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Customers now have a new and innovative way to engage with VMware. VMware Customer Connect™ is a rebranding and update of My VMware designed to unify and simplify our customers’ digital experience.
VMware Customer Connect integrates digital engagements for VMware Connect Communities™ , VMware Connect Knowledge™, VMware Connect Learning™, VMware Connect Support™ and VMware Connect Success™ – so that customers can:
- Find content for any use case, problem, or question about VMware products with a unified search experience
- Interact and get help from other customers through the Community
- Become a VMware expert with on-demand or instructor-led training and get VMware certified
- Download VMware products and manage their licenses
- Create and manage support requests when troubleshooting issues with VMware
- Manage their entitlements, funds, and team members
The “brainpower” behind VMware Customer Connect is Customer Connect AI. It uses artificial intelligence and Machine Learning (ML) in several ways to help customers find resolutions faster by anticipating their needs and providing automated virtual assistance that seamlessly guides them to the help and content they need.
What Does VMware Customer Connect Include?
VMware Customer Connect includes five major components with Customer Connect AI’s intelligence layer underpinning the entire platform.
Connect Learning
It helps customers keep their skills current and advance their careers. Formerly known as VMware Learning Zone, Connect Learning offers a wide variety of content that boosts customer knowledge and takes them to the next level in their VMware journey. In Connect Learning, customers can consume courses, take exams, and track their certifications. Customers can access VMware training at any time and from anywhere. They can choose from a plethora of rich content such as live webinars, recorded events, instructional courses, bite-sized how-to videos, exam preps and on-demand labs.
Connect Knowledge is based on a foundation of content that enables our customers to self-solve. Ensuring that customers can access the right resources at the right time means that when they search in Google or via any other channel, they can resolve their issues rapidly with intelligently surfaced knowledge base articles, product documentation and community discussions. This provides customers a frictionless self-solve experience across all our digital platforms (Knowledge Base Articles, TechZone, product documentation, blogs and more) that make up Connect Knowledge.
Using the Knowledge-Centered Service methodology, our Self-Service Experience Team leverages the collective knowledge and experiences within VMware Customer Connect to continuously refine, improve, and create self-solve content for customers. The Self-Service Experience Team works closely with VMware Support to enhance self-service resources within VMware Customer Connect with a goal to speed customer resolutions and reduce Support Requests.
Connect Communities provides customers access to VMware forums where they can speed answers to their most pressing questions by engaging thousands of VMware experts and build collaborative knowledge. No matter where customers reside or when they need answers, they can trust their peers within Connect Communities to elevate and enable each other through knowledge sharing not available anywhere else. Within Connect Communities customers can:
- Post questions and get guidance from other VMware customers and employees
- Share their customer experience with VMware and help others on their journey
- Gain visibility into trending discussions that are relevant to the products they care about
- Receive community recommendations based on their journey through VMware Customer Connect
Connect Support gives customers easy, fast, and intuitive ways to perform support-related tasks. Powered by advanced Machine Learning models, Connect Support ‘learns’ about VMware products through iterative training by our most experienced engineers and uses this knowledge to assist customers in troubleshooting, capturing key details of an issue through dynamic, intelligent prompts, and ensuring cases are routed to the most qualified engineer. Connect Support features include:
- Intelligent detection and natural language classification of products, versions, and problem categories for more accurate Support Request routing
- Content recommendations from a plethora of sources that are constantly and intelligently tuned for relevance by Customer Connect AI
- Real-time prompts that guide customers on the type of information they need to provide when filling out a Support Request for a speedy resolution
- Customers can control who in their organization can update Support Request information within the portal and receive email updates through the Watch List feature
Connect Success is an exclusive space for customers who have purchased VMware Success 360. Connect Success is where they will access their prescriptive Success Plan to drive toward their objectives. Connect Success will monitor the customers’ overall health within their Health Scorecard tracking their support experience, product performance, and progress on reaching their business objectives. Connect Success is targeted for integration into VMware Customer Connect in a CYQ2 release.
New Features Within VMware Customer Connect
The initial release of VMware Customer Connect includes new features designed to enhance our customers’ experience. They include:
- One-click efficiency with App Launcher lets customers quickly find the apps they need and customize their “My Apps” navigation panel to include the ones they use frequently. Some examples include: Product Downloads, Managing Licenses, Users and Permissions, License Management, Knowledge Base, Customer Tools (i.e. Skyline, Sizing Guidelines), merger and acquisition portals and more.
- Redesigned site-wide navigation to make sure customers can always get to the features they need in a single click.
- Single Sign-on enhancements to enable other VMware applications to quickly integrate with the VMware ID to create a seamless experience.
- TechZone and Connect Learning content added to unified search with advanced filtering capabilities.
- Virtual Assistant integrated with Support Request filing provides a guided experience to efficiently gather all the information needed and route support cases to the right engineers.
- The TAM Services Portal with single sign-on is now available within the App Launcher, providing customers with TAM services a seamless experience within VMware Customer Connect.
Continuation of Enhancements
VMware Customer Connect will have a series of releases, continuously introducing new features that enhance our customers’ experience and make it easier for them to find what they need quickly. The next release of VMware Customer Connect is targeted for March 2021 and will include the following capabilities.
- Consolidated alerts and notifications from all channels within VMware Customer Connect will keep customers informed with relevant communications such as support case updates, expiring licenses, new Knowledge Base (KB) articles and product maintenance windows.
- A redesigned alerts and notifications UI will keep customers informed from anywhere within VMware Customer Connect.
- Notification preferences give customers control of what and how they will be notified.
Connect Success is scheduled for integration in a CYQ2 release, followed by a series of agile releases throughout 2021.
Customer Connect Pacesetter Program
Our guiding principles for VMware Customer Connect are to provide a unified digital customer experience platform that is:
- Contextually responsive to give customers what they need, where they need it
- Predictive to enable customers to be proactive
- Prescriptive to speed up their ability to achieve their desired outcomes
With customer experiences central to our mission, it is essential we continue to gather customer feedback for continuously improving the platform. This is the inspiration for the Pacesetter Program. It is an early access program for VMware Customer Connect that allows customers to see first-hand the newest features and updates before anyone else. It gives customers an opportunity to engage with our design teams and provide direct feedback on the features they find most valuable.
Registration is required for the Pacesetter Program. Once registered, customers are invited to participate in Pacesetter events where new features and updates will be shared by our design team. Customer feedback is captured to help shape enhancements for future releases of Customer Connect.
Experience VMware Customer Connect Now
Go to VMware Customer Connect now to experience this new digital platform yourself.
