Technical support of customers is still seen by many organizations as a necessary evil, one of the many costs of doing business. And while providing support does add a line to your balance sheet, it also creates a multitude of opportunities to cultivate relationships that maintain your customer base and even grow it. The crux of the matter is this: Technical support should no longer be perceived as a pricy “fix-it shop around back”; technical support has grown into a revenuegenerating, company-strengthening powerhouse right in the heart of the organization.
The world today is full of options. Customers are fluent in the language of flexibility. They’ve grown accustomed to mobility and instant access. As such, they are used to choosing when, where and how they interact with organizations. That’s why it’s important that you provide your customers with the ability to request the method and type of remote support that they prefer. This step is critical in setting the tone before engagement even begins.
The most common escalation to remote support takes place when a support representative is already on the phone with the customer. This method is a convenient next step for customers who first request support via phone. The caveat, of course, is that this method only reaches customers who prefer to call you initially. Web access is an essential connection method for developing an effective remote-support strategy. If your customers aren’t able to request a remote-support session with a representative via a support Web page or a Web portal, some will get discouraged and abandon the quest for support altogether. Not surprisingly, discouraged customers generally do not make loyal customers.
If every support request was a slam dunk for Tier 1 support representatives, life would be much simpler. But the reality is this: The support rep’s day is full of unique, often complex problems. And it’s not unusual for complicated queries to require multiple contacts to be resolved satisfactorily. This places a significant burden on the budget and can do great harm to customer satisfaction levels. Your support reps have varying levels of technical proficiency that inevitably affect the handling of a support query.
Eliminating repeat requests by increasing first-contact resolution will significantly improve the customer experience while reducing your support center’s costs — and this, of course, directly impacts your organization’s bottom line.
Gathering data about the customer experience doesn’t stop when the session ends. If you aren’t capturing post-session feedback from your reps and customers, you’re missing out on truly valuable information and perhaps even the big picture. The feedback you glean directly from customers and reps after a session provides a roadmap for optimizing your support strategy and improving operations.
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