BellSouth today announced an extension of its current use of SupportSoft online customer support software to include its broadband wireless services, wireline-wireless integration and its IPTV trial.

BellSouth today uses SupportSoft's Real-Time Service Management software to power its online customer self-service option for DSL services, a company spokesman said. Customers can go online and select the help option to troubleshoot common problems and get questions answered immediately.

“The self-help portal enables any subscriber of any service to go to a Web-based portal and solve problems with their service,” said Marc Itzkowitz, director of product management at SupportSoft. “If you can’t get online, we have a subscriber agent loaded on the desktop that self-heals everything back to where you can get on line. If you want an upgrade, or to add an email account or a wireless network, the online portal will help you with that.”

The online option helps provide quick solutions for customers while reducing calls made to a support call center, enabling BellSouth to provide customer support on a less costly basis, the spokesman said.

The IPTV trial, currently underway in Atlanta, will grow to 1000 trial customers this year. BellSouth already has rolled out broadband wireless services under the name FastAccess Internet service in Athens, Ga., New Orleans and parts of Florida.

SupportSoft today provides its software to eight of the top 10 telecom service providers, including BellSouth, Qwest and Verizon, the company said. Its primary competitor is Motive, which also makes automated tools for installing, troubleshooting and upgrading service.

The key to successfully troubleshooting is the ability of the software to customize the fix to the current state of the subscriber’s equipment, Itzkowitz said.

“It should be transparent to you as the user,” he said. “You have a problem and want to fix it. What makes our system unique is that we actually collect information about your environment to target the resolution to that. When you want to add an email address, for example, we already know what you are using for an email client, what your PoP server is, etc., and we will send you a one-click fix to set everything up.”

SupportSoft has extended its support to broadband wireless by adding those capabilities to its Smart Issue, and is adding IPTV capability as well, including Service Verify capability that verifies the status of all services and a Service Gateway that offers a remote CPE management tool to enable customers to configure and manage firmware upgrades to their equipment.

“IPTV and Triple Play services will require firmware upgrades,” Itzkowitz said. “We can do that on-demand, or in batches.”

Firmware upgrades can be done ad-hoc to fix a particular customer’s problems, or after-hours, in large batches,” he said. And it can be tested in advance with a smaller number of subscribers and rolled back to the previous state if there is a problem with the firmware.