5 STEPS
TO DELIVER BEST ENTERPRISE CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Complete customer satisfaction. This is the principle behind best enterprise customer support. Customer support is one of the most important business functions. It refers to a myriad of services companies offer to their customers for a wide range of products from software to niche hardware that drive B2B or B2C communication on a global scale.
Tech support often helps users troubleshoot the problems they face, while using the product(s) or service(s) offered by the company. It may be delivered on the live support software embedded in the website, email, phone or a system that facilitates users log a call or incident.
Many users browse the Internet to access free tech support, offered by experienced users there. This can be classified into: Block hour, Time and Material, Managed Services and Outsourced Technical Support. Depending on the geographical need, it can further be subdivided into tiers or levels. Such classification of enterprise customer support better serves customers, from the coverage and technology point of view.
1. Support is personal
Every customer has high expectations from the customer service function of the business they buy product(s) from. Long gone are the days when customers contacted the companies on a single channel. In a digitally-empowered environment, customers tend to become impatient, if they do not receive support from even one channel of enterprise customer support. They expect same level of customer support on all channels – this is called multi-channel customer service. A customer expects a company and its support to be always available for them.
For example if the customer isn’t able to get a response on the Facebook, s/he attempts to reach the company on its Twitter page or the company’s live chat tool. Today’s millennial generation does not have the patience to wait for the email replies or to speak to a customer representative on the phone after dialing several IVR options.
But a company’s perspective is often different. It sees every customer support channel as a separate entity, which can be available at different times to a different degree. This perspective often results in poor customer experience.
Some companies implement live chat application on their website and think their job of providing enterprise customer support ends right there only; however, that’s not the case. Their customers might prefer Facebook, and if the company fails to provide customer support there, then that’s the case of bad customer service. To avoid such an unpleasant scenario, it is important for a company to adapt and reorganize its enterprise customer support function and gear up to offer multi-channel customer service. With CSS Corp’s enterprise technical support solutions, businesses have witnessed 67% reduction in support turnaround times, 50% reduction in TCO, 96% CSAT scores to delight customers, and 20% reduction in escalations through efficient resolutions.
2. Sometimes the best service sought by customers is self-service
Many a times customers contact customer support not to log in any complaint but to seek answers to their questions. A lot of customers love to find answers on their own. Often, the most frequently questions asked by customers are posted on the company’s website or forum for other customers, who are looking resolutions to the similar problems or issues. Such customers need not participate in any conversation, yet they’re able to find a resolution to their issues. Most companies offer multi channel support so as to best serve customers on the platforms where they are most comfortable in finding answers to their issues, on their own.
3. Automation assists, not serves
As per Gartner, real-time analytics will influence 50% of agent interactions by 2018. The addition of automated support is making Tech-Support an even larger function to transform customer experience and deliver unprecedented value to the end-consumers. It’s a common observation that some companies over-implement automation in the customer support function of the business to improve their performance. For instance, when customers call up the company’s support line to find resolution to their issues, they are often asked to navigate menus and speak to machines. Also communicating on the live chat applications of many companies feels like communicating with a bot, not an enterprise customer support representative. Not only does it feel impersonal, but also it defers customers in getting their issues resolved.
Resorting to robotic auto-responses can help your customer service reps successfully manage the storm of support requests, but it would leave your customers feeling unhappy and discontented, thereby defeating the basic purpose of customer service function. We need to clearly understand that automation should be leveraged to help our customer service reps, not serve our customers.
4. Support should be available to the customers when they need
Some time back, customers were made to wait for hours or even days to get an email reply from the customer support teams. This was and still a common occurrence for support teams that are understaffed to respond to customer issues round the clock. Heavy backlog of tickets also defers the email replies. Speed matters, to a fair extent. A Forrester survey reveals that 41% of customers expect their customer support email to be responded within 6 hours, and almost all of them wanted an email reply within 24 hours of firing in their issues.
However, the difference between a response and resolution should be clearly understood. Most customers at least expect a response from the business to feel that the company at least heard them. So if the customer support team is acutely understaffed or inundated with support tickets, it’s recommended that the customer support reps buy themselves some more time by responding to the support emails rather than resolving. However, putting on an auto responder to combat this issue is a big no-no. A personalized email that clearly is from a real human being (a rep) and not the company stating a timeframe in which you could help the customer can solve the speed issue to a good extent. This way, the customers get timely responses and the reps can buy more time to offer a resolution to the customer’s issues.
5. Customer support is to provide solutions at all costs, not excuses
If you're in customer service, you will come across upset customers. Some customers while experiencing an issue with a platform often reach out to the customer support team of another platform. And, you as a customer support rep have figured this out. In a typical scenario like this, the support from your company or you must not stop. If it’s your customer, be a partner to him/her in resolving that issue or finding out a solution. Work with their internal teams and try to spot the issue. Whatever the problem customer is facing, you must go that extra mile to offer a solution.
With ever-changing business environment and consumer expectations, you will face a number of challenges in the enterprise customer support function. However, keeping the concept of “customer delight” in focus, you can transform those challenges into opportunities to establish trust with your customers and serve them better.
THE CSS CORP
ENTERPRISE TECH SUPPORT STORY
Our enterprise technical support solutions are revolutionary. No, we don’t boast of that, but our clients do admire us! A leading American network security enterprise, specializing in advanced firewalls for network security, visibility and granular control, wanted a support partner accomplished in offering enterprise tech support and also one that understood the network security enterprise space. Read the case study to find out how we helped this client in reducing the AHT and delighting its customers.