For any SaaS company, customer support and services are one of the most important considerations when doing business. Efficient customer service is central to eliminating or reducing customer churn. With the multitude of choices available in today’s global markets, it’s often easier for a customer to stop doing business with a particular company and move to a competitor than to have to deal with bad customer service, even if your company offers a great product or service.
Customers often list bad customer service as a primary reason for not continuing a subscription or business dealings with a particular company. While good news may travel fast, bad news tends to travel faster and such customer will most likely become a negative ambassador for your company. It can be more expensive and difficult to acquire new customers as opposed to keeping a customer you already have. Offering fantastic customer service will give your company an edge over competitors and the majority of customers say they would be willing to pay more for positive customer experience. For all the above reasons, it is imperative to provide impeccable Customer service for SaaS companies.
Guidelines to apply when defining your SaaS customer support
- SaaS customer support should begin with activation. Don’t wait for a problem to arise. As soon as a prospective customer creates an account, take steps to assist them in understanding and using your product.
- Offer accessible answers to FAQ and common issues perhaps with a sidebar tool. Your customer support icon should be easy to find.
- Offer in-app support so your client isn’t required to leave the app / website to get answers.
- Consider creating social media accounts for customer support services. Then track customer support requests regardless of whether they arrive via Twitter, Facebook or other.
- Consider using automated emails to let know inactive customers that you are interested in them.
- Have the right customer service people in place, consider aspects such as: experience, skills, character and manner.
- Choose a helpdesk software that is most suitable for your SaaS support needs and configure it properly.
Choosing helpdesk software for your SaaS support
New cloud-based solutions for SaaS customer support permit you to manage everything from a web browser. Helpdesk next-generation solutions manage all your communications, including voice, email, live chat, and social media. You’ll have your entire call center right at your fingertips, within your browser. This instant call center for SaaS will help you offer prompt and multichannel support to your customers. Managing your SaaS support this way, can help your business boost productivity with call monitoring, call recording and personalized analytics for quality control. Prospective clients can quickly become paying customers with quality customer support. Remember, customers want an uncomplicated support experience, if you are offering multi-channel support such as phone, email, app and live chat simultaneously, you will need a good backend that can properly identify and organize requests for assistance. If your customer emailed yesterday and does a live chat today with another customer support operator, your customer will want that operator to be updated as to his or her problem or request. They will not want to repeat themselves.
Most departments in your SaaS business should be in contact with your customer support staff and this should be configured within the helpdesk software in the form of Teams and Tiers. Using a platform that allows for departmental input, can go a long way in resolving customer queries swiftly without having tickets “falling between the chairs” and while ensuring a smooth and effective workflow.
Creating service standards for your company
Few more things to consider when structuring your customer service department and strategies:
- Rapidity of response also commonly named as SLA.
- Greeting clients
- Procedures for following-up
- Languages to support
- Hours of support
Final Words
As one can notice from the above, providing quality SaaS customer support is a matter requiring knowledge and experience. It involves aspects such as:
- Information systems evaluation and configuration.
- Recruitment of qualified and suitable team.
- Training and monitoring the team.
- Creation of smooth procedures and workflows.
Hiring a professional call center for SaaS to get the job done for you, will enable your business to acquire such capabilities and know-how in a click of a button and avoid paying for painful mistakes during the learning curve.
