With digital transformation in every sector, customers have become aware and socially active. Their expectations from any company have risen, and it’s the company’s responsibility to meet those expectations. Earlier, customer service did not matter as much as it does today, and the end users suffered the most. They had to fight the local seller over a faulty product. They had to wait hours to file a complaint, often left unanswered. Moreover, there was no reliable source of information about the product; everything was scripted. According to HubSpot Research, 90% of customers consider an “immediate” response essential in customer service. 60% of customers specify “immediate” as less than 10 minutes.
90% of customers consider an “immediate” response essential in customer service. 60% of customers specify “immediate” as less than 10 minutes.
HubSpot
All these motivated customers want to raise their voices and share their experiences. Today, social media and the internet provide a platform for customers to express their grievances. They review products and share the product’s faults for everyone to see. As a result, buyers turn to these reviews before making a purchase.
Building great customer service is not optional anymore; companies must address customer queries and issues to survive in the market. It improves the customer’s experience and the overall company’s goodwill.
However, not all businesses have the internal resources to provide great customer support and service, and that’s where Customer Support as a Service aka CSaaS comes to play. Today, millions of businesses rely on CSaaS to provide 24/7 service and support to their customers. Let’s learn more about Customer Support as a Service and how your business can benefit from CSaaS.
What is CSaaS?
Companies are busy. With more efforts into building prominent strategies, marketing planning, and evaluating resources, they are either unable to employ an additional workforce for handling customer queries or find it hard to take care of customer support on their own when they already have so many other things going on. Customer Support as a Service is outsourced customer service and support management that allows direct communication between your customer and contact agents.
Here, you outsource external agents who will take calls, answer questions and resolve your customers’ issues. They perform all the tasks an in-house technical team manages, such as problems in installing software, technical queries, etc.
The term customer support as a service was coined recently; however, the concept has been around for a while. It revolves around creating unique and personalized customer support solutions to stay ahead of the competition by offering top-notch customer experience and building strong customer relationships.
Is Customer Support As A Service Right For Your Business?
For example, you’re an online bakery service provider who sells both bakery equipment and the final products. There you already have partnered with a sales outsourcing company to engage your customers, hit their buying intent, and make them purchase. Now, if you add an extra layer of customer support from pre-sales to post-purchase engagement, you’ll definitely start counting on the below-mentioned figures.
According to Gartner, 86% of customers repurchase, 82% retain, and 97% spread positive word of mouth if your company is willing to go the extra mile to improve customer service and provide to your customers.
These numbers are enough to tell you that customer service is necessary for your business. Customer support as a service is a step up on those benefits. To elaborate, let me list out the benefits of CSaas:
Customer Satisfaction
Word of mouth is not new; companies have been gaining from it for ages. Satisfied customers share positive feedback about your company with their peers exposing your brand to more customers. With CSaas, you can promote your customer’s trust and establish strong customer support without an extra workforce. Your new customers will contact you through positive reviews and word of mouth.
Customer engagement at its best.
Customer engagement is encouraging customer interactions and maintaining strong customer relations with the customer. It’s a win-win for both customers and your company. You get high sales, positive reviews, and word-of-mouth marketing while the customer gets a delightful customer experience. Therefore, CSaas is a practical approach to adopt when it comes to positive customer engagement.
Skyrocketing Conversion Rates
High conversion rates are complementary to quality customer experience. Attractive new customers are much more tedious and expensive than retaining satisfied customers. By focusing on customer support, you can add value to your company and present it in front of your potential customers, giving your conversion rates the thrust it needs.
Know Your Customers
With optimal CSaas in place, you can easily see and observe what your customers prefer, where they are, and so on. In simple terms, you get customer-centric insights that you can implement in your business model to improve customer satisfaction and increase sales. You can identify customer journey gaps and manage every touchpoint with online feedback and surveys.
Builds Company’s Name In The Market
With exemplary customer support comes a good reputation. Outsourcing your customer support operations can help you manage top-class customer support with quick query resolution, fast replies, positive feedback, etc. As stated above, customers purchase after scrolling through the reviews about your brand. Your reputation determines the reviews leading to high conversion and retaining rates.
To know more, contact AM2PM.
Customer Support Vs. Customer Service
Many assume customer support is the same as customer service, but that’s not the case. Customer service guides the customer to purchase a product and even upsell something. For instance, You go to a shoe store to buy shoes. The customer service agent of that company will guide you to the shoe section of your choice, show you different designs, and finally pack your order. They’ll also try to sell you socks that would look nice with the shoes. The role of customer service is over the moment you walk out of the shop.
In contrast, customer support is a broader term that includes customer service roles but also includes:
- Post sale activities like product feedback.
- Analyzing the utility of the product.
- Creating necessary documentation.
Scope:
Customer service is generally an entry-level position with little or no scope for growth in management roles. At the same time, customer support has high growth possibilities in management, product development, and more.
Objective:
Customer service is limited to fulfilling helpful customer transactions, i.e., purchases efficiently. In comparison, customer support aims to optimize customer experience and product utilities and build a strong connection between the customer and the product.
Metrics Measured:
Customer service only looks at monetary and transactional metrics such as average handle time, CSAT, etc. In contrast, customer support looks at financial and business metrics such as customer effort score, customer feedback rate, etc.
Role:
Customer service answers customer questions; on the other hand, customer support involves technical support, troubleshooting, and finding solutions to questions.
What does CSaaS have to offer?
Customer support as a service comes with multiple functions that can help improve your overall customer experience. It covers everything from the customer’s first interaction to the repurchase decision. Let’s look at what CSaas has to offer.
Online Surveys
Online surveys can help you get a glance at where you are and what’s your actual position in the market. Customer support as a service can conduct market surveys to gain valuable insights about the market that you can implement in your business.
Syncing Contacts to Cloud
With the correct contact syncing system, you can sync all the contacts in your database to the cloud and use them for different purposes like email marketing, CRM, invoicing, etc.
Help Desk
One of the primary functions of customer support as a service is being a help desk for all the customers. They’ll solve customers’ queries, provide technical support, emails, a ticketing system for complaints, and more.
Get Started With CSaas Like A Pro
Customer support as a service can be the best decision for your business; with significant operations, you can outsource all the customer-related functions to a third party who will solve customer queries and optimize the overall customer experience.
You can try AM2PM for CSaas services; you can discuss your company’s goals with business experts and make a plan together to achieve that goal. It works on a pay-as-you-go completing the work smoothly and efficiently.
