A guide for startups: giving your users the customer support they deserve

As soon as customers get good support somewhere (regardless of the industry), anything less is sub-par.

Customer support has definitely evolved from painful automatic IVR responses, to much more efficient tools like live chat, self-serve knowledge bases, and social media. The most successful companies we've worked with (unsurprisingly) are the ones that utilize every channel possible.

This all comes with added costs, but in the end customer happiness is always the priority in any business. If you want to be successful in the customer support area, you need to cater to every audience.

Whether it's an 80-year-old woman that needs to be carefully coached over the phone to install your software, or a 19-year-old university student that tweets @ your company about a tech issue... customers expect you to be there on all platforms, at all times.

Fast response times, going the extra mile, avoiding robo-speak, and actually helping your customers. Support isn’t about sending templates until the customer gets tired and gives up. It’s about really wanting to solve problems for those people by showing genuine care. And never hide yourself behind ticket submission forms - make yourself available by opening as many channels as possible: email, skype, toll-free number, live chat, webinars, social networks, etc.

Customers are providing feedback over an ever-increasing number of channels. Support tools have simplified customer support agents’ workflows by letting them triage this outreach from a single platform.

An already frustrated customer should not need to jump through hoops to provide feedback, and we have seen an increase in the number of tools that make it easier for customers to communicate with support teams - oftentimes directly from the company’s website.

There's nothing a customer appreciates more than immediate help, especially when they expected help two days later. Situations like these lead to great reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations. Invaluable.

Technology has reduced the expected and accepted time-delay between a customer requesting and receiving support. Support tools now not only make it possible to quickly respond to customers from the office, but also on the go - regardless of what device you use.

For that 1 out of 10 people who do put in the effort to reach out and contact you, you need to respond to them as fast as you can, even if it's to tell them what you're currently thinking, so they know there's something happening. It's all about throughput.

People can smell a white lie from a mile away, and it's not the image you want to present.

Make meaningful apologies. Let your customer know that their problem is your problem, and show them that you are doing everything you can to address the issue.

Don’t forget that there is a human on the other side of the computer! Be a good listener, treat your customers like individuals, and make them feel important.

Jim Shuky, an auto shop owner, sends personalized, hand-written letters to every one of his customers. As a result, a Reddit post from one impressed customer ended up getting thousands of hits. Viral stories about extraordinary customer support pop up all the time, it's your job to create those extraordinary experiences.

In the world of SaaS startups, customer support has become an integral part of the product - a “feature” if you will. Customers expect blazing fast response times and a personal touch to boot - just like immediately being greeted by a friendly clerk when they walk into a store. Makes sense - that’s why they chose you and not a faceless corporation.

The tools that make it happen are still adapting - but it’s definitely going towards proactive communication which is fully personalized. Basically, you’ll want to collect as much info as possible about your customers and tailor your message accordingly. For example, if a person failed to log in to your app three times, it’ll auto-start a live chat message right on the spot “Hey Bob, having trouble logging in?” - and a support agent will take it from there.

Support is more than being on the receiving end of people reaching out, it also reaches to how you've laid out your site to make it as easy as possible to instantly get the help they need for the task at hand. In short, you need to be able to provide timely, contextual help to your users, before they get to the point of them knowing they have an issue. It shouldn't get that far. In the perfect world, the only emails and phone calls you should be receiving, would be for service (requesting a refund etc) rather than guidance.

Excellent customer support should be a priority for your startup. You don’t need to invest in an expensive customer support tool - there are plenty of lower-cost alternatives out there, and the value will greatly outweigh the cost. The relationships that you build with your customers can make or break your startup. If your customers have an unsatisfactory interaction with your team, not only is there a high likelihood that you’ve lost them forever, but there’s a good chance that they will share their experience online.

First of all invest in a knowledge base and fill it with answers to commonly asked questions. This will cut down customer support requests drastically. You rarely see customers that would rather speak on the phone than look up a solution online. Luckily, creating one is pretty cheap if you use help desk software like Zendesk, Freshdesk, etc.

The second solution is to straight up ask your customers which channels they prefer and start out by using those. More than often it's phone and email, which are relatively cheap to implement.

Finally, if your customer base grows and you need 24/7 support or multiple channels, there's always the option to hire third-party help to take care of this. Virtual assistants, freelancers, and outsourcing firms are available everywhere at reasonable costs.

In-house support is almost always better, but in the case your company grows too rapidly, outsourcing is a great option for scaling.

Hire as many support people you can afford and get good 24/7 coverage. The benefit might not appear immediately, but delighted customers definitely get you your ROI. Also, don’t forget to arm your support team with relevant help articles - and Hotjar is really helpful here. We improved our help page readability by seeing where people click, tweaking the layout, and cutting out anything irrelevant. You’d be surprised how much work you can offload to a well-written help page.

Giving excellent support shouldn't be your differentiator from your competition, and shouldn't be a selling point. You should just be doing that, because know that if you're not, your competition damn well is. What separates you from your competition is making sure that your users easily understand your site, and if they have the slightest confusion, that the exact guidance they need is available immediately. It's all about providing timely, contextual guidance, so their question of support never gets raised.

Once this is setup, it's something that doesn't need additional resources as you inevitably grow, since your users are able to help themselves, and the only "support" you need to provide is high-level service based support. This means a huge saving in both time and money, which can be crucial for startups of any size, not just the cash strapped and time poor.

Customer support has evolved along with how the web itself has changed. Not too long ago, the web was a simpler place, and as a result, the support required was also pretty simple.

As things have evolved on the web, and things are getting so much more complex, every site has a different user experience, right from the onboarding experience. Add to this the huge growth of SaaS over the past few years, and it's easier than ever to move from one supplier to another, so providing top-notch support has been more crucial than ever, otherwise your customers will go where the grass is greener.