What is Customer Support?
Customer Service is the set of procedures and procedures designed to help customers who need specific assistance. For example, they might have questions regarding your company or product or may be facing an issue with your product or service.
91% of customers try to resolve issues by themselves before contacting an actual representative. But, if they’re unable to solve the issue, you must ensure that you provide them with the assistance they need.
Customer Support can be handled through various channels, including in-person, telephone, email, and Live Chat. Ultimately, the aim is to assist your customers when they require it.
The term “Customer Support” is frequently confused with other terms like customer service and success. We will deconstruct these subjects to show how different Customer Support differs from these.
Types of customer support
Brands can extend customer support through various methods and channels, depending on the individual customer and their specific support needs. It’s a mix of the following kinds of support that form a top-quality customer service strategy.
a. Self-support
Customers usually seek answers to their problems by utilizing the brand’s internal information and resource base. Therefore, self-support is among the most crucial and cost-effective ways of customer support that brands need to concentrate on developing and updating regularly. According to a study, 92% of consumers prefer to use a knowledge base to get self-service support if there is one, and 77% of customers think of organizations positively when they provide self-service solutions for customer support.
The most common forms of self-support are FAQs, white papers, user guides, and case research.
b. Anticipatory support
Anticipatory support provides support to customers in a proactive manner, anticipating their needs at various times throughout their lives. A strategy for customer support designed to boost loyalty emphasizes anticipatory service as it signifies a company’s commitment to providing excellent customer service.
Customer support teams need to keep an inventory of the most frequent customer support queries so that they are able to anticipate problems commonly encountered by customers and resolve them before they become apparent. By anticipating issues, support will reduce the number of support inquiries received. In addition, since your customers are already armed with the tools and instructions to comprehend and use your service or product, It reduces the workload of your customer support department.
One example of anticipatory support is sending automated emails that include explainer videos and FAQs as new customers are onboarded.
c. Responsive support
Support that is reactive or responsive is a service that is provided whenever a client contacts us with a complaint or query. However, contrary to proactive or proactive support, reactive support cannot prevent problems before they pop up.
While responsive support is essential because not all customer issues and problems can be predicted, customer service teams should strive to provide more proactive customer support to enhance customers’ experience.
A good example of responsive support is the assistance offered to customers who are facing a problem with a specific feature or tool following their contact with the support staff via email or phone.
Customer Support vs. Customer Service
Support for Customer Support Service and Customer Service are often confused. But they’re actually very distinct.
Customer Service is an assortment of practices and procedures that are designed to enhance the interactions between businesses and their customers.
Customer service begins when an individual becomes attracted to your business and lasts for months or years after the last purchase. After that, it’s a continuous effort to enhance the customer experience with your company.
You can see that even though only a few customers will need support from Customer Service, Your customers will all receive Customer Service.
These terms are so often misunderstood because providing customer support requires skills in Customer Service.
Important features of your customers’ support service
Here are a few essential features of your support you can design and should take care of as early as possible.
1. Style
The most important question is what type of support you will offer. One possible option is”the “one big answer” approach. This means that you try to address every inquiry from customers with a complete response that addresses each possible situation, e.g., your response could be between five and six paragraphs and include the links to your documentation and perhaps even an embedded video on how to utilize the feature at hand.
It’s extensive, but you wouldn’t want to engage in any type of back-and-forth conversation with your client. Another option is to exchange with your customer, whether via email, messaging in the app, or even over the phone. Try to determine what’s at the heart of the problem and then ask additional inquiries or suggestions.
2. Tone and voice
How you will communicate with customers is related to the kind of service you intend to provide. Therefore, you must think about your voice for your business (e.g., formal and reserved or casual and friendly?) and the tone to use for various situations (e.g., responding to a client who’s been overcharged instead of talking to a person via Twitter). A few of the questions you can think about are:
- How formal would you like your customer communication to be?
- Do you plan to adopt a casual tone?
- Should you use the latest technology for communication, such as GIFs and Emojis?
3. Quality
It could be a bit subjective, but you choose the quality of the support you provide. Of course, certain businesses have to count on customer satisfaction or fast response times more than others; however, the company you select is essential for the caliber of assistance you offer.
A well-planned and resourced user onboarding, even if it’s light, helps educate your support personnel to respond quickly and efficiently to your clients’ needs. However, it’s challenging or even impossible to develop someone capable of being resilient, sensitive, and capable of effectively managing situations, enduring pressure for lengthy periods, and still remaining positive and positive.
The initial hires you make, and their impact on the support team’s value system and workflows will determine the overall quality of your customer experience for years to come. Select wisely and make sure they’ve got the processes and processes, as well as the leadership that is in place to achieve success.
4. Speed
In a perfect world, all customers would be in a live chat with a helpful and knowledgeable support representative each time they encountered a problem (often using the live chat feature). However, the reality isn’t so great, and we realize that’s not the case. Consider the importance of the speed of your response. How can you use expectations setting and/or automated tools to give alternatives for your customers as they are waiting for your help?
You must look at this from the point of the customer’s perspective. How important is the speed of the initial response versus the time required to resolve the problem? It is also important to consider what other competitors in your field may be offering.
5. Coverage
Do you plan to be able to offer support all day, seven days a week? Or do you think that Monday to Friday, 9 am-5 pm, is sufficient? Be aware that even the most business-oriented enterprise software applications are used outside of working hours. What holidays do you plan to observe? Do you have a skeleton for the holiday season, or do you not provide any whatsoever?
6. Language
Which languages to support and when to begin supporting these languages can be a difficult choice.
If your clients are international, you’ll probably have to consider providing them with support in their native language at an earlier point. Another thing to think about is international marketing. There are a variety of services you can utilize to translate your website’s content into various languages. Still, it is important to inquire about the implications of support would be if you choose to do this.
7. Process
If you do not have strong procedures in place, things could fail as you expand, and customer service quality will be affected.
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