Sid Victor, Vice President - Solutions at CSS Corp, provides insights into several key industry trends and questions for the 2016 CONNECTIONS Summit, hosted by Parks Associates during CES:

What is the most important next step to engage consumers in smart home solutions, connected entertainment services, and /or value-added services like tech support and connected health?

The most important step is to fabricate a different level of consumer engagement - by constantly innovating the ways consumers interact with technology and each other. We call this transformative technology that will provide companies like CSS Corp immense opportunity to support this growing economy of technology-aware consumers. Our commitment to provide a superlative customer experience has helped our clients differentiate themselves in the market. Players like CSS Corp have to focus on developing IoT support as a Center of Excellence. Invest in infrastructure by partnering with key IoT players / leaders in the market and develop a service model that does not restrict capability to a specific domain, technology or a platform. Early adoption and integration of platforms into the support solution with an added security layer will be a key differentiator.

At CSS Corp we keep our clients and their customers at the core of what we do, by adding substantial value in their daily lives, simplifying their lives and delivering a superior service experience. This fosters customer loyalty and also opens up new avenues in the field of analytics and automation. This will help us understand our customer’s ever changing behavioral patterns in order to further simplify and enhance the service interactions.

What is the biggest challenge your company faces in 2016?

From a perspective of a service and support provider, disruptions in the technology landscape and the changing dynamics of customer behavior are challenges that we foresee in the near future. As a leader in technical support landscape, it is imperative for service providers like CSS Corp to stay ahead of the curve and be cognizant of the changes taking place. We need to rapidly acquire and build knowledge of latest technologies and devices, and ensure that we can provide support to customers through various diverse channels. In fact, we foresee these challenges as future opportunities - to scale up and provide tailored delivery mechanisms that can drive customer experience several notches higher than the current norm.

What is the biggest driver for the connected consumer market?

The biggest drivers I believe are the explosion of new devices coming into the market, traditional legacy companies entering the market and the interoperability of devices in a connected home ecosystem. Consumers want plug and play and while the technology capabilities continue to evolve more towards plug and play – the support equation will become paramount to consumers. They are going to want a one stop support solution that solves the issues they face within their connected ecosystem. One of the biggest challenges encountered by the IoT industry players is the lack of stringent security measures to secure the smart home and connected private networks. 

What are the most important initiatives your company is taking in 2016?

Creating great CX by simplifying support and IT operations will be top priority for CSS Corp.

Proactive Support using Analytics: CSS Corp’s investment in analytics helps track trends in real time. This means identifying issues and re¬solving them proactively. This has resulted in higher CX and customer loyalty for brands. Add to this, fewer calls to the support channel have reduced costs substantially, increased CSAT scores by atleast 10% and reduced customer churn by 10%.

Predictive Support using Automation: CSS Corp was one of the early adopters of technology and we have made strategic investments in the area of automation and cognitive computing. By automating support, we have been able to ensure high Quality of Service (QoS) and greater reliability. Automation of support ensures that customer interaction across all forms of support are captured and fed into the universal customer view, thereby reducing costs by 30% and improving CSAT scores.

Innovative engagement models for better stickiness: CSS Corp’s innovative support models such as our Premium Tech Support not only help clients enhance and create stickiness with their customer base, but also creates additional revenue streams for our clients. Add to that, CSS Corp’s concerted focus on Security puts us in a very unique position to create extreme¬ly profitable engagement models.

Innovative pricing models for better outcomes: CSS Corp is among the early adopters of the outcome based model for support services. We offer both the traditional – FTE or fixed pricing models, but have also pioneered the concept of offering pricing flexibility with outcome based pricing models. These models ensure that our customers move away from CAPEX and pay either on outcomes, subscriptions, transactions or delivering higher CX quotient. By moving to this model, our customers enjoy the flexibility of ramping their support needs and costs based on business requirements and market demands.

Describe your vision for the smart home and entertainment markets in 2020.

The future will be more and more like the Jetsons. The products and startups launching today and in the next 2 years will be blended in with a handful of major players. The connected device manufacturer space will evolve to a few major players leading the market but we will always have a number of innovative new products and startups coming on to the scene. Envisioning the unfolding challenges and opportunities in the smart home and IoT landscape for the years to come, we have strategically aligned our investments and focus on five key sectors – Automation, Analytics, Cloud, Security and IoT to help our Clients capitalize and stay ahead of the curve . Our services in these areas have been recognized by leading analysts and industry groups:

• As an automated company focused on experience management and delivery excellence
• As a new Age Technologies-Next-Gen automation company
• As a leader in IoT services and Analytics
• As a reliable security solution provider for the connected IoT segment
• An expert providing industry focused support, IoT and Infrastructure services and solutions
• Productizing IPs and SaaS based support delivery 

Sid Victor spoke on the CONNECTIONS Summit session "Support Solutions: IoT and the Connected Home" on January 7 at 11:00am, alongside speakers from F-Secure, Radialpoint, Sutherland Global Services, and Support.com.

For more information on CONNECTIONS Summit at CES, visit www.connectionssummit.com.

Next: Ihiji: The support burden of the IoT is quickly growing past the skills of the typical homeowner
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