You’re a recent start-up, things are going quite well and you can see that your business is growing.
You’re already scaling production, recruiting more staff, spending more on marketing… is it time to start thinking about scaling your customer support offering too?
Customer service shouldn’t be forgotten
As your business grows, the number of customers you have will also increase. That means more interactions, too.
If you can’t yet afford a dedicated customer service team, or your existing team is small, message overload can quickly occur.
Nowadays, if you want to deliver good customer service, you have to give your clients a range of options to contact you. Just having a phone number and an email address is no longer enough.
But this means managing multiple channels (Whatsapp, Live Chat and more) - and this can quickly become messy.
However, allowing queries to go unanswered is a major mistake as responding quickly (and to clients’ satisfaction) helps to attract and then retain customers. Customers who have their doubts resolved quickly won’t search for answers elsewhere.
Likewise, if complaints are not dealt with satisfactorily, a one-time buyer won’t become a repeat customer.
While it’s easy to fall into the trap of prioritising meeting orders and dealing with suppliers, if your customers aren’t satisfied, your business can only grow so far.
Things to consider when scaling your customer service offering
Deciding that your customer service needs to grow is one thing, but there are several considerations that need to be made before scaling.
Firstly, what is your budget? Hiring new agents isn’t cheap...
Do you need a new software solution to handle the larger capacity requirements? Would it require training for your team?
Are you expanding to new markets? Or does your product usage spread outside your business hours? If you want to deliver high-quality customer care, this may require support staff to work additional hours.
It’s also important to time the change well - ideally before your existing system buckles under the strain and reputational damage is suffered as a consequence.
How to scale customer support without massive expense
The best way to improve your business’ customer support is to build a larger customer service team. More agents, the larger the capacity for responses - right?
While this may sound like the most sensical option, this is also quite costly, especially if you have to outsource or pay for training.
Here are 3 other ways you can scale your customer support without enormous investment - and without compromising on service.
1) Improve your website’s knowledge base
Investing in content is never a bad idea. Especially if that content solves issues quickly and diverts traffic away from your customer service channels.
Place yourself in the shoes of the customer and ask yourself what information they might require. What questions are they likely to have?
Use this brainstorming to improve your product descriptions or to create an FAQ section on your website.
You can also refer to this information when customers reach out to you, therefore speeding up your response times.
2) Invest in better tools
One of the biggest obstacles in tackling message overload is the number of channels that require management.
Not only do you have to have separate accounts for email, phone, Whatsapp, Live Chat and more, you also have to juggle corresponding log-ins for all users that need access.
With Superagent, however, you can bring hundreds of channels together in one place. This can help to slimline your entire operation and ensure that you, or your support agents, are spending time engaging in the human interactions which are such a valuable part of the customer service experience.
3) Improve customer service processes
Not only does Superagent make it quicker to find your clients’ messages, its intuitive tools make it easier to answer them too.
Thanks to Conversation Blocks, you can respond quickly to queries in a semi-automatic fashion. You can prepare a wide selection of template messages that respond specifically to frequently asked questions or scenarios.
They can be loaded up and sent quickly thanks to easy-to-use keyboard shortcuts, ensuring that queries are dealt with swiftly.
Superagent, the intelligent helpdesk for efficient customer support
Both scale and streamline your customer support offering with Superagent.
Download the program for desktop or mobile here and make sure that you never get overwhelmed by customer enquiries again.
Head off any increase in queries, get through tickets quicker and increase sales by ensuring clients go away satisfied.