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The Art of Customer Support

06 November 2009

Geraldine Woo discusses how building an effective customer support function can help build your business through more effective customer engagement. Geraldine has previously held Principal Customer Experience Managment roles with Engin, Microsoft and MYOB

How you respond to your customers in a timely and efficient manner determines how they view you as an organization and can help to build your long term relationships. If you ensure these functions are properly implemented from the beginning, you could be laying the foundations for a consistent and predictable customer experience which requires little investment over time. I once worked for a multinational software company who had a developer tools customer base that cost very little in support because they supported each other through their own “community”. They were extremely loyal to the product, they provided the necessary feedback in order to continue to develop the product according to the needs of the customer and they supported each other through an online community. It doesn’t always happen like this, but getting the balance right between good support and a good customer experience is not hard if you are willing to invest a little time upfront. Following are four simple steps to setting up a good support function.

1. Analyse current practices
Firstly look at the interactions customers are having with you currently, and determine how they’re engaging with you. What is the nature of the support they require, how frequently are they needing this support and have a look at existing service levels you have in place? All too often we assume we know what our customers want and design service levels in isolation of them. We need to know how our customers are interacting with us and the issues they might face in using our products/services, so that we can have a meaningful long term relationship with them. Building a long term relationship with your customer equates to loyalty and loyalty means they continue to purchase from you. Ask yourself; do you think your customers like you? Would they recommend you to their friends/family? What do they like about your service? How can I improve?
Take a look at each level of support, for example, do I respond to their phone calls in a timely manner?, how do I respond to their email?, do I provide sufficient self help online? Within these levels of support, are you happy with the turn-around time? For example, do you think it’s sufficient to respond to a customer’s email inquiry within two weeks or should it be 24 hours?
Make it a part of everyday practice that you call in to your own call centre or access the web “as a customer” to experience what they experience and ask yourself if you would be happy with that service level. All too often, we seldom spend time putting ourselves in the shoes of our customers.

2. Research
If you don’t know the answers to some of the questions above, then ask them. Find out if you are meeting their needs, what’s working well and what’s not working. What are they looking for from your organization? If you can show customers you genuinely want their opinions and will act on the feedback they provide to you, surveys can be a valuable tool to building a relationship with customers especially if they can see positive change over time.
There is also no need to spend a lot of money, as it can be as simple as creating a short survey on one of the many free online survey tools and emailing this out to your customer base. Some examples include: Zoomerang, Surveymonkey, and SurveyGizmo. Use this opportunity to update your customers’ records and ensure you have their correct contact and demographic information. You will often find out at this time how many email addresses you need to update on your database.

Another important thing to do is look around at other companies in your industry vertical and of similar size, and find out what are they doing and what works well. Knowing your competitors is important to any business but knowing what they are doing better than you is even more important for you to continue to exceed your customers’ expectations.

3. Define your service levels
Based on the information you have gathered, define your service strategy, your commitment you’re looking to make to your customers and with that an operational plan to deliver on that commitment. Define a consistent and predictable experience in line with your service commitment & strategy and communicate with them so they know what to expect from you as a provider.

Once you know your customer & what they want from you, segment them and provide them the information & support they require. For example, do they need a dedicated account manager to support them? Will a contact centre suffice? The answers to these questions are all dependent on how much they spend each year with your organization and how much they have the potential to spend with you. Build the structure of support according to each segment. I have provided an attached example of how you might segment your customer database and what engagements you plan to put in place for each segment. The customer segment names are just examples. You will notice the customers at the top of the pyramid will require more interactions and a dedicated account manager to service their needs, however a customer further down the pyramid may not require one-on-one interactions with a dedicated account manager but regular e-newsletter communications may suffice. You will need to tweak the structure and model as you move forward and customers may even move up and down the pyramid but it’s important you create a structure for support so you know you have constant contact with customers at all levels of your business. Building a consistent and predictable customer experience is important so they know what to expect of you as a company. This builds brand and over time if you’re doing it right may also result in loyalty.

4. Monitor
Pull all your feedback mechanisms together; such as account manager interactions, support incidents, calls to your call centre and survey results, to provide you feedback on how you’re doing as an organization. Customers are always moving and you’re also moving as an organization so it’s important to have the checks and balances in order to determine if you are doing the right thing by your customer. Survey customers to determine if their happy with your service levels and allow them to provide you feedback on how you can continue to do better

Ensure that you’re constantly delighting your customers and meeting their needs with a consistent and predictable relationship in order to build loyalty.

Written by: Geraldine Woo

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