For the past several years, ASP has awarded four or five support websites each year in our annual Best Support Websites competition. In 2023 we made seven awards, all for high scores. We cut off the awards at 740 points out of a 1,000 possible this year, the same as in the past several years. The fact that seven sites scored higher than 740 is notable. Each site is judged by five randomly assigned judges in 22 different areas. The judges were pretty much the same as in past years and so were the 22 criteria judged. We do make changes, but mostly gradual changes so the companies can easily compare results from year-to-year. What was different? Many sites were just better this year. We believe that AI is making a noticeable impact on self-service, and probably assisted service as well.
ASP researched and held a conference about AI in support in 2017/2018. That turned out to be a bit early as there were only a relatively small number of companies actually using AI back then. However, things have changed a lot since then. Not only are there many more companies using AI for support, but there are many, many more support organizations starting to use AI right now. ChatGPT opened doors by making AI more widely known and accepted. This made it more likely to get budget approvals for AI tools. In some cases, support leaders are being encouraged by top management to get these tools. In fact, to be seen as not moving in that direction can result in someone else being brought into a company to lead that charge.
We encourage you and warn you that the state-of-the-art for support is changing very rapidly at this time. In the subscription economy, support must be great and require low effort. Call diversion might have been important in the first waves of AI adoption, but low Customer Effort Scores (CES) are the more important measure today to keep renewals going. Support is moving into the product more. Proactive support is still early but is also moving to the forefront. AI tools can help with these activities. You and your organization need to keep up.