A troubleshooting platform for customers to support themselves.
Call centres could use this to reduce training time and gain analytics on the troubleshooting process itself.
Make technical support as repeatable as writing a unit test and built into the product design.<p>Problem: Most self service solutions boil down to lmgtfy and rtfm.<p>Solution: Give people the ability to rapidly compare working and non working systems and the ability to zoom in down to the necessary level to troubleshoot. Any issues that can't be fixed indicate an undocumented part of the system. This would spare developers assisting every single customer as the system would update in real time for everyone.<p>I spent 5 years in technical support and have given this a lot of thought.
There is a lot things that could be automated, but the simplest thing is to focus on call centres for the start.
I think there is some potential in using a similar system for coding as well though that is a long ways off.
Customers hate reading directions, and many people seem totally incapable of following written instructions. How can you ensure that your service improves outcomes over a call center?