Consumers will demand comprehensive support services as home tech increases
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
May 20, 2008 at 7:16am
Here’s another opportunity for Apple: with the expansion of technology in the home has been accompanied by installation and troubleshooting problems that often require specialized knowledge.
To help consumers overcome these challenges, the IDC research group believes a new generation of tech support services is rising up that leverages the Internet to provide assistance remotely and directly.
“Technology has become more deeply entwined in consumers’ lives while consumer support options have remained limited and often unsatisfying,” says Matt Healey, research manager, Software and Hardware Support Services at IDC. “However, we are quickly reaching the point where certain devices and applications are considered ‘mission critical’ in the home. This means more consumers will require, and be willing to pay for, a higher level of support to ensure smooth operations at home.”
To better understand the technology problems that consumers are encountering, IDC analyzed more than 10,000 consumer support sessions captured by support service provider PlumChoice. Key findings from this data include the following:
° Personal computer software and operating system problems were the most common, representing 41 percent of the support sessions analyzed. (Apple already excels in this area; now is the time to capitalize.)
° Security problems, particularly issues associated with viruses, spyware, and malware, were the second most common session type representing 23 percent of the sessions. Despite the high number of security related sessions, 82 percent of consumers indicated that they had security software installed. This suggests that consumers are not regularly updating the software to meet new threats. (Again, there’s no platform better than the Mac to deal with this).
Other categories where consumer support is regularly needed include personal computer performance issues, networking, personal computer hardware, and peripherals that connect to the personal computer or network.
There’s never been a better time for Apple, and the Mac, to prosper than now.
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Peter Says:
Actually, having to bring in “support services” will be what keeps consumers away from deploying these things in their houses. At home, I expect things to “just work.”
On the other hand, that is also something Apple excels at…
Posted on May 20, 2008
CT Says:
If you read your homeowner’s or renter’s insurance policy, you will see that information services and restoration are part of it already… if 1) you can prove you purchased materials (usually via a credit card charge, not an itemized receipt and 2) if you purchase a rider for technology/laptops, which is usually a $3-10,000 additional no-deductible additional coverage.
I have had a few clients need to use this aspect of insurance due to fire or theft.
Posted on May 21, 2008
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
Yacko Says:
And that’s just the hardware side of the issue. Assuming people continue to buy media rather than rent, what will happen when a family’s 100TB media server melts when the house burns down 30 years from now? Will there be service that reconstructs the complex mass of information, assuming it can be and is insured and the insurance company cuts a check? Or do they buy another server with an inbuilt bittorrent client and let it do it automatically on its own? Or maybe nobody cares they invested $40,000 in a 20 year period?
Posted on May 20, 2008