Customer support is not just a necessary evil for brands; it’s the cornerstone of good business. Helping customers is a way of building up your business’s reputation and earning loyalty. When customers get in touch with a query, you can answer with prompt and friendly support.
Support-driven businesses are in a great place to enhance their company’s reputation by providing stand-out support. Customers will be happier with your business when you resolve their problems quickly and provide that little extra touch of human support. Although AI is becoming more important, it’s working hand-in-hand with your support agents to provide the best support possible.
Customer support is a way to connect with your customers and make them happier with your business.
Customer support is the way to connect with your customers when they need it most: when they run into problems with your products and services. There is no better way to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty than by providing top-notch support, by helping frustrated customers and sending them on their way to success.
What is customer support?
Customer support is the process of providing help to your customers when they need it. Customers usually get in touch with the business to ask for help and the support team responds by raising a ticket. Support agents work to resolve the query and achieve customer satisfaction.
Companies and products don’t usually operate without issues and that’s why customers contact your business. Businesses are obligated to provide support to customers when they run into trouble, otherwise this leads to other problems later down the line such as increased customer churn.
Holding onto customers requires great customer support in the form of self-service and human support.
When customers have problems, they need a way to contact your business to get them resolved. Not every customer is the same and some will prefer phone, email or live chat. That’s why businesses provide the support channels for customers to get in touch.
What are the main customer support channels?
Phone
Companies usually provide a phone number that customers can call to obtain support. Support phone calls are the most expensive method of providing support as agents must be fully engaged in the call to resolve the query.
Email is a popular form of customer support because customers and agents can correspond at their own convenience. Email also provides a record of everything that was said between the support team and the customer.
Live chat
Live chat is usually installed on the company website and agents can manage multiple live chats at a time. It’s an instant messaging service that allows customers to quickly submit their queries to be resolved by an agent.
Self-service
Self-service knowledge bases and chatbots are an alternative method of obtaining help from your business. Brands maintain these resources so customers can help themselves instead of waiting for an agent. Self-service can deflect multiple queries to reduce the support load on your agents.
How does customer support benefit business?
Increases customer satisfaction
Customer satisfaction is increased when you invest in good customer service. It’s important to maintain customer satisfaction levels for your business’s long-term viability as satisfied customers are more likely to recommend your service.
Increases customer loyalty
Nearly three out of five consumers report that good customer service is vital for them to feel loyalty to a brand, according to Zendesk. This means you’ll earn longer term customers if you offer good customer service; ones who feel loyal and are likely to stick around, viewing your business as a positive force.
Increases customer purchases
93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with a brand after receiving excellent customer service, according to Hubspot. Excellent customer service can increase revenue through leveraging existing customers, encouraging them to buy again instead of having to constantly attract new customers.
What are the obstacles to good customer support?
Lack of investment
Companies that don’t invest in customer support won’t get the results they desire. Viewing customer support as a cost-center contributes to lack of investment as companies try to cut costs instead of allocating more budget. Not investing in customer support is obvious as poor quality support is the result for your customers.
Lack of training
Poorly trained customer service agents cannot deliver the support you need to customers that require help. Ongoing training is essential for a well-oiled team that has the skills which are appropriate to great customer support. Not training customer support agents results in agents that don’t know how to help customers, which is an embarrassment for your business.
Long wait times
Customers hate waiting for customer support and long wait times are an obstacle to providing great service. Average wait times vary by channel but customers generally expect a response within a few minutes, or they will give up and cancel the product. Adequate staffing and appropriate customer support channels like live chat, plus deflecting through customer self-service, will help reduce wait times.
How can businesses improve their support?
Adequate investment in customer support is the first step to improvement. Support-driven customer service is the way to help customers where you view customer service as a revenue driver instead of cost-center. Customer support can drive repeat business, earn loyalty and referrals.
Training customer support agents gives them the skills to help customers in a timely fashion. Well-skilled customer support agents are able to support customers more effectively and turn them into loyal fans. Teaching customer support agents and setting up mentoring programs helps with knowledge-sharing and results in customer support agents who know what they’re doing.
Reducing wait times through allocating more agents and investing in self-service support will improve customer support. Chatbots and self-service knowledge bases can field some of your customer inquiries, leaving agents free to focus on more complex tickets.
If customers can obtain a quick response to their inquiry then your business is obligated to provide it through self-service. It doesn’t make sense for customers to wait for an agent every time.
Self-service support can improve wait times and increase customer satisfaction as they have their queries quickly resolved.
What is the future of customer support?
AI is going to be the future of customer support as it becomes embedded in tools like help desks and self-service portals. Many customer support inquiries will become automated as AI makes its way into customer support tools.
AI self-service can deflect customer inquiries instead of tickets building up in a queue. Chatbots and self-service knowledge bases have the capabilities to automatically solve customer inquiries without requiring the intervention of human support. These tools can help multiple customers at once, significantly boosting the capacity of your support team.
Smart help desks use AI to automate many of the processes of customer support, and use the technology to help agents write better answers to their customers. AI help desks can significantly reduce the time it takes to help customers by assisting agents with each inquiry and offering advice on how to support the customer.
Automations are the future of customer support as many routine inquiries can be deflected or supported by the help desk.
Conclusion
Customer support is the cornerstone of good business, as it earns loyalty and repeat business from customers. Helping customers when they get stuck just makes good business sense and prioritizing support will help your business to grow. Not prioritizing support results in a bad customer experience and customers who will complain about you online.
AI is making its way into customer support tools and automations will be the way forward for businesses investing in customer support. Customers now expect self-service solutions such as a knowledge base or chatbot to help with routine inquiries. Automated customer service will become expected as the technology evolves.
Treating customer support as a revenue-driver rather than cost-center is key to growth. Investing in customer support achieves better results as agents are better-equipped and wait times are reduced. Customers mention that great support is the reason they return to your business, so customer support is important for customer retention.
