Being a successful Customer Support agent requires a full skillset of abilities that will allow one to communicate efficiently with the customer and provide fast and effective solutions to their problems.[4]
All businesses provide customer service, but not all need to offer customer support. A restaurant, for example, provides customer service when you are seated, as you order your food, and upon payment. The waiter is probably not going to show you how to cut your steak, though.
Jonathan Brummel, Director of Enterprise Support at Zendesk, puts it this way: The difference between customer service and customer support is that a customer support team can fix a technical issue in the short term, but providing good customer service helps build relationships and establish a true partnership in the long term.
For example, maybe a customer reached out about a stolen credit card. Beyond identifying what information was compromised and then taking steps to solve that problem, going the extra mile can go a long way.
The short answer is that customer support is important because support agents are key for helping resolve customer queries quickly and effectively, and driving customer satisfaction. This ultimately impacts customer retention, customer lifetime value, and brand reputation.
There is always a technical answer to a technical problem, and a customer support representative is there to help when those issues arise. But the type of help being offered, when, how, and to whom, can be what sets a support team apart.
But he encourages fellow support leaders to be open-minded about the soft skills that go beyond technical. There is plenty of opportunity during a support interaction to connect with customers and demonstrate empathy for their needs, Brummel says.
Knowing that their customer base is equally likely to call in for a chat or to ask about an online purchase, the support team is empowered to take their time with customers on the phone, and even allowed a budget to entertain customers or send them flowers.5. Support your support teamThe nature of technical support demands a level of specialization in the products and services, which can lead to repetitive work over time.
With such a grab bag of issues and personalities to encounter on a phone call or in a chat window, a stint in 1:1 live service can provide a new perspective for even seasoned veterans of a support team.
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.
After he was able to calm down, he explained to her how his wife was battling stage 4 cancer. My support agent empathized with him over the phone and shared a personal story of her own and continued to answer his questions.
Customer support will always demand intimate product and process knowledge, but adding a dash of customer service might prompt agents to focus on the customer and develop the other skills necessary to help them.
By rewarding soft skills, encouraging empathy and extreme rapport, reviewing outcomes and KPIs, and supporting agents in all of the above, a customer support team using customer support software can take a more customer-centric approach and provide long-term support beyond the issue of the day.
In this post, we're going to take a look at the world of modern customer support, what it is, why it's important, how it's changed over time, and how it differs from the stereotypical view of customer service.
Before call centers and social media, local business owners often knew their customers really well. In the video below, Help Scout's Emily Triplett Lentz discusses the principles of old-school customer service with her father, who ran a butcher shop for 37 years.
And while local businesses often knew their customers well, customer service during that time wasn't perfect. Customers had limited options for purchase and support, few ways to educate themselves and solve their own issues, and scant resources for avoiding businesses with subpar products and poor service.
Customer service has undergone some dramatic changes since that time, starting with telephone-based business and the advent of call centers in the 1960s. Suddenly, companies were able to resolve customer issues (or at least nominally offer service), if somewhat impersonally, on a larger, more efficient scale.
But more widespread access to the internet changed things again. Between social media, online forums, and review websites, today's customers have a wealth of resources for learning more about the businesses they're considering and the products they offer, and dissatisfied customers can reach many more people with their support horror stories.
Instead of the stereotypical view of customer service as a cost center, customer support teams are the face of the company. They play a critical part in sales and word-of-mouth marketing, work side-by-side with product teams, and have a seat at the table when it comes to company decision making.
The new customer support applies the principles of customer service in helping customers solve problems and make decisions but, in addition, functions as part sales, part tech support, and part customer success.
While it's certainly possible to run your entire support operation using a shared Gmail or Outlook mailbox, it's not always the best way to set your team up for success. Dedicated customer service software is often a better choice for enabling your team to deliver excellent support.
Tools that have been designed specifically for support teams offer features like shared inboxes, built-in help centers, saved replies, automated workflows, duplicate reply prevention, and customer relationship data.
Sometimes, delivering excellent customer support means making it easy for customers to help themselves. In fact, 81% of consumers attempt to resolve issues on their own before reaching out to customer support, and 71% want the ability to solve most issues on their own.
Next, make it easy for customers to find that documentation by optimizing your content for search (both within your knowledge base and on the major search engines), structuring your knowledge base logically, or adopting a tool like Help Scout's Beacon that surfaces relevant content when customers initiate live chat.
Your team needs to be composed of people who want to learn everything there is to know about your product because they genuinely want to help your customers succeed. They must be willing to dig in to troubleshoot issues, solve problems outside of their domain, and actively listen to customers to determine what they really need.
The guidelines you document don't even have to be specific. American Express' Jim Bush found that guidelines as simple as "use creative (and where possible, inexpensive) methods to delight customers" encouraged employees to come up with and share lots of inexpensive solutions to customer problems.
The call center customer service teams of the late 20th century were held to operational metrics tied to cost-cutting, such as first response times and call resolution times. But providing excellent customer support means focusing more on holistic metrics that are tied to company-wide goals, such as customer satisfaction and NPS.
Don't make your customers turn to Google to find out how they can get in touch with your support team. Make it easy for them by displaying your contact information in logical places on your website. Also, consider meeting them where they are by offering live chat support within your product or accepting support requests over social media.
Help Scout's live chat tool, Beacon, offers a feature called modes that surfaces relevant content from your knowledge base before putting customers in touch with your support team. This lets you prioritize self-service to reduce support volumes while still making human help available.
Automation is a great addition to your team's toolkit because, when used correctly, it eliminates some of the mindless, repetitive tasks that keep your support agents from delivering attentive, personalized service. And in some cases, AI tools are even great for customers because they provide quick, instant answers to simple questions.
But when used incorrectly, chatbots can easily become the voice-activated phone menus of the online customer support age. They misunderstand questions, pointing customers to the wrong resources, or send customers around in circles trying to solve problems that require critical thinking and other exclusively human skills.
While customers like quick, easy answers, they expect more human service when it comes to solving complex problems. They don't want to be referred to as a ticket number, don't want to repeatedly provide long explanations as they're transferred to different teams, and don't appreciate generic responses to genuine concerns.
Are your customers struggling to find the answers and how-tos you've documented in your help center? Are there specific questions your team spends time answering over and over again that could be easily solved with better user onboarding or in-app tips? The answers to these questions are often readily accessible in your data.
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