“Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – Damon Richards, a customer care expert

Imagine these different scenarios. You have got a sketchy idea about your customers’ expectations; customer problems piling up every day; customer calls transferred from one executive to another – These issues have become an everyday affair for your support team to face customer wrath. Sounds familiar? These are some common situations that are symptomatic of an inefficient customer support process.

A business needs to have some sustainable strategies in place to address such situations. One way to retain customers and ensure their constant satisfaction is to rely on time-tested customer support systems. Startups, in particular, feel the need for effective customer-facing services. They have just embarked on their journey to building a great business. So, any lead conversion at this crucial stage serves as a stepping stone to accomplish long-term goals.

There are several ways in which startups can manage customer support and get positive results. This blog post discusses seven of them; dig in to learn more.

1. Build the Right Support Team

Whether you employ a small or a large customer support team, what matters is how good the team is in resolving customer issues. An ideal customer support team should consist of right individuals who are capable of resolving customer issues on time and in a delightful manner. Customer support teams need to be well-trained about your company products and well versed in using modern support tools as well. More importantly, they must be continually driven by the desire to help their customers and keep them happy.

2. Use Advanced Customer Support Software

A simple, yet, comprehensive customer service solution should form an integral part of your customer support. Effective and timely customer support guarantees the best of customer service experience. Businesses that deliver better customer experiences obtain revenues between 4% and 8% above their market.

A customer service software such as Help Desk improves customer experience through collaborative teamwork. With the various features of Help Desk such as shared inbox, you can track, manage, and resolve customer tickets collaboratively. Choose a help desk software, such as ProProfs Help Desk, as it suits the requirements of your business and reduces ticket pile-ups drastically through faster resolution.

3. Listen to Your Customers

As a startup, one of the smartest things you can do is to listen attentively to what your customers are saying about your product or service. Feel the pulse of your buyers and ensure that you know them like the back of your hand. Useful inputs such as product improvement ideas often come from customer feedback. Unhappy customers, indeed, can be the best source of learning for your business. Pay attention to your buyers’ likes, dislikes, and preferences.

4. Multi-channel Support

It isn’t important that your customers make requests or queries through a live chat app or uses a support email address. They may even post their queries on your company’s social media pages. As a business, you need to ensure that customer issues and queries are resolved on time and none of the requests is left unattended or unresolved.

5. Shorten the Response Time

Customers decide to choose a brand based on the response they get to their queries, requests, and feedback. While almost all businesses have 24×7 self-service help centers nowadays, there may be times when customers feel the necessity to contact a real person. Among other factors, how rapidly your agents touch base with customers and resolve their issues determine your consumer behavior. They may continue to use a product or service or look elsewhere for companies with better customer service. The golden rule is to prioritize and timely resolve customer issues.

6. Use a Simple Workflow Setup

An easy and simple workflow setup is another key factor in handling customer issues effectively. Timely resolution can remain an uphill task if you lack a streamlined customer handling process, even when your customer support department is manned by well-trained employees. Right from sending an auto-response to customers on new ticket creation to the satisfactory resolution of their issues, the entire process should be smooth sailing. Adopt a scalable help desk software that you can scale up or down as per your business requirements. The customer support tool should be capable of integrating with your knowledge base, live chat and survey tools.

7. Encourage Review Meetings

One of the key customer support strategies is to encourage team review meetings. Managers may conduct periodic meetings with agents and others in the customer support team, after capturing customer feedback. Real-time customer surveys and NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys help managers to learn where agents are performing poorly and where they need training. Agent training ultimately leads to improved customer service.

Last Word

Adopting the right measures is the key to tackle common customer support issues head-on. A trained and well-equipped support team is toothless without the necessary tools to back up their day-to-day duties. Embrace a secure customer support software tool that enables you to attain your business objectives of both employee retention and customer service. It’s high time that you upgrade your customer service and start looking for the right customer support tool.