Many of us have experience interacting with customer support agents in various contexts, from streaming service subscriptions and car rental bookings, to online clothing purchases.
For businesses worldwide, offering timely support across multiple channels and touchpoints is critical in today’s highly competitive and digital-first world.
A strong customer experience strategy is a defining feature that sets companies apart – yet what do customer service and customer support truly mean? Why is delivering quality customer support so essential, and how can companies begin doing so? Fundamentally, how can businesses keep customers happy? Here, we break down the meanings behind the terms, and several key best practices to consider weaving into your customer support strategy.
We’ll answer the following questions, so jump directly to a specific section or scroll to read the post in its entirety:
- What is customer support?
- How does customer support differ from customer service?
- What are the most important qualities of customer support?
- Why is customer support essential for any business?
- What are some tips for boosting customer support?
What is customer support?
Customer support: the team of individuals who provide assistance when customers have questions about a product or service, or experience issues.
How does customer support differ from customer service?
Although the two are often used interchangeably, customer support is not synonymous with customer service. The latter is an umbrella term for all interactions that encompass the overall customer experience and help shape a person’s relationship with the company.
| Customer Service | Customer Support |
| Focuses on creating positive, hassle-free customer transactions | Focuses on how the customer interacts with a product |
| Attends to customer needs throughout every interaction with the product | Solves one specific need at a time |
| Does not always include customer support | Always requires customer service |
| Proactive to customer needs and reactive to issues | Reactive to specific customer issues |
| Agents use soft skills often | Agents rarely need soft skills |
| Not inherently technical | Often very technical |
Customer service, the broader umbrella term, typically refers to all types of customer-facing activities, those that often are non-technical in nature. An essential part of improving customer success is the sales process for many products.
Customer service is directly related to the customer experience, and is comprised of roles such as a sales associate at a department store, or a barista at a cafe. Successful customer service teams often employ customer-centric soft skills. Great customer support requires attention to detail and an overall positive approach in order to keep existing customers. Customer service is all about adding value by helping customers to make the most of a business’ products or services, and support is just one subset of this.
What are the most important qualities?
Good support is more than just installation and troubleshooting – it is about making the customer feel heard, about collecting data and using that to better the customer experience. It is about investing in personal conversations, demonstrating sound product knowledge and empathy, and devising creative and customized solutions to customer issues. Good customer support involves meeting, as well as exceeding customer expectations – what do customers themselves want? What types of experiences do they expect, and what will keep them coming back for more?
A survey from Zendesk discovered that the key customer service principles revolve around empathy, convenience and speed. Customers favor, above all, speedy resolutions to their problems, 24/7 access to support, and interacting with friendly agents.
For customers today, a seamless omnichannel experience is also critical. This allows them to switch devices and fluidly maneuver between multiple channels, carrying forward context with each interaction. For instance, if one day an individual received support via telephone, they want to log into their web browsers to continue the conversation on a separate occasion. Consistency is key – 71% of consumers desire a consistent experience across all channels, yet only 29% say they actually receive this. Investing in omnichannel experiences plays a big part in customer loyalty. Businesses that adopt omnichannel strategies enjoy 91% higher customer retention rates year-over-year, compared to businesses that don’t.
Why is customer support essential for businesses?
Amid a shifting global landscape (new and emerging technologies, new ways of working), consumer expectations are shifting along with it. In Netomi’s The State of Customer Service in 2022 Report, more than 65% of those surveyed report they have higher expectations for customer service today than they did 3-5 years ago. What’s more, the report found these higher expectations are not being sufficiently met, with 51% believing that customer service has not improved over the past 12 months.
Uncover Customer Expectations in The 2022 State of Customer Service Report
Put simply, support, delivered in a timely manner, drives customer satisfaction, and conclusively impacts customer retention, customer lifetime value, and brand reputation. Our report also revealed that 77% of U.S. consumers believe that good customer service is crucial to earning loyalty as well as business. Such findings emphasize that there is a tremendous opportunity for companies to put such strategies into place, to go above and beyond to elevate the overall customer experience. Good customer support is expected – it is sought-after and highly regarded.
What are some tips for boosting customer support?
Support your support team with AI-powered chatbots
In the demanding and always-on economy of today, many contact centers are feeling the pressure – with 74% of them at risk for burnout. Moreover, turnover rates hover between 30 and 45%, among the highest of any industry. Companies using AI chatbots for customer service can create a more cost-effective and streamlined approach to drastically improve the experience of agents themselves. This helps to make them feel more fulfilled and engaged in their roles.
A February 2022 survey from Salesforce found that 71% of service agents have considered leaving their job in the past six months, while 69% are considering leaving customer service roles entirely. Working with outdated technology systems and a lack of access to career development opportunities are among the challenges faced by agents. According to the survey, 81% of service agents say they do not have new and advanced technology/tools at their current jobs.
AI-powered chatbots have come to the forefront as a means to meet consumer preferences for 24/7, instantaneous support in real-time. Interest and usage of these tools is burgeoning, and not just among SaaS (Software as a Service) companies. Insider Intelligence predicts that, by 2024, consumer retail spend via chatbots worldwide will reach $142 billion – a jump from just $2.8 billion in 2019.
By providing immediate resolutions to the most common and repeatable of queries, chatbots help to drastically cut down on customer service tickets. They can also assist customers with no human intervention (How do I pause my gym membership? How can I select my seat?) Agents, as a result, can dedicate their time and energy to more complex, high-touch and creative tasks. Advanced technologies such as chatbots serve as the all-important key to supporting overworked employees, helping them to complete their jobs more efficiently.
Be proactive
Today, 27% percent of customers expect customer service to be proactive – for companies to anticipate their needs and wants. How can you preemptively intervene, before an issue exacerbates, or even turns into an issue? Informing customers that a software update is available, or they will soon be eligible for a cell phone upgrade takes your customer support strategy one notch higher, and signifies to customers that you are looking out for them.
Take Your Customer Experience to the Next Level
Make it personalized
How can we harness customer data that is at our disposal to better tailor and curate the experience? This can be as simple as greeting customers by name or asking for feedback in Customer Satisfaction Surveys.
A customer, for instance, may have previously ordered several pairs of jeans from an online retailer. After being sold out for some time, these best-selling jeans are now back in stock – and are also now available in several colors. Might the customer want to purchase another pair or two?
According to research from Accenture, 83% of consumers are inclined to share their data with companies, to enable a more personalized experience for them. This is true so long as businesses are transparent about how they plan to use that data and that customers have control over it, however. Moreover, almost 70% of consumers want companies to personalize their communications, and 65% of customers report that personalization influences their brand loyalty.
Meet your customers where they are
Allowing for multi-channel customer service, chatbots enable businesses to deploy their customer strategy across social media, email, chat, voice, and phone – scaling support across every channel of their – and their customer’s – choosing. Support delivered via live chat has grown to become a must-have. This is the preferred channel for consumers between the ages of 18 and 49, nearly 70% of consumers expect live chat support. Some matters may be better suited to one channel over others, depending on the situation and degree of urgency. Customers typically do not have one single channel that they choose to use 100% of the time.
Make it easy for customers to assist themselves
In line with the ‘DIY’ culture of today, customer preference for self-service is growing. A 2022 report from Gartner points to several categorical shifts in customer service – among them, customer’s growing preference for self-service. 59% of customers, the report found, prefer to resolve their issues without reaching out to a customer service rep. However, only 13% of customers feel that they are successfully contained within self-service.
Meanwhile, Zendesk’s CX Trends 2022 report found that 70% of customers say that they expect a company to have a self-service portal or content available to them.
How can we reimagine the customer journey, guiding customers to the best fit path? The key then, is to coordinate the self-service journey all the way from search through to resolution, from directing customers to relevant self-service options on a company’s website, to routing them to a human agent, if and when needed.
Leveraging curated FAQ pages and robust online knowledge bases (or Help Centers) can help users easily find answers, and enhance the customer self-service experience. The ultimate combo, however, is a knowledge base, used in parallel with AI-powered chatbot software. This offers content that is most relevant to each individual customer, and delivers it at the exact moment-of-need. To determine the appropriate next steps, chatbots should first diagnose and triage the customer issue. Can the customer find the necessary information within an article in the company’s knowledge base, or does the situation warrant an interaction with an agent? With AI chatbot platforms sitting at the center and human agents stepping in only when needed, this also relieves a bit of the pressure on the agents themselves, significantly reducing their workloads.
Track KPIs, and determine where they can evolve
It is important to employ metrics and KPIs in order to gauge performance of support efforts, for businesses to track the performance of their support agents and identify areas for improvement. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT), volume by channel and total tickets are among the KPIs that can be measured. How does ticket volume fluctuate based on the time of day? On which channels are customers reaching out for support?
It is also advantageous to regularly review KPIs to determine where they can evolve. The relevance and efficacy of KPIs that were initially selected will change over time, as a business grows and customer expectations and preferences shift.
Final thoughts
Customer support, as part of a great customer service approach, can add tremendous value to a business’ product or service, improve multiple business bottom lines, increase customer retention, and build trust and loyalty. It can offer an experience that is in line with today’s digitally-savvy customers, and keep them coming back for more.
Get in touch with us at Netomi to chat about leveraging conversational AI to supercharge your customer support strategy, and boost overall customer experience!
To learn more about improving the customer experience, visit:
- How a SaaS Chatbot Can Reduce Churn Rates
- How Ticket Triage AI Can Revolutionize Customer Service
- The Top 11 Zendesk Alternatives