Trapeze Networks (News - Alert) had a challenge - how to provide 24/7 access to information allowing options for self-service and interaction with the support team.

As the company has grown, the distributed, 24/7 nature of its business required self-service support capabilities, company officials said, adding that the bug tracking system that the company previously used for managing support tickets lacked a customer-facing component.

Trevis Schuh, VP of Worldwide Customer Service, said that based on their customers' feedback, Trapeze created a support portal requirement list which included a searchable knowledgebase, customizable support portal, ticket module, online discussion forum, a channel to get instant customer feedback, and customized reporting of metrics, among others.

"To log a ticket, customers had to email us or fill out a Web form and we had to then create the ticket manually, which increased the resolution times for customer cases," Sandeep Moza, senior customer advocate. "Customers also could not manage their issues online."

With self-service as the primary goal, Trapeze turned to Parature (News - Alert) Customer Service, "primarily because of the simplicity of having multiple modules rolled into one," according to Parature officials.

Parature Professional Services assisted Trapeze with implementing the software and mapping it to the support team's specific workflows. Additionally, they integrated Parature via the Application Programming Interface with the company's salesforce.com CRM software to allow all employees, especially sales reps, to see any current support issues with a customer.

Trapeze now uses nearly all available Parature modules, including Parature Portal, Parature Knowledgebase, Parature Ticket, Parature Download, Parature Forum, Parature Report and Parature Survey.

Now, Trapeze has more than 900 customer accounts in Parature and an impressive self-service usage rate, Moza says, adding that a full 70 percent of all new tickets are created by customers on the portal. Those using the knowledgebase to resolve their issues never create tickets, "further reducing the support team's workload. The site has proved popular, with 35,000 to 40,000 page hits every month."

To download a free white paper and learn more about how Parature improved Trapeze's operations, click here.