Knowledge

7 Customer Support Strategies For Small and Medium Enterprises

Providing excellent customer is an essential part of running a successful small or medium enterprise.  It increases customer retention rates, leads to more sales, improves customer satisfaction levels and helps your business succeed.

This post will identify 7 excellent customer support strategies that will save you time and increase the success of your business. These strategies can be implemented by businesses of any size and will greatly improve your bottom line.

What is customer support?

If you are new to the business world, you may be wondering what customer support entails.  It refers to a range of services that are provided to help customers:

• Purchase a product or service
• Successfully use a product or service
• Obtain assistance with tasks like product maintenance, upgrades, installation, and disposal

Traditionally, customer support is provided via instruction manuals, over the phone, in videos, or during face-to-face encounters.  The availability of the Internet has increased the number of methods available for providing customer support.

Businesses can now provide support via automated online assistants, social media, web chat, online help desks, Internet forums, and email.  Some of these methods make the provision of support much more cost-effective for your business and satisfying for customers.

Providing excellent customer support has some incredible advantages for SMEs, including:

• Increased customer retention rates
• Better word of mouth for your business
• Increased profitability as customers return to purchase more products or services
• Your businesses reputation will be enhanced
• Your workforce will be more effective thanks to satisfied customers creating a positive work environment

7 excellent customer support strategies for SMEs

Here are 7 simple strategies that can improve your businesses delivery of customer support.

#1 — Make obtaining customer simple for your customers

Your business should make obtaining support as simple as possible for your customers.  They shouldn’t have to search for a specific email address or scour your website to lodge a support ticket.  Inform the customer of the available avenues for support as soon as they make a purchase.  Provide them multiple avenues for obtaining support including:

• A well-staffed phone line that they can ring for support
• Easy access to documentation (online and offline)
• Clearly written installation instructions (online and offline)
• Access to a well-staffed support forum
• A list of and social media channels they can use for support
• Access to an online support desk

Providing clear details on the types of support that are available will remove a lot of frustration for your customers.  They will realise that you are eager to help them use the product or service they have purchased.

#2 — Train your support staff well
Customers are much more likely to have a satisfactory experience if they are dealing with well-trained staff members.  Give your support staff all of the information they require to deal with common problems affecting your products or services.  Ensure they have documentation that they can refer to and encourage them to ask for assistance if a customer has a difficult problem.

#3 — Reward your customers after they receive support

You can provide customer support in a way that improves your relationship with each customer.  One technique for doing so is by rewarding customers when they contact your business to obtain support.

By providing them with a free and unexpected gift, any negative feelings associated with the support process are lessened.  It also triggers a psychological concept called reciprocity.  They will feel compelled to repay this free and unexpected gift in some way, to reciprocate it.

Your gift could be a 5% discount or free postage on their next purchase.  They will be delighted by their free gift and their reciprocity impulse compels them to make another purchase soon.

#4 — Provide resources to make self-support possible

Many customers prefer to use self-support tools that allow them to fix their own problems.  Tools like FAQ pages, searchable online manuals, customer service software, and searchable knowledge bases allow the customer to find the information they need by themselves.  Providing comprehensive self-support features will also reduce the pressure on your staff.

#5 — Capture data to understand why customers contact support

You can track metrics associated with customer support to improve your business.  Some customer data that is particularly valuable includes:

• The reasons why each customer is contacting customer support
• Which methods of support attract the most customers
• How long different types of customer support issues take to resolve
• How much does accessing support affect customer retention
• What products and services are responsible for causing most support issues

You can use all of this data to improve your support systems, writing better instruction manuals, promoting different types of support and much more.

#6 — Provide support over social media
Social media has become a very important tool for small and medium enterprises.  It is very useful for marketing products, improving brand awareness, promoting specials and providing support.

Have your staff monitor social media channels for any mention of your product or services.  They should look for tweets, public Facebook posts, Instagram posts and so on.  If you find a post that mentions a problem with your product, engage with that user and provide support.

When the problem has been successfully resolved, not only will you have a very satisfied customer — all of their social media followers will see how much your company cares about its customers.

#7 — Make your support content accessible by mobile devices
Most customers prefer to find a solution on their own before contacting a customer service hotline.  When they encounter a problem with a product or service, their first action is often pulling out their smart phone and looking for help online.

That is why your business should ensure all support content is usable via mobile devices.  That includes support desk applications, FAQs, online chat applications and so on.  Your mobile customers will be very appreciative if they don’t have to call you to solve every issue!

If you are interested in improving the customer support strategies used by your small or medium enterprise, contact The Salesguys today on 033 3303 1468 or info@thesalesguys.co.uk.  We will help you set up customer support processes that save you money, increase customer retention, and help your business succeed!