Best International Web Support Sites

Following on the success of the 2006 and 2007 Best International Web Support Sites awards, LISA, the Localization Industry Standards Association, and ASP, the Association of Support Professionals, announce the 2008 Ten Best International Web Support Sites program. Designed to recognize companies that excel in providing support to their international customers and not just customers in their home markets, the program combines ASP’s proven methodology for evaluation of support sites with LISA’s expertise in the needs of international customers.

According to recent research by LISA, many problems with software, including serious ones, are never reported by users outside of the U.S. Why? Issues of language and lack of support make it difficult for consumers in other countries to make their problems known and to find resolution. Yet unresolved problems lead to loss of market share and product/brand loyalty. Companies that wish to maintain their world-wide market share need to provide service to all of the customers, no matter where they are.

However, as companies move to more and more markets, supporting those markets can become a major challenge. Barriers of language and culture keep companies from leveraging their knowledge assets to deliver support to their international customers, and they have had to come up with innovative solutions to deliver the same level of service and support to all customers. This contest recognizes the growing importance of international customer support and the giant strides made by some companies in recent years to provide support.

Open to any companies that provide support sites in three or more languages (including the language of their “home” market), the contest evaluates the sites on how well they provide customer support based on twenty-five criteria derived from ASP’s evaluation metrics, in five broad categories:

• Overall usability, design, and navigation
• Knowledgebase and search implementation
• Interactive features
• Personalization and locale-specific adaptation
• Integration of international support into an overall strategy

Independent judges evaluate each site on these criteria and provide detailed feedback on how well the sites are meeting international business challenges. From among the entries, those sites that receive the best overall evaluations are selected as the Best International Web Support Sites and will have their web site profiles published in a book to be released by LISA in 2008.

Arle Lommel, LISA’s manager for this program, says that, “Support is rapidly becoming one of the major differentiators in international business, and the level of quality of international support is rising. ASP has long recognized the importance of support, so it made sense for LISA to partner with ASP in this area. The success of the last two Awards has made it clear to us that we are dealing with an increasingly important topic and that ASP's methods, combined with LISA’s expertise, is a winning combination.”

Jeffrey Tarter, executive director of ASP, states: “As technology companies have moved toward a self-service model, they’ve developed some of the most content-rich and complex sites to be found anywhere on the Web. Moreover, these sites need constant updating, often on very tight schedules. Managing support in one language is difficult—trying to satisfy the needs of customers in global markets takes extraordinary efforts. Our goal with these awards is to showcase the best solutions to localization challenges and to help raise Web support standards worldwide.”

Entries for the contest may be submitted beginning in March 2008, with a submission deadline of September 18, 2008.