Why You Should Always Start With Support

CEO at Yooz Inc., leading product innovation road maps and strategic partnerships.

Imagine you’ve just bought a new automated time-tracking product and need help with the initial setup. You go to the company’s website, but the search feature is terrible. Instead of a single page with a handful of results, you must wade through 10 to 20 pages. When you find a promising page, it reads like the company expects everyone to be as knowledgeable about their product as their employees are. You look for other avenues of support but find there’s no user community. The automated chatbot accepts your question but says not to expect an answer before 48 hours. Finally, you’re put on hold for hours on end when you call the helpline.

When faced with this kind of frustration, it doesn’t take long for buyer’s remorse to set in. If you’d known what poor support you’d receive, you might have spent your money elsewhere. You might even be inclined to leave a bad review, deterring others from making the same purchase. This kind of experience is never good for the vendor’s brand.

Being customer-centric starts with support.

A truly customer-centric organization puts as much focus on supporting existing clients as it does on acquiring new ones. Many businesses claim to focus on providing a great customer experience, but when you look closer, that’s not the case. High-growth companies often focus on sales and neglect support. That’s understandable: Without sales, there’s nobody to support! However, that model can come at a cost: customer attrition. In fact, 96% of customers will switch companies because of poor customer service.

While they may be few in numbers, vocal unhappy customers have a more significant impact than satisfied ones, and they will voice their displeasure more often than happy customers will sing a company’s praises. Without a proper support system, unhappy customers blame the company instead of the product for not meeting their needs. That can lead to fewer sales, to a poor reputation and even to fewer job applicants.

Spending more money to gain new customers only to lose them because of poor support is a recipe for disaster. In today’s inflationary economic environment, companies that want to survive must do whatever they can to keep customers. It’s more costly to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. Furthermore, loyal customers spend more with a company and are more willing to forgive mistakes. Loyalty translates to one of the most important metrics for business success: customer lifetime value.

A support-focused model extends across the organization.

When discussing support, your first inclination may be to think about contact centers and customer service representatives. Yes, the contact center is an essential piece, but you need a customer-centric mentality to extend across every facet of the organization, from marketing your website to sales and order fulfillment, finance, product development and more. Every one of these affects the customer’s journey.

If everyone in the company is on the same page—doing what’s best for the customer—there’s less friction in the sales and implementation process. Agents will not cut corners to “save costs” nor end a support call early to “meet hourly quotas.” A customer-centric organization has a knowledgeable and well-trained staff so that anyone can ultimately help support existing and potential clients. Someone in your finance department might be unable to answer a technical question, but they should know where to send a customer to find answers quickly.

5 Ways To Incorporate Or Expand Support Offerings

Providing superior support to your customers need not be complicated. Here are some ideas that can help you deliver a great experience.

• Install a live chat feature with a real person instead of relying entirely on a chatbot. It’s okay to automate the initial greeting, but the entire discussion should not be between a human being and a machine. Your clients are human, and the support they get should be, as well.

• Offer a growing support library or knowledge base. This includes not only FAQs but also answers to infrequent questions. Customers’ positive perceptions grow when companies solve their unique problems.

• Organize regular webinars to cover best practices and new features of your product. A team of regular facilitators should host these webinars so customers can get accustomed to them. Bring in the most knowledgeable people on your staff to answer any type of question that customers may have.

• Provide on-demand training for your products and services. Even small companies can have clients in other parts of the world. Self-serve support can be essential for customers who cannot reach your team during regular business hours.

• Create a team that handles new feature requests. Provide a way for customers to submit and vote for new features. Make your implementation roadmap transparent. It can be frustrating for someone to request a new feature and not know if you will implement it. Similarly, customers will be thrilled to see their requested feature in your roadmap. That anticipation will keep them with you until you implement what you promised. Follow through.

These tips are part of creating a “Voice of the Customer” process at each major touchpoint in the customer journey—from sales and onboarding to implementation and support. This can allow you to listen to your customers, monitor their satisfaction, get verbatim feedback, receive improvement requests and identify new trends.

Support can be your unique differentiator and competitive advantage.

Support lets companies show—not tell—their customers they love them, which can lead to a healthy bottom line, especially in tough times. The better you treat customers, the longer they will remain with you. Competitors who try to lure them away will have to work much harder to succeed. After all, your customers won’t want to risk working with a company that doesn’t meet the support standards you’ve set. They’ve experienced buyer’s remorse before, and they want no part of it anymore.

Support is the foundation of your company. Start there, and success should follow.

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