5 Steps for Excellent Customer Support

The Art of Customer Centricity

Offering software products and services always comes with the responsibility to provide great onboarding and support towards customers. Technology companies have different approaches to customer support, but all of them have the same goals: To serve their customers in the best possible way, and to provide the best possible help. At the end of the day, this will help customers to achieve their business goals even faster.

If you work in Customer Support, you know about the struggles and the challenges. Often times, there is a complex structure behind the idea of customer success, and customer service representatives on the front lines are true multitasking heroes! How can you build on a great customer service and make your clients happy?

Some days ago, we had a chat with our Customer Support Team, about IT Support and Customer Care, and we collected some of their ideas and experiences. In this blog, we will share their thoughts with you, and make your life a little easier by providing 5 simple steps to achieve excellent customer service.

5 Steps for Creating Outstanding Customer Support

1. Know Your Product

Of course, you know the product you offer support for. But how well do you really know it? Can you put yourself in the customer’s shoes, and see how the product helps them in their daily business?

Especially when you start a new position in a customer support department, you should take the time to familiarize yourself with the products and services you offer.

The first step is to use the product as if you were the customer, and to understand all the functionalities so you will be able to answer customer questions effectively. Become familiar with each aspect, the strengths of the product, but also the weaknesses. This helps you troubleshoot your customers problems more effectively.

2. Use the Right Tools

Everyone has great software tools to manage their customer service teams. But how reliable are the tools that you have in place? Are they simple and easy to understand, or does it take extended periods of onboarding to make new employees familiar with these tools?

Working with Remote Support Software can be extremely frustrating if it is not easy to use. Be sure to work with a tool that is intuitive, lightweight, and simple, with just the right amount of features that you and your team need.

Not only will this help your team to do their job faster, but it will also help you retain the right employees in customer support. Happy employees do their job in a more motivated manner, which has a direct impact on your customer satisfaction and the efficiency of your support team.

3. Know Your Customers

Your customers are a key factor within your business success. By putting yourself into their shoes, and by analyzing their needs and customer expectations to the core, you will gain important insights into additional product requirements. Does your product address all their pain points? Is anything missing? Find out by understanding your customers’ businesses.

It may be helpful to actively ask your customers about enhancement requests, and check which ones are important enough to be put on your product and customer support roadmap. This will help you to improve and maintain customer satisfaction on the long run and, consequently, increase customer loyalty.

Showing your customers that you are interested in their pain points also helps you to build a healthy relationship with them. Position your customer success/support teams as part of the product and the customer experience, with empathic humans that relentlessly work on satisfying the customers and minimizing bad experiences.

4. Offer Self-service

Times have changed. Nowadays, people are even more impatient than ever. When they have an issue, they want a solution instantly. Not tomorrow, but now!

By setting up a self-service center with FAQs and a knowledge hub, you will cover most of the commonly issues without even actively replying to support requests. The portal is available around the clock and therefore accessible anytime across all time zones and places in the world.

While a self-service center should not replace your customer care team, it is a nice addition and an elegant solution to complete your customer support strategy.

5. Listen to Your Customers

Customer feedback is valuable. No matter how harsh it may be, it will help you by presenting new ideas, and maybe even bringing up issues that you have never thought of before.

It is therefore highly recommended to regularly offer them a platform where they can get in touch with you. This could be by e-mail or by phone through conversations with customer support employees. You could think about implementing an online community on social media, virtual meetups, and online conferences, or even a regular face-to-face event for your customers, like an Annual Conference.

No matter which communication options you offer, be sure to follow up on the ideas, and to be consistent in your approach by offering a real dialogue with your customers. Interacting with customers is still an important aspect of and effective customer service strategy.

Conclusion

Follow these 5 steps to build on a successful customer support strategy:

• PRODUCT. Make yourself familiar with your own product and stay up to date with product enhancements to really understand how your customers benefit from your offerings.
• TOOLS. Invest in technology, but don’t throw your money out of the window for inefficient tools. Be sure to work with a simple, secure, and fast Remote Support Software.
• CUSTOMERS. Know the people you sell to. Understand their needs and make sure you cover their constantly changing requirements. Happy customers are key to growing your business.
• SELF-SERVICE. While your customer support team cannot answer the phone or reply to e-mails 24/7, a customer portal with commonly asked questions and related solutions can be a nice and customer-friendly addition to your customer support.
• FEEDBACK. Whatever your customers have to say – listen to them and make sure to integrate their feedback in your product and customer support strategy.

Do you already have the right tools in place? Leverage the full potential of your customer support with AnyDesk, a Remote Desktop Solution that understands the needs of its users.

Want even more excellent customer support? Here is our Remote Support Guide that provides insights into how you can improve your processes and achieve better results. If you want to learn more about improving customer relationships and have a higher level of customer retention, feel free to take a read!