As a business leader, you know that customer service is everything. After all, it's an age-old practice to assume the customer is always right. But these days, customer service means more than just that. It means empowering your customers, providing them the support they need when they need it, and using their feedback to make improvements in when, how, and where you respond to them. Customers happy with the support they receive usually complete transactions and return for more. They tell their friends about you. The post about you on social media. They can make or break your company.
One of the best ways to ensure your customer support is some of the best in the industry is to incorporate support team software into the way you do business. There are countless reasons why, but we put together a list of 10 of them.
1. Provide More Consistent and Quicker Customer Responses
Support software typically automates your workflow so that each of your customers receives a consistent response in a timely manner. There's no waiting on hold or wondering if anyone is in the office that day — your customers will get a response when they need it.
2. Help Your Team Collaborate Better and Improve Productivity
Customer support software doesn't only benefit you and your customers. It can also help benefit your employees. Many businesses that implement software claim that they see an almost instant increase in collaboration and productivity. Because your customer tickets are organized, centralized, and prioritized, your team doesn't have to worry about duplicating responses or answering common questions that can be dealt with through an automated response. You'll be surprised at how many hours you'll get back.
3. Gather Data and Insights
As a business leader, you'll enjoy the fact that most support software generates data and provides insight into what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong. Customer feedback, bugs, type of customer, staff productivity, and more — you'll gain so much knowledge about how your organization works that you may not have noticed otherwise.
4. Scale Up Without Losing Quality Service
One of the biggest fears business leaders have about growing their organizations is whether or not they can keep up the high levels of customer service they've offered in the past. This is also a fear of customers when they see their favorite brands grow. With customer support software, you can toss those worries out the window. Scale up as much as you need, and most of the industry-leading software will scale up with you without a hitch, whether your support team consists of 20 people or 2,000 people.
5. Stay on Top of Tech Trends
Customers today expect you to stay on top of the latest tech trends. For example, many people shop via their mobile devices, and, if they find that the business they want to buy something from doesn't have a great mobile site or app, it will be a turn off. It may even cost them a customer. Most support software offers omnichannel solutions, so you can provide support via the latest trend, whether it's a mobile-friendly site or social media.
6. Empower Your Customers
Most customers don't want to have to talk to someone to get help. If they can find what they need by searching frequently asked questions (FAQs) or chatting with a personalized bot, they're fine with it. When you provide all of these services, you empower your customers to find the answers they need when they need them. For example, if they're on your e-commerce site at midnight and able to get help, they're more likely to go ahead and buy something. Meanwhile, if they have to wait until the next day to call you or receive an email response, they may move on to a competitor or even talk themselves out of making the purchase.
7. Work Around System Failures
While it largely depends on the type of software you choose, most options will help you get around your own internal system failures. Phone system down? Computers down? Power outage? If your software is cloud-based, your customers can still receive some sort of response when they need it.
8. Offer 24/7 Support
If you're a small or medium business (SMB), you probably don't have the capabilities to offer 24/7 support. Maybe you're a doctor's office that's closed on weekends or an insurance company that sends your staff home at 6 p.m. every evening. With support team software in place, you can still provide your potential customers with some type of response, no matter the time of day or day of the year.
9. Get Organized
It can get a little overwhelming when you have customer inquiries in your email, social media messages, via text, or voicemail. One of the greatest aspects of support team software is that it organizes all of those inquiries in one place. You and your team can access them via a single dashboard. In many cases, the software will even help break them down into categories.
10. Improve Customer Satisfaction
Finally, your ultimate goal should be to improve customer satisfaction as customer satisfaction improves profits. Most of the industry-leading software platforms promise an increase in customer satisfaction within weeks of implementing their programs.
