Great conversation on the Wednesday panel at CONNECTIONS™ :Technical Support as a Value-added Service. Some key points from this and follow-on discussions:

• iTOK shared the data point that 30% of incoming calls convert to paid users, and of those, 80% become subscribers.
• PlumChoice is handling the technical support calls for its Home Monitoring and Control solution (per Eric Bruno's keynote).
• Dell is offering premium phone support in the U.S. and China, wrapping it into warranties, and offering more simplified choices for how consumers choose technical support services.
• John Fisher at Troppus Software (EchoStar) said that one key feature of their technology platform is enabling a tech support agent to have more information about what type of problem the consumer may be experiencing at the moment of a call connection - this reduces the need to ask the customer many questions up front, and allows for quicker diagnostics and remediation.
• Jordan Socran from Radialpoint - a company whose technical support platform is being used by a large number of broadband providers - talked about expanding the support business to OEMs and retailers, and focusing on a complete lifecycle of services.

We just had a release today citing the enormous growth of the tech support business - upwards of $30 billion in the U.S. alone between consumers and SMBs.

Also, it was interesting to see CyberDefender's press release from last Tuesday detailing the growth of its tech support business - LiveTech. LiveTech is now averaging more than 40,000 PC repairs per month, up 471% from approximately 7,000 repairs per month during the same time last year. These repairs are primarily due to malware infections or PC slowdowns, which together account for more than 65 percent of repairs made by the company's subscription service.