B2B Customer Support | 6 min read | Published November 04, 2020

A Tale of Two Customer Support Departments, Chapter 2

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Instead of asking, “How do we manage this ever-growing pile of tickets?” ask, “How do we drive success by aligning support to the needs of the customer with proper onboarding, planning, and adoption strategies?”

11.2.20_Tale of Two Cities_“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” So begins the classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. It refers to the premise of the story: A time of despair and suffering on one hand, and joy and hope on the other. And it's how we began our story of two customer support departments.

In Chapter 1 we meet Jack who is suffering with a customer support department that still struggles with silos between support, sales, and product teams, using e-mail to manage support tickets, and no visibility into the history of the customer issues; and Emily, whose customer support department works collaboratively with sales and product teams to resolve issues, provides tools and resources that help educate users making the most of the solution, and focuses on building relationships rather than closing tickets.

We continue the story in Chapter 2.

Jack is hearing word that the company just lost another big account. His customer support team is starting to doubt their ability to support those that need it. “Should we have seen it coming?” “We’re trying to provide good service, what can we do better?” “I know it’s not our fault, but we just don’t have the tools we need to solve complex issues when we’re so bogged down with a high volume of basic tickets.” “I wish we could get more help from the product team.” Sales is blaming customer support for losing the customers they worked so hard to bring in.

Emily and her customer support team use a customer support software

 solution that features a Customer Distress Index™ (CDI) to identify contacts who might be unhappy. They investigate the ticket history to see trends in issues and work with the product team to address issues that are frequent or recurring. And they can help the Customer Success managers be proactive in uncovering concerns and making sure the customer contacts are maximizing the benefits of the solution.

They have time to do these things because their Knowledge Base of self-help articles, Community discussions, and automated chat features help customers with simple issues get resolved quickly. There is collaboration among internal teams and collaboration with the customer. Silos, finger-pointing, and frustration don’t exist in Emily’s organization.

How can Jack turn things around? He needs to find a customer support software solution that enables his organization to:  

  • Shorten time to resolution: Resolve more tickets, reduce issue resolution time, and empowers their B2B customers to easily solve issues on their own time with self-service solutions.
  • Eliminate silos: Support, sales, and product development teams all have full visibility into information at both the customer and contact level so they can be proactive in improving the relationship.
  • Minimize frustration: Pinpoint a customer’s issue and see it in action with visual support tools for swift resolution. Solve a customer’s issue in minutes through native screen sharing or video chat instead of hours or even days trading emails.
  • Enjoy maximum flexibility and customization according to their business goals and needs of their customers.

When he finds that solution with TeamSupport, his team is cleared of mundane and inefficient practices, and everyone in the organization has visibility into the health of their customers. And Jack’s customer department actually helps reduce churn and contribute to each customer’s successNot only is there now synergy between support, product, and sales teams, but the finance team loves Jack’s department when customers are retained and annual recurring revenue increases.

Jack and Emily have lunch together, outside of their respective offices, and collaborate on ideas about how to make the most of their TeamSupport software solution. Instead of asking, “How do we manage this ever-growing pile of tickets?” they are instead asking, How do we drive success by aligning support to the needs of the customer with proper onboarding, planning, and adoption strategies?”

It was the best of times.

THE END

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