7 tips for better tech support

7 tips for better tech support

So far we have established that technical support is and why it is important to get it right. But if you are running a system of support, how can you do better?

We have established 7 tips for better technical support that will help you keep your users happy so they stay loyal customers for years to come.

Let's start.

1. Think before you outsource

Technical support gives you a tremendous opportunity to influence the overall experience of your product user. But you must ensure that your support team knows the product inside. This is why you should think carefully before outsourcing the processing of your support.

Before you consider outsourcing technical assistance, ask yourself the following questions:

• Can you guarantee the experience will be consistent every time?

• How can you measure the level of product knowledge in the people, who deal with customers on your behalf?

• Do your customers want to hear familiar accents and talk to people in their own country?

If you can get it right, outsourcing can be a great way to cut costs.

Get it wrong and it can affect negatively all the work you've done product development, making the sale, and to meet the needs of your customers until that time.

2. Treat technical support with the same prominence as sales

No company should operate entirely in isolation.

Instead, you should consider the impact different parts of your business have for each other.

And technical support is no different.

Whenever your marketing and sales teams acquire a new customer, they rely on excellent service to remember. And the first point of contact will be a new customer once they have installed (or connected to) your product is technical support.

But the support does not only concern the processing of applications for incoming clients.

You can also use the technical support and upsell cross-sell products and features for your customers.

For example, if a customer has a specific problem they can not solve their current pricing, technical support can offer an upgrade to an A more expensive plan. That way you solve their problem with a solution that allows them to continue their work, while at the same time, you increase their commitment as a customer.

3. Implement the five levels of support

Not every business has a well structured technical support system.

Everyone has to start somewhere, and it's not uncommon to find small companies that have all their support of issues from the founder or CEO.

However, as your business grows, you need to ensure that customer needs are met quickly and effectively. It is clearly not an affordable or reasonable idea to have your technical manager to answer all support tickets in your queue, so consider applying the 5 levels of support to filter the "ripe fruit" and easy to process requests that can be processed by a younger member of the team.

By implementing the 5 levels of support, it will keep your customers happy (as they get a fast response), but more importantly, it will increase your profitability as most queries can be handled by a person who earns a lot less than a CEO or CTO would.

4. Control of the conversation outside of your own ecosystem

If the user encounters a problem, their first point of contact could be on a forum or social media.

Therefore, you will need to monitor user conversations outside your own platform.

If you can take the time to monitor and contribute to conversations occurring online about your product, it can go a long way. this will solve not only the customer's immediate problem, but it will reassure others that you care, and convince them to become customers too.

Companies like Stripe leading the way in this form of technical support for early intervention.

5. Make it easy to contact support

Have you hidden your support link in the footer of your website?

Nobody wants to spend time browsing your website for a link to technical support.

In fact, 79% of site visitors admit to leaving a website if no contact information is visible.

To avoid this, be where your customers are and make it easy for them to contact you.

quickly resolve support issues for users and make it very accessible technical support for your customers is a surefire way to keep them happy and keep them long term.

6. Listen and learn from your users

Any information you share with your customers is as precious as gold.

Your customers can give you valuable insight into what works in your product and what is not. Listening to the different requests of support coming, you can discover how you can improve your product, the quality of support you provide, and in many cases, form a complete feedback loop between user and product. This kind of voice of customer data (VOC) can be powerful.

If your technical support team is an increase in related problems connecting, you can prevent further emails by updating your login screen with a note on the matter, or including a link to your FAQ or base knowledge to help them solve the same problem - all while your team product works on solving the problem.

7. Make sure to use the right tools for the job

An email is a great tool.

But, using Outlook or a platform generic email is not the best tool to use to handle technical support.

Instead, you should consider getting the right tools for the job.

The best tools will be able to manage incoming requests, support tickets, live chat, the basics of climbing and knowledge - while keeping the rest of your team up to speed with technology problems.

Yet managing relationships with your customers is a team effort. That's why the most in class companies are using tools that integrate with their broader sales and CRM operations to ensure that all team members are on the same page - every time.