We all know a great customer support experience can be the best thing when it comes to customer retention, hopefully creating product brand advocates in the process. But how exactly do you know what type of experience your client will consider great? And therefore, how do you design it?
A b2b software company might need to design customer support processes where quick turnaround, fast resolution time, preciseness are key attributes of a successful interaction. Customers want things fixed, and they want them fixed now.
On the other hand, we tend to believe that a b2c or e-commerce company might benefit a lot more from focusing on the softer, human aspects of the interaction: empathy, patience, hand-holding, wow! Not that these attributes aren’t important in all settings, but the emphasis on them is usually more or less depending on the type of support or assistance being provided.
Take for example the online shopping site Zappos. Their customer support processes encourage support agents to go out of their way to create a WOW moment on every call they receive from their customers. Zappos has created a brand for themselves around service, which is what customers mostly rave about. They feel they’re being helped by real people.
With the advent of the cloud, SaaS and other types of subscription models, customer support of technology products must take a page out of the best customer service organizations out there. Yes, it’s about fixing the problem, but if you want that subscription to be renewed next month, you better leave your customer feeling pretty good too!
