Technical support is one of the oldest forms of customer service and is as old as the industry. It is predominantly available in the IT sector itself. It is a team of troubleshooters who look into the issues customers face with regards to products or services they have opted for and provide prompt and appropriate solutions. In perspective, tech support is a form of communication initiated from the customers’ side made to an agent or representative of a product-centric company. The primary objective of tech support is to solve customer queries over any product that may arise as a result of using it.
There are multiple mediums through which technical support is carried out. Let’s take a look at a few of them.
- Knowledge base
- Emails
- Live chats
- Phone
Having noted that, let’s just move ahead and take a look at a few reasons why tech support is an important part of customer experience.
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Offer First-call Resolution
First-call resolution is a lot more important an aspect than what a lot of growing businesses avoid. However, focusing on first-call resolution can ensure that your customer retention is at its peak. With proper technical support, your customers would be satisfied with both your product as well as the after-sale support.
First-call resolution is a great way to show your customers that you value them and make them a part of the massive profile. It is no hidden secret that customers who aren’t very satisfied with the after-sale support are most likely to start buying from you and consider a new vendor for the same service.
However, outsourcing to business process operation companies can help you increase your first call resolution rate to a lucrative level.
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It Increases Sales
The sales figures of any specific product-centric company can be directly related to the level of customer satisfaction it can provide via its tech support team. Now, the moment you start focusing on the tech support depart of your operation, your customers will feel the effort you put in.
Further, the higher the customer satisfaction level, the more inclined they feel towards your product. This turns the one-time customers into loyal ones who prefer your product over any other brand. And since the customers place you as their preference, your sales will increase automatically.
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Creates a Brand Reputation
With proper technical support, you can boost your brand reputation to the very next level. The moment your customers see that you have put a lot of effort towards technical support, you customers will get an impression that it is a big business they have chosen.
Also, putting the customers ahead and focusing on resolving their issues will boost customer satisfaction. On the other hand, this will increase their biasness towards you during posting reviews, spreading word of mouth, recommending your brand to others, etc.
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Think before Outsourcing Tech Support
Outsourcing your technical support operations can help you boost your user experience. However, there are ways how you can ensure that the user experience is top-notch, like being choosy about the tech support or 24/7 answering services company you choose. The team needs to have proper product knowledge to handle customer complaints and queries without any glitches.
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Treat Tech Support as Important as Sales
One of the most vital pieces of advice for businesses would be to treat sales and tech support equally. So often, most IT companies make the mistake of emphasizing too much on the sales process while leaving aside the tech support team with fewer resources and focus.
However, if you fail to focus on the tech support operations, you will lose out on the existing customers, brand reputation, and goodwill. These losses can take your business a long way in hampering your overall business value. In addition, once your brand reputation starts to dip, your fresh sales will also be affected since new customers will not prefer buying products from you.
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Monitor Conversations Outside Your Ecosystem
When it comes to troubleshooting, customers look to resolve the issue themselves by looking up on third-party knowledge bases, social media, and other forums. So, if you want to control your business the way you want to save your brand reputation from any wrongful acts or information.
For this, you have to monitor all the conversations surrounding your business on all platforms outside your own ecosystems. In order to boost your brand reputation, you should have a presence on such popular forums and platforms and engage with customers on those platforms as well. The moment your customers see your business being active on multiple platforms, they will start liking your service, not because of the product itself, but due to the importance you pay them.
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Implement the 5-Level Tech Support
Last but not least, you need to offer a complete solution. In order to do this, there are five levels of tech support that you should implement in your operations. However, if you don’t know much about the five levels of technical support, keep reading.
Five Levels of Tech Support
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Pre-support
Initially, when the internet was rare, people used to have the user manual. Post the internet era, we started with Google. So, every customer you or your competitor might have had in the past would be keen on sharing their experiences with both the product as well as your customer service.
This means many things are going on outside your ecosystem, which may be good or bad. So, the best way to know this is to monitor the conversations on such review sites forums.
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Self-service
Self-support is important and the first step for most users to troubleshoot the issues themselves. So, it is very important to have a knowledge base within the ecosystem and a forum for all your users to interact. You should also consider monitoring and bettering any conversation you might have outside your ecosystem.
The idea behind this is not to penalize the third-party sources but to just rectify their information if they have it wrong.
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Human Touch
There are two situations when the customer will call in a 24/7 answering service for tech support. One is when they couldn’t troubleshoot the problem themselves, and the second is when they want the company to do everything on their behalf. So, offering a human touch when they call can have a great psychological impact on them.
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Second Support Line
The second line of support is meant for more complex issues that require high knowledge of skills. So, if the customer could not get the problem solved in the first instance, it is then time to have a team of highly skilled agents who can solve the issue without turning the customers off.
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Third Support Line
The third support line is important for queries that the first and second instance couldn’t solve. Such issues are troubleshot by the top-level executives, which is typically the research and development team.
