What is customer support?

At its most basic, customer support describes the services, tools, actions, or strategies designed to help customers resolve any technical issues or problems with a specific product or service. Customer support may include everything from original planning and installation, through training, troubleshooting, and maintenance.

Contact centers often play an important role in customer support. When a customer encounters a problem with the product or needs further direction on how to use it correctly, they may opt to contact trained support personnel via the company’s contact center. The customer calls in using their phone, and is able to speak one-on-one with a support agent. The agent can then walk the customer through the troubleshooting process and help them find a solution.

Other customer support channels may include the following:

• Social media
• Messaging apps
• Live chat
• Email
• Forums/message boards
• On-page support widgets
• Online self service
  

Each of these options carries with it certain advantages in terms of reach, availability, usability, and communication effectiveness. Successful businesses tend not to limit their customer support options to just one or two channels; multi-channel support ensures that wherever your customers are and however they prefer to reach out, you will be waiting for them and ready to help. Omni-channel support takes this interaction even further, connecting all available service channels and allowing agents to freely share relevant information to promote a more seamless customer experience.

A hundred or so years ago, customers were effectively limited to those businesses that were located nearby. Most people would purchase locally, and when they encountered problems with the product or service, they would simply return to the shop and speak with someone there.

But as larger businesses began to expand to include more and more locations, it became apparent that the need for customer support was growing as well. At the same time, new communication technologies—such as the telephone—made it possible for customers to call into stores directly to find solutions to their problems.

The first call centers began to appear in the 1960s, offering a more efficient way for businesses to manage customer support at scale. The advent of toll-free numbers helped solidify call centers as the preferred approach to customer support.

Throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s new technologies further revolutionized customer support. Interactive voice responses (IVR) and phone trees made limited self service a possibility, and help desks—backed by on-site computer software—allowed agents to quickly retrieve important information. The emergence of home internet technology brought with it email and eventually live chat support options. Finally, the 2000s saw an explosion in customer support software and online support-and-feedback channels.

Today, we are living in a golden age of customer support. However, as support options and capabilities expand, the line between customer service and customer support is starting to blur.

By adhering to a handful of best practices, most organizations can build a customer-support strategy capable of addressing almost any issue that may come its way.

In creating a customer support strategy, you will need to define several key features. Addressing these points early in your planning will help you stay on track and provide a consistently positive experience for your customers. Here are several key features to consider:

• Approach
  How will you approach customer support? Will you focus on one-on-one conversations where your agents walk customers through potential solutions? Or will you take a more comprehensive, but less personalized approach and simply direct customers towards informative resources?
  
  Both options carry their own advantages and disadvantages, and may be more or less appropriate depending on your business and customer base.
  
  
• Voice
  The tone and voice you use in communicating with your customers can have a big impact on their overall experience. Your agents should be friendly and informed, but how casual or formal they are depends on how you would like to present your brand.
  
  
• Quality / speed
  Although every business should strive to provide the highest quality support as quickly as possible, you may find that your industry or your audience values one of these traits over the other.
  
  Determine early in your planning stages which is more important. If quality is a bigger concern, then hiring a smaller, but better trained support team will help ensure that customers enjoy comprehensive solutions. On the other hand, if your customers are more interested in a fast response and quick turnaround, hiring a larger team can help make that a reality.
  
  Ideally, you would want a large support team made up of knowledgeable, skilled individuals. But if you lack the resources to field such a team, first concentrate on ensuring you can provide either a fast or quality experience, and then supplement your choice with automation and other support tools.
  
  
• Availability
  When will you provide dedicated service? Will you limit support to traditional office hours, or will you make sure that there is someone available to provide support at any time of the day, on any day of the year?
  
• Process
  There will be times when your customer support department encounters problems of its own. At the same time, even routine events will require defined processes to ensure that they go smoothly. Defining your emergency and non-emergency processes, including who has the authority to make critical decisions, will help ensure that your support team remains effective as you scale your business.

At its heart, customer support is all about promoting a positive customer experience. How you do that will depend on who your customers are, what products or services you offer, and the expectations within your industry. That said, we’ve compiled nine tips to help ensure that your customer support strategy is an effective one.

• Clearly define your contact paths
  Before you can provide effective customer support, your customers need to know how to get in touch with you. Make sure that support options are clearly defined throughout your website, and that all contact information is up to date.
  
  
• Identify your starting benchmarks
  To effectively measure your success, you need to know where you’re starting. Establishing starting benchmarks also includes taking a meaningful look at leading competitors in your industry.
  
  
• Establish performance measurements that reward customer centricity
  In all likelihood, not everyone in your organization works directly with customers. But everyone needs to understand that customers are the most important factor in business success. Recognize and reward customer-centricity through every department, and internal behavior will become more customer focused overall.
  
  
• Give your support team the right tools
  Depending on the size of your business, the size of your customer base, and specifics of the products or services you offer, your support team may need quite a bit of support itself. Customer service software and customer service management platforms provide invaluable resources. Additionally, tools that promote effective inter-departmental coordination, such as digital workflows, connect your agents with other teams outside of customer support.
  
  
• Hire the right people
  Ideal support teams are made up of patient, attentive individuals with clear communication skills. Hire for these soft skills wherever possible. Additionally, keep your best hires interested by offering competitive pay rates and clear advancement opportunities.
  
  
• Create and clearly document guidelines and policies
  Make sure that your support teams know what is expected of them and how to go about meeting those expectations. Identify processes, goals, values, etc.
  
  
• Empower teams to act with authority
  If you hire the right people and have reliable guidelines in place, there’s no reason why you should force your support teams to double check everything with management. Giving your teams the authority to make decisions will help expedite solutions and improve the overall customer experience.
  
  
• Keep customers in the loop
  Occasionally, businesses will put so much focus on support, that they neglect the customer. Communicate with your customers and keep them up to speed on what’s happening, and what you are doing to resolve their issues. If something isn’t working properly, let them hear it from you first, and give them estimates on when they can expect solutions.
  
  
• Don’t rush when providing solutions
  Support teams should be sure to respond quickly to support requests, but that doesn’t always mean having an answer up front. Give your teams enough time to effectively research issues and come up with working solutions, and make sure the customers understand the time frames involved.
  
  
• Motivate your employees
  Working in a call center or answering email support requests can feel repetitive and thankless—but it doesn’t have to. Recognize and reward exceptional work among your support team, and they will be more attentive to the needs of your customers.
  
  
• Don’t neglect personalization
  Automation can help your support team provide a better, faster, more accurate service, but it shouldn’t replace personalized support. When problems are too complex for chatbots and self-service portals to solve, make sure that customers have access to real, thinking human beings. Personalization supports automation in other ways as well, allowing businesses to tailor automated responses and suggestions to the specific needs of the customer.
  
  
• Report on business wins as well as customer wins
  Raw data and customer-focused metrics don’t always clearly demonstrate the big-picture impact. Be sure to look at the overall impact of your customer support strategy, and share those wins with the rest of your organization.
  
  
• Always be improving
  With every interaction, your support team collects valuable data related to your customer base, your products, and the issues that relate to both. Use this data to inform your support offerings and improve your products. As you identify the most common problems, you’ll be able to address those issues company wide.
  
  
• Be open to make big changes
  It may be natural to experience pushback as you realign company focus onto customer support. But sometimes big changes are necessary if you want to experience big improvements. Help your people commit to improving customer support; difficult changes now can mean significant improvements and gains down the road.

Once you’ve established a working customer support strategy, consider taking the next step. Check out the ServiceNow customer engagement whitepaper, and see how far your customer support can take you.