The Rules of Supporting Customers Where and When it Matters

Think about a bad product experience. It probably ended with multiple phone calls that led to nowhere, leaving you frustrated. When customer support does not fulfill expectations, businesses generate detractors that are very hard to recover. Great overall support does not only enhance customer experiences, but it also improves business economics, both directly (e.g., faster resolution times) and indirectly (e.g., more propensity to buy and recommend your brand). Therefore, it is paramount for any organization to build a solid Customer Support Use Case that drives great experiences.

The following are a few rules TechTorch follows when building great Customer Support Use Cases:

1. Omnichannel support: First, make sure to engage with customers wherever and however they prefer to be supported. At a store, on the phone, via chats or email, checking social media…

More importantly, offer a consistent experience across all your channels.

2. Self-service: With customers becoming more comfortable with technology, we see huge growth in self-service support. Therefore, businesses must provide clear and easy-to-use self-service features: how to learn about a new product, how to resolve issues, how to change or buy more plans, how to provision new services, etc. Great self-service experiences increase satisfaction, generate revenues, and decrease costs. However, self-service capabilities are not simple to achieve as they not only require a well-structured customer portal, they also include self-diagnostic tools embedded in the product and a very well thought set of experience workflows.

3. Consistent customer view and experience: All areas of a business that interact with customers need to have access to the same consistent information. That requires support systems orchestrated and well-integrated into other capabilities such as Customer Success (refer to “The Subtle art of customer success”). In the same way, the support experience needs to be consistent across all channels. For example, users should not need to change their identity or credential depending on the means for contact.

4. Centralized knowledge: If customer information needs to be orchestrated, so does the information required to support those customers. A knowledge database and common diagnostic tools are exceedingly important so that the front-line can perform their job quickly and effectively.

5. Technology-enabled:  The support organization must be enabled with suitable front-end and back-end tools. These tools include purposed-build contact center software, as well as robust ticketing systems that are able to route, recommend and orchestrate fast resolutions. Further integrations into deeper back-end systems (e.g., customer databases, monitoring tools, etc.) make it easier to diagnose and solve issues.

6. Clear expectations and SLAs: Support levels need to be clearly identified up-front when customers purchase services or sign contracts. For example, customers who buy SaaS software expect a baseline level of support with recurring payments. However, there might be an additional level of support that requires premium payments. Again, ensure consistency on what it’s agreed to versus what is delivered.

There is nothing better than a satisfied customer. And satisfaction is built every time a customer successfully engages with your business. So, make sure you have the right Customer Support capabilities. TechTorch can help you get there!

‍