Defining Customer Support in 2024

Whatever you decide, ensure you are tracking your average response times and time to first response to see if you are hitting your goals. While both focus on helping customers, customer support is a specific type of customer service that involves documentation, product feedback, and technical problem solving. Companies must remember that great customer support and service, and eventually, customer success is a constant work-in-progress.

• The main goal of client support is to help customers get started and solve their everyday problems during the first contact.
• When used strategically, customer testimonials are an excellent means to establish and demonstrate credibility in your brand, thereby enhancing your company’s image.
• You may also need to consider what competitors or challengers in your space might be providing.
• In addition, you want to integrate the support team into your company.
• Eighty-four percent of agents say their company views them as customer advocates and brand ambassadors.
• For small businesses with limited manpower, building an exhaustive knowledge and resource base including FAQs, user guides, video tutorials, etc. not only saves time but also money.

Curex is an integrated, online telemedicine clinic for people who suffer from food allergies, and environmental allergies. Customers can consult with doctors online, over the phone, and via SMS. Here are some of the key features of your support that you get to design and that you should address as early as possible. ‍Zappos personally replies to every support email creating a better connection with its customers.

SUPPORT

The structure of a customer support team isn’t the same in every company but depends on its size and goals and the type of problems customers have the most. Customer support is all about being there for your customers when they have questions, problems or issues with your product or service. A customer support agent’s role is more about improving the customer experience than interacting transactionally with the customer. The definition of customer support is still evolving, but many signs point toward support morphing into a branch of marketing and growth. Companies who fail to offer quality support will lose their customers to those that do. And the more closely support is tied to your product, the better your product becomes.

That means that a human touch is necessary for solving humans’ problems with their technology of choice.

The definition of customer service is evolving. Here’s what every service leader needs to know.

Therefore, having a proper Customer service portal (self-service) is crucial. If you do not provide this option, you are risking that the customer will choose a competitor over you. The name should ultimately reflect the activities of the agents representing it. Explore your service options, some of which can be handled fully online. One of our agents will review your message and get back to you via email.

For example; active listening, empathy, excellent communication skills, the ability to use positive language, conflict resolution skills, and more. A good support representative understands and is technically knowledgeable about the company’s product and service portfolio. The client support team should also have great listening and talking skills since customer support requires patience, clarity, and brevity. Provide your customers with the information they need in as few words as possible.

Frequently asked questions on customer support

NVIDIA’s support services are designed to meet the needs of both the consumer and enterprise customer, with multiple options to help ensure an exceptional customer experience. The top 3 customer support skills are empathy, communication, and product knowledge. Customer support is all about communicating with and relating positively to customers. When you are building your team, take time to teach and stress the importance of empathy and communication skills. On a basic level, agents must understand every aspect of your product so they can communicate how it works to the end-user. But they must also be well-trained on the tools you use such as your CRM and other support software.

Not only is that great customer support, but I’m now more likely to buy from them again, despite the initial mistake on their end. “Without our support team, it would be extremely difficult to operate as a company,” says Meg. Handle time is an important metric, but it doesn’t tell you the whole story. Analyze a range of metrics to better understand the customer and their relationship with your company overall. It is essential to make customers happy and leave a positive impression when the problem has been resolved. After listening to the customer’s problem and developing a solution strategy, the next stage is to solve the problem.

Many businesses have dedicated support agents answering phones, hopefully at all hours of the day or night. Often, the terms customer support and customer service are used interchangeably. Customer service typically covers the entire interaction with customers. Your earliest hires and their influence on the support team’s value system and workflows will impact the quality of your support experience for a long time to come.

While the lines between “customer service” and “customer support” may have become blurred, it is important to use both to deliver high-quality customer experiences. 93 percent of customers will spend more with companies that offer their preferred option to reach customer service. Channel preference can vary based on issue type so companies will want to provide customers with a choice of channels. But as traditional “support” functions become more integrated with other channels and business processes, organizations are changing how they measure success. This also affects the ways in which support teams support their customers.

Becoming Fin: The story behind the name of our AI chatbot

But customer service is more than solving a customer’s problems and closing tickets. Today, customer service means delivering proactive and immediate support to customers anytime on the channel of their choice — phone, email, text, chat, and more. At a high level, the role of customer support is to ensure customers end their experience with your brand happier than when they started.

Your knowledge base may include FAQ and other instructional information. This type of support is not only empowering to your customers but it saves your CSRs time, too. Surveys are critical to measuring your business’s internal and external successes. In addition to providing tools and solutions for your CSRs to better help customers, empower and motivate them by showing them how much you value their work and commitment. This will help you improve their happiness, loyalty, and desire to provide the best support they possibly can for customers. For example, a software company may need more support employees than a clothing brand due to the level of attention needed and the amount of time it can take to walk a customer through a solution.

Delivering superior customer experiences is a great way to create this value and gain a competitive advantage against other players in the market. And great and customer service are the cornerstones of a memorable customer experience. You should constantly be measuring your customer support team’s results to improve your strategy. This includes the results of your rep-to-customer interactions as well as the results of your rep satisfaction and happiness efforts in the workplace. Support reps should be clear and effective communicators throughout any interaction. Whether it’s chatting with a customer via any support channel, escalating an issue to a manager, relaying information to higher-ups, or sharing experiences with other CSRs, strong communication skills are key.

Today, digital is at the centre of customer experiences across all geographies and industries. Digital transformation is about going beyond merely digitizing and automating existing Customer Support processes. It is about creating platforms that allow customers to communicate, exchange data, and switch between different legacy systems seamlessly, thereby enhancing their experience. These systems enable customer service and support teams to contact technicians and send them to service a product when needed.

Meeting customers wherever they want, and providing them consistent support across all channels can dramatically improve their experience. Omnichannel support is all about lowering the effort it takes for customers to have their problems resolved. As organizations grow, so does the pressure on support teams to respond to customer queries and complaints swiftly and satisfactorily. While most organizations promise a hour window to respond to customers, customers today expect and value faster turnaround time.

After every customer interaction, support agents must ask for feedback and share it with the relevant departments. Customer feedback, whether positive or negative, helps brands grow at various levels. It fosters product innovation and development, improves marketing performance, and enhances the overall customer experience. AI-powered tools, such as a chatbot, can help support agents deliver faster responses. A bot can collect key customer information upfront and take repetitive questions off a support team’s plate. And since bots don’t need to sleep or take lunch breaks, they can deliver fast support around the clock.

Disempowered agents who require managerial approval for tasks customers should be able to accomplish themselves. Modern customer support is a much more all-encompassing role that plays a part in the entire customer lifecycle — from acquisition to retention. Word-of-mouth marketing can prove to be a lot more useful than traditional marketing. According to a report by the marketing agency IMPACT, 75% of people don’t believe advertisements, but 92% believe brand recommendations from friends and family. Customer service isn’t just about putting out fires; It’s also about going above-and-beyond for a community or group of people to show the human-side of your brand. Similar to the Adobe example, above, this shows MADE.com’s interest in providing its customers with the support they need — wherever, and whenever, they prefer to receive it.

Read more about Customer Support here.