I’ve all the time labored in customer support. I’ve labored the field workplace at a San Francisco vacationer attraction, dealt with front-line and escalation assist for a client electronics model, labored in information administration, and now I assist produce content material at an organization that makes buyer assist software program.
Over time, I’ve spent a good period of time fascinated by assist and how much expertise I’m offering prospects. How can I simplify the troubleshooting steps on this saved reply? Am I doing a adequate job of empowering prospects to self-serve? Is that this weblog put up helpful and relatable? How can I get these people from Australia to Alcatraz in need of rowing them there myself?
Plenty of vital questions there, particularly if you happen to’re afraid of open water. Nonetheless, one query I’ve by no means actually thought of is “What’s customer support?”
At first look, it looks as if a easy query with an apparent reply.
What’s customer support?
Customer support is the show you how to present folks shopping for your organization’s items or utilizing its providers.
However I feel we are able to all agree that customer support is about much more than answering a telephone name, offering troubleshooting steps, or processing a return.
At Assist Scout, we expect customer support is fairly vital, however there’s nonetheless quite a lot of variance in what customer support means to every of us. On this put up, we’ll discover what members of the crew suppose customer support is, why assist is vital, and the way buyer care impacts your small business.
Customer support aids in product adoption and reduces churn
Have you ever ever purchased one thing, gotten it dwelling, and couldn’t make it work? Perhaps you fiddled with it a bit by yourself, leafed by means of the instruction guide, or requested a member of the family for assist. Ultimately, you most likely took to the web to (hopefully) discover a solution within the firm’s assist middle or on their YouTube channel.
In a scenario like this, if you happen to can rapidly discover assist, be it by means of a well-designed information base, a thoughtfully applied chatbot, or a fast change with the customer support crew, likelihood is you’ll forgive the preliminary unfavourable expertise and maintain the product. However if you happen to can’t discover a solution, contact data is hidden or lacking altogether, otherwise you wind up trapped in an unsightly tango with a nasty IVR system, what are you going to do?
That merchandise is heading proper again to the shop or, at a naked minimal, to a really darkish nook of your storage, by no means to be seen once more.
The job of customer support is to make it simple and pleasant for patrons to make use of your services or products.
Chrissy Chavez
Technical Help Specialist
Some enterprise leaders may suppose that assist high quality and buyer expertise isn’t as vital as your services or products; nonetheless, 80% of consumers say in any other case. Whereas it’s true {that a} extra intuitive product would assist essentially the most in a scenario just like the one above, good service within the type of self-service choices or a superb restoration technique couldn’t solely negate the influence of a nasty expertise however even assist construct model loyalty.
Customer support is everybody’s accountability
However, poor service can have a long-lasting impact. A 2023 survey discovered that 73% of consumers will abandon a model after only one occasion of subpar service. This reveals that assist’s influence on a buyer’s general expertise with — and opinion of — a model is substantial.
If you wish to present your prospects with the very best expertise potential, customer support have to be seen as an all-hands-on-deck operation requiring cooperation throughout each division.
I take into consideration ‘customer support’ within the broadest sense of the time period — each touchpoint is a chance to provide the shopper a seamless, pleasing expertise shopping for, utilizing, or troubleshooting a services or products.
That encompasses far more than simply assist when there’s an issue or query. It’s how properly your web site tells your story and will get customers the place they need to go, the model values and character prospects get to expertise in your communications, and the way simple it’s to work together along with your firm throughout each optimistic and unfavourable moments.
Hillary Noble
Director of Content material
At Assist Scout, the Advertising crew all the time provides our Clients crew — our title for assist — a heads-up when we’ve an electronic mail scheduled to be despatched to prospects, are making ready to publicly announce a brand new function, or are making a change to the web site.
Equally, our builders give the crew a shout earlier than rolling out a launch or in the event that they discover a efficiency concern with the platform. This permits the Clients crew to organize for questions, be looking out for associated points, and react extra rapidly if one thing goes flawed.
We additionally contemplate customer support throughout the design course of for each the Assist Scout product and our advertising web site. We use Beacons — our embeddable net widget — to supply entry to our assist crew’s contact type from throughout the buyer expertise. We additionally hyperlink to useful sources like reside lessons and our weblog within the web site’s nav bar for simple entry.
It’s your entire firm’s job to assist our prospects really feel supported and have a optimistic expertise with Assist Scout, and we’re all the time in search of methods to enhance.
Customer support is about empowering prospects
Ensuring prospects don’t encounter limitations to customer support is vital, but when we’re being trustworthy, a buyer’s superb state of affairs isn’t having to speak to your assist crew in any respect. For easy points, prospects would somewhat assist themselves.
Customer support to me is that feeling the place you are about to ask a query or increase a grievance, and somebody passes you the answer at that second. They’ve anticipated what you want and have solved it for you with out you needing to ask or get your enter.
Once you consider self-service, you most likely think about a well-organized information base, an AI-powered chatbot offering 24/7 assist, and large value financial savings for your small business. And whereas sure, self-service can present a superb buyer expertise and fewer tickets within the queue, it isn’t free.
Behind each profitable self-service technique is a devoted crew, digging into buyer questions and considerations and discovering the easiest way to proactively current data in order that prospects are arrange for fulfillment.
For me, the very first thing that involves thoughts helps folks assist themselves. It shouldn’t be nearly giving the shopper a solution and sending them on their manner. As a substitute, good customer support ought to first get to the basis of the issue by asking well-crafted questions after which empowering the shopper, not solely with the answer, but additionally serving to them resolve related issues sooner or later.
Tamara Zuk
Senior Engineer
The truth is, information administration groups are much more essential in at present’s world of AI enthusiasm. In spite of everything, AI instruments are solely pretty much as good as the knowledge they’re fed, which signifies that investing in your assist crew is simply as — if no more — vital because it was earlier than ChatGPT got here on the scene.
As we begin to construct AI options into our product, the crew is placing further effort into our personal documentation and inspecting how we may also help our prospects create AI-friendly Docs websites that can result in a greater self-serve expertise for his or her prospects, too.
Customer support is a profession that requires talent
Customer support is commonly simply seen as a stepping stone in a profession — a job the place you will get your foot within the door after which transfer on to one thing higher. Nonetheless, that is normally the view of somebody who has by no means held a assist place. Customer support is a occupation that requires an amazing quantity of talent, and never everybody can do it properly.
Individuals who have a knack for assist are helpful to corporations in quite a lot of alternative ways. After all, there’s the apparent — they’re consultants at getting prospects again on observe rapidly. Nonetheless, they’ll even have a big influence on the services or products itself.
[Customer] interactions also can assist form the product even when the shopper didn’t straight share suggestions when reaching out. Nice customer support [teams] can learn between the strains and share that data with the Product crew.
Tamara Zuk
Senior Engineer
Help groups do extra than simply reply questions. They’ll see previous the particular ask of the shopper and use their product information to establish and supply artistic options. Additionally they use these interactions to advocate for product enhancements that cut back friction and enhance buyer expertise.
Customer support deserves a seat on the desk
As talked about above, buyer conversations are filled with helpful data. Nonetheless, getting that buyer suggestions to the broader firm is commonly a problem.
One solution to maintain everybody within the firm up to the mark is by giving assist a seat on the desk. Your assist leaders ought to current at all-hands conferences regularly, offering concrete information and suggestions from actual prospects. After all, visibility doesn’t have to cease on the management degree; each assist crew member has one thing worthwhile to contribute.
Customer support not solely informs prospects but additionally acts as an important channel for corporations to constantly gauge buyer sentiment and preferences.
Wendy Chen
Assistant Controller
At Assist Scout, members of the purchasers crew are supplied with a number of alternative ways to share the information gained from their work with prospects. One instance is the choice to work on “mini groups,” that are small squads devoted to a particular function or product launch. They’re accountable for issues like product testing, creating associated documentation, answering any questions that are available in from prospects and teammates on the subject, and straight passing buyer and assist crew suggestions to the related product supervisor.
Pssst — are you a assist professional in search of tips about how one can make your case to the product crew?
Hearken to Season 1, Episode 3 of The Supportive podcast, hosted by Mat Patterson. On this episode, Mat chats with product supervisor (and former Assist Scout!) Ben Henderson about his function and the way buyer assist leaders can most successfully make their case for product modifications and fixes.
Customer support is commonly an underutilized useful resource, particularly on the agent degree. Firms that present distinctive service know that and be sure that assist is all the time concerned with any initiative that has buyer influence.
Customer support gives area for human connection
Whereas it’s good to have a buyer advocate within the room, it’s no substitute for truly rolling up your sleeves and answering buyer questions. At Assist Scout, your entire firm will get into the queue frequently to remain in contact with buyer sentiment. It helps us improve product information whereas constructing curiosity and empathy.
It’s additionally good for the shopper. Customer support is a manner for us to construct relationships and join with prospects on a private degree. In line with Heidi Harris, a member of our Individuals crew, typically that’s precisely what a buyer wants.
My first job out of school was working in customer support for a automotive finance firm. I used to be in a regional workplace and a lot of the telephone calls I acquired have been from people who known as the 1-800 quantity, sat on maintain for about two hours, after which have been lastly transferred to us. Most of them weren’t joyful once I picked up the telephone, so my method was to carry as a lot kindness and empathy as potential to each dialog — even once I was annoyed.
There may be one name particularly I’ll always remember. A buyer wanted monetary aid for her automotive cost — and to maintain her automotive. Her daughter had most cancers and wanted to be pushed a number of hours away just a few instances every week for therapy. We lowered her funds for a number of months, and he or she was so grateful. She informed me about her daughter, the challenges they have been dealing with, and the way she was hopeful. She not solely wanted assist along with her automotive funds, she wanted somebody to pay attention.
For me, that is customer support. It’s concerning the human connection. Whether or not you’re working with somebody over chat or electronic mail, calling an organization about a problem, or spending two minutes with a checker within the grocery line, it’s remembering that there’s a human being on the opposite aspect and discovering small methods to make their day just a bit bit higher.
Heidi Harris
Lead Individuals Enterprise Companion
Whether or not you’re a assist rep or a buyer, it may be simple to overlook that the one on the opposite finish of the telephone is an actual individual. Good customer support is all about tapping into one another’s humanity, discovering an answer to an issue, and constructing belief that spans past a single interplay.
Customer support is a mirrored image of your organization’s values
As I wrote this put up, I believed loads about what I consider customer support is. Whereas I can level to particular options of fine customer support, like proactive assist or delivering a superb buyer expertise, I’ve been pondering extra about what customer support says about an organization’s values.
Everybody is aware of concerning the nice assist that Chewy, the pet provide ecommerce enterprise, gives. They do the standard assist stuff properly — quick refunds, simple returns, and so on. However they’re additionally well-known for delivering surprising delight within the type of birthday playing cards and shock pet work, in addition to compassion and empathy when a buyer’s pet passes away.
These actions aren’t simply good service; they’re selections and practices that replicate what’s vital to the model, like being customer-first, delivering outcomes, incomes belief, and pondering huge.
Buyer-first values: How we work at Assist Scout
Whereas the connection between values and repair is properly executed within the instance above, it isn’t true for each enterprise. Prior to now, I would normally discover a checklist of values and statements on imaginative and prescient and mission in an worker handbook on my first day at a brand new firm. I would hear all about them whereas coaching, then by no means once more.
They have been out of my thoughts earlier than I even completed my new rent paperwork.
At Assist Scout, we’ve 4 guiding values that assist outline how we work. They are not simply ideas that reside in an onboarding slide deck, however somewhat one thing that we reside and discuss every single day. In conferences, in efficiency discussions, in giving one another a shout out for a job properly accomplished — our values are totally embedded in our firm tradition.
In the event you’re , you possibly can dive additional into what every worth means and the way we outlined them on this article, however for now, let’s take a second to take a look at how our values present up within the expertise and repair we offer our prospects.
Glad to Assist
On condition that assistance is in our title, it’s most likely not stunning that considered one of our values facilities round serving to each our prospects and one another. Our crew is made up of a few of the most pleasant, empathetic, and sort folks I’ve ever labored with and everyone seems to be all the time prepared to leap in and assist.
By way of service, all of us have a:
Dedication to the apply of entire firm assist.
Willingness to go above and past and supply artistic options to buyer issues.
Dedication to offering proactive assist and schooling by means of documentation, reside lessons, and useful content material to make sure that our prospects really feel properly supported and assured in our product.
Craft over Conference
At Assist Scout, we really feel it’s vital to get issues proper, even when it goes towards what is predicted or what our competitors is doing. We’re given room to be bold and maintain our work and one another to excessive requirements.
By way of buyer expertise, we
Stay customer-first in an trade that’s usually obsessive about the subsequent new factor.
Don’t intention for function parity. If a function isn’t adequate for our personal prospects or received’t present a superb buyer expertise, we don’t launch it.
Persistently prepare and sharpen our crew’s product information and troubleshooting abilities to make sure that our prospects all the time obtain the very best assist potential.
Progress not Perfection
We ship our greatest effort, pay attention, iterate, and repeat, working with a CANI (fixed and unending enchancment) mindset. The Assist Scout crew does our greatest to embrace vulnerability, welcome suggestions, and keep curious and humble.
Our crew:
Values buyer suggestions and makes use of it to tell function enhancements and the product roadmap.
Is aware of that the work within the queue is rarely “accomplished” and that there’s all the time room for enchancment.
Believes that there’s no such factor as a dumb query. Our assist professionals know that it’s unattainable to know every part about our product they usually aren’t afraid to ask one another for recommendation to make sure that a buyer will get the very best reply potential.
Personal the Consequence
We all know that the work we do every day has a direct influence on our teammates and prospects. We consider in possession, pondering earlier than you act, and that belief and integrity are non-negotiables.
Assist Scout:
Empowers our assist crew to make selections.
Encourages all staff to think about influence when taking motion that might have an effect on a buyer’s expertise with our crew or product.
Takes a considerate method to new know-how, as we’re finally accountable for the expertise our prospects obtain.
Values our prospects’ success above all and are all the time trustworthy if we don’t suppose we’re the very best match for a buyer’s enterprise or use case.
Bear in mind: How your small business helps its prospects reveals them who you might be; it’s as much as you to resolve who that’s.
What does customer support imply to you?
Do our crew’s definitions of customer support resonate with you? Have considered one of your individual? Drop us a notice — we’d like to study extra about what customer support means to you.
