customer is maintained throughout each session, so the highest levels of service can be provided from beginning to end. It’s a tremendous step forward in relieving the long-standing frustrations between support agents and their customers.” For more information about GoToAssist, visit www.gotoassist.com or for a complimentary trial, visit www.gotoassist.com/s/corp/pr. For more information about Citrix Online, visit www.citrixonline.com. About Citrix Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) is the global leader and the most trusted name in application delivery infrastructure. More than 200,000 organizations worldwide rely on Citrix to deliver any application to users anywhere with the best performance, highest security and lowest cost. Citrix customers include 100% of the Fortune 100 companies and 99% of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers. Citrix has approximately 6,200 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2006 was $1.1 billion. Citrix® and GoToAssist® are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.