Tips on customer support to keep your clients satisfied and loyal

Kristina Azarenko

For example, when Amasty started its way, it consisted of a few staff members, developers and marketers. As we were expanding, the need for more specialists grew, and now we have a separate team dealing with customers’ questions and needs, that is a dedicated support team. And now we can share some useful tips based on our experience.

1. Be polite and professional. Always.

This seems so logical, right? Not for everyone, as I can see. Some companies fail to understand that writing an email to their customers in a way that is too informal shows unprofessionalism and negligence. Of course, there may be some exceptions: for example, if your branding and positioning on the market presupposes an informal manner of communication. In other situations it’s important to stick to a business email format and use business language.

2. The sooner, the better

When it comes to client support, time spent on resolving a customer’s issue is really important. If the solution you provide will be elegant and perfect but overdue, there won’t be any point in it. The thing is that many issues your customers face are time-sensitive, and every hour of waiting may mean your clients suffer losses. So there’s no wonder why people get frustrated if their support tickets are not answered timely.

3. Don’t overuse ready answers

There is nothing more frustrating than ready answers that don’t really help. Sometimes it seems that customer support managers don’t even read your issue explanation, just see one or a few words and choose a ready answer from the list. Of course, there are typical issues, and automation of customer support really helps to save time on such frequently asked questions. But before sending a ready answer, support managers should really understand what is asked in the ticket. Otherwise, it will turn into a series of unneeded emails, frustration and waste of time.

4. Knowledge base is the answer

You may ask: why use knowledge base if it consists of ready answers customers don’t like. But the truth is that use of such answers doesn’t harm customer satisfaction, overuse does.

A knowledge base may be a valuable source of useful information on your products, their aspects, specifications, etc. If your products need configuration, you can also add this info to your knowledge base along with the answers to frequently asked questions.

5. History of a client’s tickets helps

Another important thing is to have a track record of previous tickets from each client. A current issue may be connected with the previous one and having a ticket history at hand will greatly help a support manager in solving the issue. Moreover, a customer won’t have to answer some typical questions multiple times.

6. Ask your clients

No matter how professional you are, it is still hard to evaluate your own work from all possible aspects. That’s why it’s important to ask your customers what they don’t like and what can be improved in your work. Be ready to get many answers with strange requests, but among all of them you will definitely find valuable ideas that will help you to improve customer service.

Moreover, you can learn from other companies when you happen to be their client. I’ve been on both sides of customer support. And each time I am a customer seeking help, I try to analyse what the customer support is doing wrong and how it can be improved.

To sum it up

If you are still not sure that customer support should become one of your top priorities, here are some statistics:

• According to the survey conducted by Aspect, 76% of clients view customer service as an indicator of their value to a company.
  
• The same survey found out that 56% of consumers moved their business from at least one company in the past year due to poor customer service.
  
• According to this infographic, attracting new clients is five times more expensive than retaining old ones.
  
• This report presented by Parature shows that 97% of global customers surveyed view customer service as an important aspect of their loyalty to a brand.

As you can see, good customer support is a strong competitive advantage. Clients’ expectations are growing each year, and you should do your best to improve your support policy, services and products as well.