1. Accenture Communications & High Tech
Transforming On-line Customer
Support to Drive Increases in
Customer Satisfaction

2. Even the most casual user of the
Internet would no doubt acknowledge
that the average on-line experience
today is vastly different from—and
much better than just two years ago.
However, in most cases, the typical
buyer of Communications and High
Tech products would likely believe
that is not the case when it comes
to on-line support. In fact, recent
research by Accenture and others
finds that most consumers are
dissatisfied with the on-line support
capabilities that Communications
and High Tech companies provide,
and that dissatisfaction threatens to
erode the kind of customer loyalty
that is so critical to any companies’
ability to compete and grow.
In Accenture’s view, most
Communications and High Tech
companies exhibit numerous
shortcomings in their on-line
support sites—ranging from merely
annoying to customer relationship-
threatening—that must be addressed
to win the loyalty of customers,
especially the younger generation
for whom the Web is central to
their way of life. As they seek to
address their past on-line support
sins, Communications and High
Tech companies need to get back
to basics—applying the central
principles of good website design
and functionality, as well as smooth
integration with other customer-
facing channels—before incorporating
the powerful new Web 2.0 tools
and concepts that have enabled
Telecommunications and High Tech
Industries leaders such as Apple to
create an on-line service experience
that strengthens their brands and
keeps customers in the fold.
1 Accenture Communications & High Tech
Introduction

3. The Criticality of
Customer Loyalty to
High Performance
With competition more intense
than ever for Communications and
High Tech companies, customer loyalty
is one of the biggest drivers—if not the
biggest—of strong, sustained profitable
growth. And one of the most important
drivers of customer loyalty is a great
customer experience. Indeed, profitable
growth (and, consequently, greater
shareholder value) is dependent upon
companies’ ability to cultivate loyal
customers—those who purchase
again and again over an extended
period of time.
Research by Accenture and others
shows that customers who consider
themselves loyal spend more than
other customers with that company.
In fact, Accenture’s Customer Loyalty
survey revealed that 81 percent of
people said they will continue buy-
ing from companies to whom they are
loyal, and about half said they would
buy more or respond to specials from
such a company. Increased loyalty pos-
itively affects revenue in other ways
as well. Accenture’s experience shows
that increased customer loyalty not
only can generate higher revenue per
customer and reduce customer churn,
but also generate pricing power for
companies and protection from com-
petitive threats—thus enabling them to
increase their margins while they pro-
tect their turf. In addition, as little as a
5 percent increase in customer reten-
tion can increase profits by 50 percent
or more.1 And as the Harvard Business
Review noted: “When a company con-
sistently delivers superior value and
wins customer loyalty, market share
and revenues go up, and the cost of
acquiring new customers goes down.”2
These findings support what
Accenture’s ongoing research on
high-performance businesses has
discovered: that is, to create value, a
high performer develops a formula for
doing business—either at the enterprise
or business unit level—that success-
fully translates a big idea regarding
customer needs into a unique set of
connected business processes and
resources that cost-effectively satisfy
those needs. These customer-centric
formulas are critical to fostering the
type of customer loyalty that drives
robust, profitable growth.
Most Customers Are
Dissatisfied with the
Service Experience
Yet, Accenture also has found that
Communications and High Tech com-
panies are not fostering strong cus-
tomer loyalty—in large part, because
they have done a poor job of providing
service and support options that meet
customers’ needs.
In Accenture’s recent Technology
Industry Customer Support & Service
Survey, 57 percent of consumers
described themselves as somewhat
upset, very upset or extremely upset
when they accessed service channels
in general from high tech providers.
Furthermore, 78 percent of consumers
believe their high tech provider’s cus-
tomer service level is at or below the
level of service offered by competitors.
Consumers in the survey are especially
upset with technology-enabled sup-
port channels. In fact, 61 percent of
consumers believe technology has not
improved the service they receive from
high tech companies, and only 11 per-
cent said they value the ability to solve
a problem themselves with on-line
tools. This is despite the fact that many
companies in recent years have invest-
ed heavily in on-line support capabili-
ties that, executives believe, have cut
customer problem resolution time and
boosted customer satisfaction. In real-
ity, while Communications and High
Tech companies have invested consid-
erably in on-line support tools, that
investment was largely geared toward
reducing the company’s cost profile—
not toward making the on-line support
experience more satisfying. As a result,
many Communications and High Tech
companies have actually damaged or
destroyed the customer experience with
misguided on-line support capabilities
that did little to motivate customers
to continue doing business with the
company.
The situation is especially critical now
for two reasons: one, changing societal
demographics have increasingly made
Web support the preferred channel for
service, especially among younger con-
sumers; and two, the customer experi-
ences that companies such as Amazon,
several banks and some of the world’s
largest airlines create with their service
capabilities have substantially raised
customers’ expectations for the func-
tionality they should see on any web-
site, regardless of industry. Customers
today simply do not distinguish
between types of retailers, manufactur-
ers or service providers—they just think
that all companies’ websites should
enable them to quickly and easily solve
a problem, answer a question or make
a simple transaction (such as tracking a
delivery, paying bills or changing one’s
seat on an upcoming flight).
Importantly, unless a company can cap-
ture the eyes and hearts of customers
in their first attempt using a Web ser-
vice tool, customers will likely always
default to the phone for help. That’s
why it is critical to have compelling
capabilities on the site that customers
value and that encourage usage—such
as package tracking on FedEx’s site or
the ability to view checks on a bank’s
website. If customers have trouble find-
ing the information they are looking for
or navigating through the site (often
the most significant shortcoming of
most on-line support sites)—or if the
capabilities offered fail to work prop-
erly—customers will get frustrated, give
up on the website and call for assis-
tance. Furthermore, lack of integra-
tion between websites and call center
agents further erodes consumer confi-
dence that they can rely on the Web as
a trusted source for service resolution.1Reichheld and Sasser 1990
2Harvard Business Review, Mar-Apr 1993
Transforming On-line Customer Support to Drive Increases in Customer Satisfaction 2

4. Evaluating Five High
tech Companies’ Self-
Service Websites
Given customers’ low impressions of
companies’ on-line support capabili-
ties, Accenture embarked on some
field research to identify where
companies are falling short. We
chose the high tech sector and evalu-
ated the support sites of five major
multinational high tech companies
(which remain anonymous) against
a set of criteria that Accenture has
found to be important elements of
a robust support website. In scoring
each site against these criteria, we
used a simple 1 to 5 scale, where
1=poor/difficult to impossible to
navigate and complete tasks; 2=below
average/many major areas in need
of improvement; 3=average/minor
and major areas in need of improve-
ment; 4=good/minor areas in need
of improvement; and 5=near perfect.
These criteria generally involve the
3 Accenture Communications & High Tech

5. navigation, design, content, ease of
use and process flow of a company’s
website in six general categories.
• Troubleshooting—capabilities that
enable customers to determine the
cause of a problem they are having
with a company’s product.
• Warranties—pages that enable
customers to check on the status of
their product’s warranty and extend,
upgrade or transfer the warranty.
• Drivers and downloads—functional-
ity that enables users to access and
install software updates for their
product.
• Parts and upgrades—capabilities
that enable customers to locate and
order new or replacement parts for
their product.
• Contact—pages that enable custom-
ers to locate contact information
for a support follow up or office
location.
• Overall assessment—the consistency
with which design, content, ease
of use and process flow are applied
across all five of the preceding
sections.
In our evaluation, one of the sites
fared extremely well and employs
many leading practices. The remaining
four sites suffered from deficiencies
in a number of key areas. Next, we
discuss our overall assessment of each
company’s support site in order of
how well they met our key criteria.
Company A (4.15 overall)
Company A, the leader of our pack,
provided the most cohesive user
experience across all assessed support
sections. The support sections of the
site were framed within the parent
site, anchoring the global naviga-
tion throughout all pages of the site.
Local navigation was intuitive and
the scheme was relatively consistent
across Customer Service and Support
sections. The color scheme had good
contrast and the look and feel was
very consistent (and consistently
branded) and modern. Company A
provided the most capabilities and
features, all of which were imple-
mented well.
Company B (3.00 overall)
We found some consistency issues in
Company B’s support site (although
not as severe as others in our evalu-
ation) across support sections and
the parent site that prevented it
from being scored in the same tier as
Company A. The use of many “mini-
sites” for different support functions
led to a less-smooth user experi-
ence than Company A; however, the
number of support functions that
could be accessed via these mini-sites
was a high point. The global and local
navigation was not as consistent or
intuitive as Company A’s.
Transforming On-line Customer Support to Drive Increases in Customer Satisfaction 4

6. It’s interesting to note that even
though companies A and B are
substantially ahead of their peers,
they proactively are launching
programs to transform their customer
support sites to make them even
more compelling. They plan to
better integrate across their product
organization boundaries to create a
more customer-focused view; intend
to redesign the sites to better meet
the known intentions of customers
when they access the site; and intend
to leverage new Web 2.0 technologies
and capabilities to create an easier-
to-use Web experience.
Basic Practices All
Support Sites Should
Incorporate
If the results of our assessment are
representative of the Communications
and High Tech segment at large—and
our experience tells us they are—they
help explain why so many custom-
ers elect to bypass a company’s own
website in favor of other sources
when seeking an answer to a question
about or a solution to a problem with
a particular product or service. This
is a situation that should be very
troubling to companies because it is
damaging their brands while elimi-
nating opportunities for them to build
stronger, more effective connections
with customers.
The fact is that customers today—
especially younger people—exhibit a
reluctance to use a manufacturer’s
site for support, whether it’s because
of past experiences in which such
sites failed to provide sufficient help
or because general search engine
inquires actually led to better advice.
That’s why on-line user communi-
ties, blogs, wikis and message boards
have become so popular. Such sites,
most of which are based on Web 2.0
technologies, are highly informa-
tive, easy to use, and attract other
users who can offer their first-
hand insights on solving common
and not-so-common problems.
Company C (3.00 overall)
Company C and Company B achieved
the same overall score; however,
Company C’s support-related pages
had an older and plainer look (for
instance, a lack of visual contrast,
no clear sectioning on pages,
less-modern feel). In general, the
navigation was intuitive and the
global navigation was anchored
throughout support pages. The user
selection methods for the task flows
were intuitive overall, but the number
of options (such as optional sorting
functionality, no customer ratings/
reviews, etc.) did not approach those
offered by Company A.
Company D (2.00 overall)
Company D had many different mini-
sites but, unlike Company B, the look
and feel, style guides, page design,
navigation and local and global
elements were vastly different
among the mini-sites. Each mini-
site seemed to be designed without
incorporating any elements of the
other mini-sites or the parent site.
In addition to being confusing, such
inconsistency creates a very disjointed
brand experience.
Company E (1.85 overall)
Company E and Company D scored
very similarly. Company E received
a slightly lower score overall, partly
due to some functional issues (such
as broken links). Furthermore, on
Company E’s site, it was more difficult
to locate support pages or links in
which the user may be interested.
Company E’s user experience was
similar to that provided by Company
D in that there were inconsistencies
across many different areas (such
as navigation and page design)
for the assessed support sections.
Additionally, many of the page
designs throughout Company E’s
support sections were very poor—
suffering from, for instance, excessive
white space and local navigation
areas being too small in proportion to
the rest of the page.
Additionally, because such sites have
become highly adept at position-
ing themselves as specialists in their
domain, they typically are the first to
appear on the lists of search results
when a customer poses a relevant
problem or question to one of the
major search engines—thus, further
cementing their image as the “go-to”
place for answers.
Several years ago, this may not
have bothered manufacturers all
that much. In fact, they may have
welcomed it, as they were very
focused on deflecting calls away
from their call centers to save money.
But today, companies recognize the
need to more closely understand and
listen to that aspect of the customer
relationship to strengthen their brand,
create new opportunities to inter-
act with customers, and respond to
customer complaints and ideas for
improved service. Leaders are improv-
ing their websites so that they rise to
the top of global search engine result
pages and work more effectively than
third-party sources, therefore improv-
ing the chance to better manage
the customer relationship and their
brand. Others are hosting their own
user forums, encouraging participa-
tion and rewarding those who are the
most helpful in the forum community.
In doing so, these companies are
integrating the voice of the customer
into their support capabilities, which
helps make the site more relevant and
intuitive to visitors.
What should Communications and
High Tech companies do to reverse
the tide and bring customers back
into the service fold? Our on-line
support evaluation identified several
practical actions that companies can
take as initial steps toward creating
a more pleasing and effective on-
line user experience—thus enabling
customers to more quickly and easily
solve their own problems.
At a high level, companies must
make website design formats
consistent across the entire website.
5 Accenture Communications & High Tech

7. make it easy for customers to order
new or upgrade existing products
and services (and not, in the case
of communications companies,
only focus on customer billing).
Customer ratings and reviews and
a recommended upgrades section
can help in this regard by allowing
users to research products and
upgrades to feel more comfortable
about their potential purchase,
possibly leading to more sales.
(Customer ratings and reviews were
available for parts or products only
on some of the high tech sites we
evaluated, and only one company
offered a “Recommended Upgrades”
section.) Search, product comparison
and customized recommendations
capabilities also are effective in
helping customers identify and order
new products or services. Some
companies even are now deploying
selling and upgrading tools to help
customers in purchases by providing
“people like me” information.
For their part, high tech companies
should tune their support sites to
make it easy for users to find drivers
and download options and relevant
download information. Various
options such as sorting functionality
and auto-detect capability can enable
users to find particular downloads or
drivers faster, and presenting impor-
tant download/driver information
can help the user make the correct
selection. Our evaluation found that
not all sites had prominent links to
downloads and drivers, even though
this is a major reason users come to
the sites included in our assessment.
Our research also found that older
drivers were often not even avail-
able and required customers to go to
driver community sites to complete
their task. Enabling proactive software
updates, such as Microsoft does,
takes this a step further by taking the
burden off of customers to remember
to keep their applications up to date.
Troubleshooting—especially remote
diagnostic and repair—is also another
Our assessment found that incon-
sistent schemes and design formats
were the most common hindrance
to a positive user experience among
the sites we evaluated. Disjointed
navigational schemes can cause users
to get lost within a site or stuck in an
individual area, while the lack of
a consistent visual design can confuse
users by shifting content unexpect-
edly, changing the way tasks are
completed, opening external pages,
and making users feel as if they
are navigating through a series of
separate sites rather than through
one site.
Furthermore, companies should
fully integrate their on-line support
capabilities with other service
channels (especially the call center)
so that they have a full picture of
a customer’s interactions with the
company, regardless of channel used.
And, all companies’ sites should
provide accurate and audience-
appropriate product or service
manuals and documentation, enable
customers to manage their accounts
(such as registering for automatic
payment of bills and updating contact
information) and perform other basic
tasks such as scheduling service calls,
managing their devices and getting
status updates on product shipment,
new-service activation and technician
visits. A “remember and adjust to me”
feature—through which customers can
register products (if not automatically
loaded), view their existing services,
see a list of past orders and other
interactions with the company—is a
highly effective way to build rapport
with customers and encourage them
to continue using the site. Leading
companies are leveraging their
websites to enhance the customer’s
use of the product in addition to
traditional support of the product.
This creates a higher likelihood that
customers will continue leveraging
the website for support as well.
Communications and High Tech
companies’ support sites also should
important capability for high tech
companies’ support sites that can
substantially increase customer
satisfaction. Yet, despite the promise
that remote diagnostic and repair
functionality holds, several of the
high tech companies we studied
do not provide such functional-
ity. Remote diagnosis and repair
can substantially reduce the time
it takes for customer issues to be
resolved and, consequently increase
customer satisfaction. But careful
implementation of such features
is key. Offering an overly complex
support feature can actually have
the opposite of the intended effect,
causing users to spend too much time
trying to figure out how to use it.
Also important for high tech compa-
nies is functionality that enables
customers to quickly answer
questions about product warran-
ties. Such functionality can consist
of well-designed and implemented
entitlement verification, warranty
search tools, warranty Q&A pages
and extended warranty purchase
capabilities. Some of the sites we
researched provided some type of
warranty look-up or search tool.
However, the tools typically were
cumbersome and took an unneces-
sarily long time to understand and
use. If these tools are not quick and
easy to use, the design (or the need)
of the tool should be reevaluated.
Finally, for communications and high
tech companies alike, consistent and
direct access to contact informa-
tion—whether phone, email or live
chat—always must be readily avail-
able on the site. We recognize that
some companies intentionally make
contact information difficult to find
in an attempt to reduce calls to
the contact center. The only thing
more frustrating to a user than not
being able to resolve a problem via a
company’s website is not being able
to find a way to contact the company
when self-service efforts fail.
Transforming On-line Customer Support to Drive Increases in Customer Satisfaction 6

8. Make on-line process flows
more cohesive and transparent
to users.
Web 2.0 tools hold tremendous
promise for improving the
user experience delivered by
Communications and High Tech
companies’ support sites, just as they
have enhanced sites for companies
in other industries such as Yankee
Candle Company and BMW’s Mini
brand. It’s well known that if a
company reduces the number of clicks
a visitor must make to complete a
transaction—whether it’s buying a
product or finding the answer to a
support question—the chances of
that customer dropping out before
completing the session are reduced.
By using Rich Internet Applications
(RIP), a company can create an
interactive environment on its
support site to make it appear that
the customer is not clicking through
different pages as he searches for
his answer, but rather, is simply
Tools to Leverage for
Supercharging Self-
Service Sites
The preceding approaches to on-
line support, however, are just the
beginning steps toward creating a
robust, compelling and user-friendly
support site. Today’s leaders have
advanced well beyond these practices
and are rapidly incorporating new
tools and concepts, such as Web 2.0
capabilities, to make their self-service
sites even more powerful and relevant
to customers—especially among the
vital next generation of customers.
We detail some of these Web 2.0-
based practices here.
Adopt capabilities that
enable the site to return
highly accurate answers to
customers quickly.
As noted earlier, customers want the
right answers fast, which is why they
visit third-party sites. Therefore, in
building or revamping their support
sites, Communications and High Tech
companies should look to tools that
streamline the on-line question-
and-answer process. For instance,
software company BEA Systems
Inc. has developed AskBEA, which
is a natural language query tool
with which customers can search
BEA's knowledgebase. Using AskBEA,
customers can search, through a single
platform, all the disparate resources
across BEA that could contain answers
to customer questions—ranging from
the simple to highly complex. Among
the sources searched are BEA product
documentation, BEA customer support
knowledge databases, the entire BEA
website, BEA white papers and the
BEA Usenet newsgroup community.
7 Accenture Communications & High Tech

9. modifying the same page. In short,
the result is a smoother flow within
the site, the perception of fewer steps
involved—and, ultimately, a more
pleasant experience. Yankee Candle—
the leading designer, manufacturer,
retailer and wholesaler of premium
scented candles in the U.S.—has used
Rich Internet Applications to improve
the way customers can create and
visualize custom candles on-line, and
customers have noticed. The company
has seen a 25 percent increase in
average order size and overall product
revenue and a 70 percent drop in
call center calls for custom candles.
Similarly, Web 2.0 tools have made
Mini’s website a magnet for customers
(73 percent of site registrants have
actually configured their customized
car) as well as a robust inquiry
generator (more than half of all the
brand’s leads have come from its
website). Even more notable is the
average rate of conversion-to-sale for
customers configuring a car on-line:
an impressive 30 percent.
Increase the amount of relevant
content and participation on
the site
A key concept of Web 2.0—collec-
tive intelligence—involves creating an
“architecture of participation,” where-
by sites and services provided by those
sites get more robust and interesting
as more people use and contribute to
them. For instance, user reviews are
what make Amazon, TripAdvisor and
similar sites so uniquely valuable. In
on-line support, Communications and
High Tech companies should create as
much relevant content for their audi-
ences as possible, thus dramatically
improving the value of the site and
making the site difficult, if not impos-
sible, for others to duplicate. One
large PC manufacture serves as a good
example, hosting 30 user forums on
technical topics alone across software,
notebooks, desktops and peripher-
als—as well as forums covering such
diverse subjects as small business,
gaming, “digital life,” Windows Vista,
and servers and storage.
Building such a large and effective
community requires a company to
understand what motivates commu-
nity members to participate (a strong
connection with the product, a
distaste for a competitor’s product
or a simple desire to help others, for
instance) and then appeal to those
desires with appropriate incentives—
such as Microsoft has done with its
MVP program. Microsoft monitors
its Windows Mobile user community
closely and bestows MVP status on
members who provide superior input.
Each year, the company holds a
special event for all MVPs, where they
are treated to various perks such as
previews of new Microsoft products.
Such attention helps keep users
motivated to continue to support
Microsoft’s efforts and help the
company maintain a superior
self-service site.
Transforming On-line Customer Support to Drive Increases in Customer Satisfaction 8

10. Enable others to use one’s tools
in their mashups.
Companies can expand the power
of their service content by allowing
others to access it and remix it on
their sites. For instance, Google
multiplies the power of its Maps
functionality by enabling other
sites to use Maps to illustrate
where a specific business is located
or, in a support environment, enabling
a company to show where custom-
ers can find nearby sales and service
locations. From a Communications
and High Tech company’s perspective,
the goal should be to make it easy
for external user communities to
reuse and extend its service and
support functionality—not only to
keep the brand in front of customers
visiting such communities, but also
to give these communities the most
current and “official” support tools
and information.
Enhance their support websites
for the major search engines just
as they tune their main sites to
attract new customers.
Like most companies, Communications
and High Tech companies pay consid-
erable attention to search engine opti-
mization—getting the highest rank-
ings of their main sites for relevant
searches. Yet most forget that the
same can—and should—be done for
their support sites to make it easier for
current customers to find them when
they have an issue or question. One US
based PC manufacturer hasn’t forgot-
ten. Random Yahoo! Searches using
the key word “problem combined with
the company’s various product names,
consistently landed their support and
user community sites at or near the
top of the returned search results list.
By making it easier for customers to
find its support communities, this
manufacturer is able to more effec-
tively manage its brand and create a
positive customer experience.
Provide customer training via
the website.
Many products are returned because
the customer did not know how
to use the product and found the
product’s user instructions to be less
than helpful. That’s why some leading
high tech companies are taking a
page from user community sites and
providing on-line video tutorials on
how to use their products. Apple, for
instance, provides such tutorials on
virtually all of its products, making it
easy for customers to set up and begin
using their products more quickly.
Furthermore, video tutorials are also
effective for helping customers perform
troubleshooting by illustrating how
to fix common problems. Such videos,
searchable by type of problem, can help
eliminate a high percentage of returns
and improve customers’ satisfaction
with the product.
9 Accenture Communications & High Tech

11. Conclusion
In their drive for efficiency and lower
costs, most Communications and High
Tech companies have implemented
on-line support capabilities designed
to reduce customer inquiries to
the call center. However, in many
cases, these self-service channels
have not been especially powerful,
compelling or helpful to users. In fact,
in general, support websites provided
by Communications and High Tech
companies have routinely failed to
enable customers to more quickly
and easily solve their own problems
and, in the process, slowly eroded
companies’ brands. Ironically, these
sites also have had the opposite of
the intended effect: Because they
have been so user-unfriendly and
unhelpful, they ended up forcing
customers to use a higher-cost
channel—the call center—to
resolve their issue.
Today, companies are awakening
to the fact that they must do a
better job of helping customers
to solve their own problems on-
line—and not simply to save money
on support costs, but to improve the
customer experience and strengthen
the customer relationship. To that
end, Communications and High Tech
companies should first apply to their
support sites the basic principles
of good website design: pleasing
graphical elements, simple and
intuitive navigation, useful and
easy-to-find information, integration
of information to other service
channels, pleasing graphical elements
and consistency in look and feel
across the site. With those basics in
place, Communications and High Tech
companies then can incorporate new
Web 2.0 tools and concepts to create
a much richer, pleasant, compelling
and helpful customer experience.
Indeed, as the Internet continues
to evolve and new applications
and tools transform the on-line
experience, the bar for self-service
will rise accordingly. Companies
where the support portion of their
websites continues to take a back
seat to the “main” site will find
themselves scrambling to keep those
customers they worked so hard to
attract—and, subsequently, struggle
to achieve high performance in an
increasingly on-line world.
Transforming On-line Customer Support to Drive Increases in Customer Satisfaction 10

12. Copyright © 2007 Accenture
All rights reserved.
Accenture, its logo, and
High Performance Delivered
are trademarks of Accenture.
Copyright © 2007 Accenture
All rights reserved.
Accenture, its logo, and
High Performance Delivered
are trademarks of Accenture.
This document is produced
by consultants at Accenture
as general guidance. It is not
intended to provide specific
advice on your circumstances.
If you require advice or fur-
ther details on any matters
referred to, please contact
your Accenture representa-
tive or one of the individuals
identified above.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management
consulting, technology services and
outsourcing company. Committed to
delivering innovation, Accenture col-
laborates with its clients to help them
become high-performance businesses
and governments. With deep industry
and business process expertise, broad
global resources and a proven track
record, Accenture can mobilize the
right people, skills and technologies
to help clients improve their perfor-
mance. With approximately 170,000
people in 49 countries, the company
generated net revenues of US$19.70
billion for the fiscal year ended Aug.
31, 2007. Its home page is
www.accenture.com.
Chris Condon is the Director and CTO
of Accenture’s Innovation Center,
which provides leading technology
capabilities and solutions, demon-
stration and development facilities,
skilled professionals, cross-industry
expertise and a global network of alli-
ance partners to help companies bring
their ideas to life quickly. He is also
the Communication and High Tech
North America Lead for Enterprise
Architecture within Accenture’s
Technology Consulting practice. His
areas of expertise include Technology
Visioning, Enterprise Architecture
Strategy, New Product Development,
User Experience, Trivergence, Web 2.0
and Multi-Channel Architectures. Mr.
Condon holds Engineering and Liberal
Arts degrees from the Pennsylvania
State University and is based out
of Accenture’s New York Metro
location. He can be reached at
chris.e.condon@accenture.com.
Reiner Fischer is the Managing
Director for Accenture’s Electronics &
High Tech Industry in Europe, Africa
and Latin America. He has experi-
ence in helping clients improve their
customer-facing operations especially
in the area of improving selling and
service effectiveness as well as busi-
ness process and application manage-
ment outsourcing. He holds a masters
degree in Business Administration
from the University of Mannheim/
Germany. He can be reached at
reiner.fischer@accenture.com.
Brian Sprague leads Accenture’s
Customer Service and Support Program
for the Communications and High Tech
Industry Globally. He has experience
in helping clients improve their cus-
tomer facing operations especially
in the area of improving service and
selling effectiveness. He has exten-
sive experience in CRM strategy,
service management, alliance man-
agement and managing the design,
development, and implementation of
large system initiatives. He holds an
Economics degree with honors from
Stanford University and is based in
San Francisco. He can be reached at
brian.m.sprague@accenture.com.