Profit From Excellent Saas Customer Support In 4 Steps
Customer service is the backbone of SaaS companies. This department represents how a brand values customer experience and success, and when prioritized, the company benefits in a wide range of ways.
The Benefits of Good Support
First and foremost, software companies rely on their subscription-based customers and the length of these relationships. Maintaining this connection through customer support does more than just answer questions and leave the client satisfied–it bolsters the growth of the company through customer retention.
Retaining customers not only costs less than generating new leads, it’s more profitable too. Even a retention rate as small as 5% can increase profits by 25%, for the simple fact that you’re investing a small amount of money into preserving what you already have, as opposed to spending more on acquiring new customers.
When you hold the success of your customers in high regard, they are more likely to remain loyal to your brand. This is constructive for more reasons than just the obvious lifetime value–happy clients are more likely to promote your business to others. This way of referral increases sales since the recommendation is organic, referrals are reaching people who need the product and would be interested in purchasing, and offers great social proof that the brand has a good reputation. Not only are new leads generated from this exchange, but their lifetime value is 16% greater than customers who engage with the brand without a referral because their churn rates are statistically lower. All this from supporting your customers, and it doesn’t cost you a dime.
The data collected from offering excellent service provides your company with direct knowledge of what exactly your audience’s needs and concerns are, which can be shared across departments to update things like buyer personas and enhance marketing strategies for future customers.
Doesn’t sound too difficult, does it? Support the customer, and business will flourish. However, the importance of this practice shouldn’t be taken lightly. Following these four steps will boost your quality of service, strengthen the lifetime value of customers, and build sales through improved brand equity.
Progress In 4 Steps
1. Build Your Team
A customer service team upholds the integrity of the business and reflects the mission of the brand. Besides having patience, empathy, and spending the necessary time with customer inquiries, this team’s success depends on whether or not they have the right tools to provide complete results. They should be equipped with:
Knowledge of the product
Members of this team must be well-versed in the technical knowledge of your company’s products through proper training and updates. Sharing documentation is an easy way for departments to collaborate and keep each customer service member informed, connected, and up-to-date.
Call history and information collected from past interactions
This makes it easy for agents to seamlessly interact with returning callers and provide a level of personal care when addressing their concerns. It also decreases the time spent handling a customer if the information is easy to access from agent to agent.
Varying avenues of communication
Besides support over the phone, email and live chat are other options to provide. Be sure to keep the path to support as simple and direct as possible–cut down on phone trees, automated responses, or long wait times so the customer doesn’t get confused or irritated.
Flexible support hours
This is especially beneficial for overseas clients in different time zones, but also provides more opportunities to get in touch with a service agent. Show your customers you’re aware that not everyone can call during typical work hours, and you care about their schedule.
2. Provide a Knowledge Base Through Self Service
As opposed to reactive support which entails a customer reaching out and waiting for a response from a service member, proactive support is the idea that the answers to their questions are readily available and provided by the company. Studies show that customers prefer to do their own research before speaking to a support team, and if an answer isn’t easy to find, are highly likely to abandon their purchase. Proactive support, besides a trustworthy layer of transparency with consumers, relieves the amount of incoming calls to the support team for a lower ticket volume.
There are two great examples of this kind of self service: a monitored space for community support, and useful content provided by the company.
Community Support
Chances are, customers are already browsing your social media profiles to make more informed decisions about your brand, so why not use these platforms as a way to share and promote information? Comments and inquiries can be monitored through an online tool such as Google Alerts, which identifies predetermined keywords and lets you know when people are discussing your brand, have a question about a product, or leave a negative review. You can then respond immediately if the situation requires, which adds a human touch to consumers’ interaction with your brand and leaves proof that your company cares about its customers and their satisfaction.
Useful content
Ideally, this means answering the questions your customers might have before they need to ask them. FAQ pages are a great place to start for a simple, easy way to provide help on the company website. Other options like blog content, demonstrations, and webinars can be more long-form and go in depth when a customer needs specific information. These avenues can be available on your website as well, or link a customer to places like your blog page or YouTube channel. Information can also be sent through email, which builds subscription lists and reinforces email marketing tactics. It may take some time to create all this content, but pays off in the long run.
As an added bonus, transparency with documentation is helpful for new employees as they learn about the nuances of your company’s software service. It also shortens the time spent training new hires if they can access the bulk of product information themselves without the need of an expert spoon-feeding them the material.
3. Unify the Support Team and the Company
This is a brief point, but an important one nonetheless. If customer support members are cut off from other departments within the company, it puts a wall up between valuable information that should be flowing freely between everyone involved with a product.
Feedback from customers is a treasure trove of useful information that can optimize decision making in places like ad targeting or opportunities for upselling, and customer support is the front line for collecting this data. Open communication keeps a business moving like any well-oiled machine towards a common goal of growth.
It also pushes the customer to the forefront of business tactics, and, as stated before, customer satisfaction and retention is an invaluable tool to profitable results.
4. Measure the Data
Through the connections made with customers by handling their software queries, collecting feedback can be used to enhance customer experience and build a stronger customer lifetime value. This information also leads to opportunities for innovation, provides positive reviews and testimonials for an increase in sales, and improves performance quality.
Some valuable metrics to monitor are:
Customer satisfaction
Responses from surveys or questionnaires focus on specific aspects of the customer’s experience, and the results are easy to read when the answers are based on a numeric scale. Performance of certain teams can be measured and adjusted accordingly depending on how these responses rank.
Ticket volume
The amount of tickets, or incoming support requests, can be measured to determine if and when there are increases or decreases in the number of inquiries. If the ticket volume is high at specific times of day or days of the week, it might be a good idea to hire more support staff to handle the rush. If it peaks after a new product is launched, the launch tactics probably need to be revised to improve information and its integration with the customers.
Case levels
Besides the volume of tickets and cases created to determine when customers require the most support, topics and word usage can also be tracked during these conversations for a better understanding of what specifically is confusing to customers. For example, the amount of interactions per case identifies which support team has a poor resolution rate. Understanding why the issue wasn’t resolved on the first interaction improves efficiency for next time, and can determine whether the use of a script would be helpful, or if information within the company needs to be updated or shared more efficiently, or if additional training for support team members is necessary.
Response and resolution rate
Customers expect their inquiries to be handled as immediately as possible, so it’s important to value their time with not just an initial reply, but how long it takes for a satisfying resolution. This data can show the gaps in service quality and where support can be improved.
Net Promoter Score
NPS measures customer loyalty, and is calculated with a single question that rates from 0 to 10. Depending on their score, customers are filed into one of three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. Promoters are satisfied with their experience and respond accordingly with high scores, Passives are in the middle range and typically aren’t measured in the outcome of the final score, and Detractors make up the low end of dissatisfied customers. Your company’s score is calculated by the percentage of Promoters subtracted from the percentage of Detractors. The closer this number is to 100% shows how satisfied and loyal your customers are, and whether or not the tactics for customer retention need to be adjusted.
Churn Rate
Customers who churn are those who have disconnected themselves with your company and no longer use your software. By following the behavioral patterns of users who cancel subscriptions, have decreased their purchase volume, or who score low on their NPS, you can predict those who might leave your business, take action to retain them, and analyze their grievances to better handle similar situations in the future.
Final Thoughts
The level of support a company provides for its customers can make or break its success. With so many options in a competitive market, consumers can easily back out of their choice and find one they like better. The more you empathize with your customers by guiding them to succeed, the more they’ll be willing to choose your brand for their customer journey because they trust that you have their best interests at heart. Show them their trust is warranted through your support team’s patience, availability, and the level of care spent on keeping them happy. Relationships work both ways, and when you show the effort you put in to maintaining a healthy connection, the customers will respond with loyalty.