Offering amazing customer support is not an option or a nice to have.
It’s a requirement.
Consumers are more demanding than ever, especially when it comes to the speed and quality of the support companies provide.
And they have every right to be.
In the USA alone, 40% of customers stopped doing business with a company over poor customer service. It’s the same across the globe.
Businesses worldwide are searching for ways to develop a better strategy to manage their future customer relationships.
One way to meet the needs of your customers is by adopting customer support software – currently the fastest growing segment in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM software) market, which is the largest of all software markets.
Customer service software, also known as help desk software, dominated the market and accounted for a revenue share of over 20% in 2021.
And this trend will continue to grow.
But what is customer support software and how can it benefit your business?
Let’s take a closer look.
Table of Contents
- What is customer support software?
- Benefits of customer support software
- 1. Easier communication with colleagues and customers
- 2. Increase sales and conversions
- 3. Provide support 24/7
- 4. Automatically route inquiries to the right specialist
- 5. Easily track and view support tickets
- 6. Support your customers in any channel
- 7. Lower operational costs
- 8. Improve customer support performance
- 9. Stand out against the competition
- Conclusion
What is customer support software?
If you’re running a business, whether it’s e-commerce or brick and mortar, a startup or an enterprise, effectively supporting and communicating with your customers is critical to your brand’s reputation, success, and growth, especially in today’s digital age.
The communication needs to be immediate and accurate so customers can get their issues addressed as soon as possible. At the same time, your employees shouldn’t get burdened trying to keep up with large volumes of customer queries as your business begins to scale.
This is why your business needs the right kind of customer support software.
Customer support software is a type of application meant to assist an organization’s customer service team in resolving customers’ issues efficiently and effectively.
Think of it as a second brain for your customer support team. Support software helps you streamline your team’s workflows and organize incoming customer requests by assigning them to designated customer service agents.
It also lets you track the status of customer requests and customize different kinds of reports to monitor your team members’ performance and support quality.
Benefits of customer support software
If you’re considering an investment in customer service in 2022, here are 9 customer support software key benefits to help you and your business level up the quality of service you provide to your customers.
1. Easier communication with colleagues and customers
Customer support software is an ideal solution for communicating canned responses and frequently answering customer inquiries to both colleagues and customers.
First, this reduces response times to customer queries which – according to research – is the most important attribute of the customer experience, since the answers to those queries are stored within the software.
Secondly, it aids newer customer support agents to learn about product and sales issues sooner (which is the third most important attribute of the customer experience).
Ultimately, customer support software improves external and internal communication.
It’s one the key service benefits Travelist has seen since switching to Hiver.
Their customer support reps no longer have to write emails for internal conversations or to seek help from managers. Using Hiver’s Notes feature, their teams have discussions right next to the email thread – so no time is wasted in building context.
Better internal communication leads to faster resolution times for customers.
2. Increase sales and conversions
Before buyers decide to buy a product or service, they often research the company they are buying from. 89% of customers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer support experience.
Customer support teams can answer questions about pricing, other products, and services, or support capability should something go wrong.
But how can customer support software help with this?
When customer support software is integrated with the website, social media channels, chatbots, and other customer support channels, customers can easily send businesses a message.
Making it easy to be contacted means a company can be trusted to speak with customers, thus pushing potential leads further down the buying process to the right moment for the customer to make a purchase.
3. Provide support 24/7
What’s the best way to build customer loyalty?
Provide exceptional service, 24/7.
When a customer complains or sends you an email, their biggest concern is whether or not they’ll get a reply.
Companies that are prompt with their responses and are available for customers round-the-clock are the ones with the most loyal customers.
Customer support software allows you to be there for your customers even beyond working hours with the help of automation.
Businesses can use customer support software to send automatic replies to submitted requests. This reassures customers that their request has been received and is being dealt with, all day, every day – without having to hire additional customer support reps to work around the clock.
This way, customers immediately know you’re working hard to help them. It shows them that you care.
Another benefit of using automated support messages is this:
You can provide additional information such as links to frequently asked questions (FAQs) or directing them to a customer self-service portal or business help center.
4. Automatically route inquiries to the right specialist
When a customer service rep receives a request they do not know how to deal with, their first step is to find out who to direct the request to.
Either they give the customer a new number to a more appropriate department or ask them to hold on while transferring their call. 60% of customers feel that long holds and wait times are the most frustrating aspects of customer support.
Similarly, 33% customers find it frustrating to repeat themselves to multiple customer support reps. Worse still, they have to do this constantly until they find the right team or rep to deal with their request.
Customer support software allows businesses to filter requests by routing them to the right specialists, thereby avoiding or mitigating customer frustration.
The end result?
Customer requests arrive in the inboxes of the right people, problems are resolved immediately, and you achieve higher levels of customer satisfaction.
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Here’s a great example of how powerful this can be:
Kiwi.com used to manually assign emails to designated team members. It’s a slow process – both for the support team and the customer. They knew there was a better way, so they signed up for Hiver. Since using Hiver’s email assignment automations, they’ve been saving over 167 hours every month!
5. Easily track and view support tickets
One thing to note:
There are different types of customer support software.
It’s important to choose a ticketing system that provides an easy-to-use search functionality to track and view past support tickets and emails – allowing you to quickly access real-time customer information.
A customer support solution should also help you:
- store customer data and their past interactions with your support team
- categorize or tag tickets based on priority or type
The ability to easily track support tickets significantly reduces the time your customer support team spends searching for previous customer interactions.
Furthermore, using support software allows your customer service to store every interaction in one place – thus giving you easy access to every customer request, and making it easier to answer their questions immediately.
In addition, by tagging and categorizing support emails and tickets, you can assign them to the right team specialist and resolve customer issues quickly, as support teams can prioritize more pressing concerns.
6. Support your customers in any channel
In the digital age, it is vital to offer support to your customers across all digital channels. Your customers should be able to get in touch with you from whichever channel is convenient for them.
When your company is easily accessible to customers, it improves their trust and loyalty, apart from enhancing their experience.
Sadly, only 54% of buyers agree that customer support interactions are seamless.
With customer support software, all incoming queries from different channels – whether email, phone, chat, or social media – are automatically registered with a ticket and effectively followed up by the customer support team, thereby ensuring fast resolution.
Plus, your customer service representatives can view each point of contact, no matter which channel a query came from.
7. Lower operational costs
Investing in customer support software can help a business reduce its overheads.
Typically, customer service reps answer phone calls and reply to emails, usually only one at a time. However, this approach to customer support requires an extensive customer service department, resulting in higher support costs.
Research by Forrester Research and Oracle analyzed business costs with multiple customer service channels and concluded that by switching to a web-based help desk, you can reduce costs by as much as $9.50 per interaction.
With customer support software, especially web-based support software, you can lower your operational costs – as it significantly decreases the number of customer support staff needed, meaning fewer salaries and personnel expenses.
8. Improve customer support performance
How do you respond when senior management asks you how your customer service team is performing?
Are you able to provide a customer with a service level agreement?
With customer support software, you can view analytics and monitor SLAs, providing you answers about your team’s performance and support quality in a few clicks.
Customer support software can record and track every piece of information concerning support tickets. Because of this, you can keep a well-organized database of customer issues and your overall support performance.
Furthermore, if you use software that provides easy-to-digest visual reports of important customer support metrics, it makes it easier to assimilate information and trends faster.
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9. Stand out against the competition
Customer service is fast-becoming a crucial differentiator among companies – and being better than the competition will make your business stand out in the eyes of customers.
Focus on delivering best-in-class support to build stronger relationships with your customers. Establishing a strong bond with your customers can help your business increase customer retention and lower churn.
That being said, customer service has to keep on improving as 54% of all customers say that they have higher customer service expectations than they did just one year ago.
Therefore, it’s crucial to constantly evaluate and improve a customer support team and make sure they have the right customer service solutions available to give customers the best service.
Customer support software is one way to help a business run their customer support teams more efficiently and gain an edge over the competition.
This has an impact on the bottom line, too.
Customers who rate a company’s service as ‘good’ are 38% more likely to recommend that company to others. They’re also likely to spend more with you.
Conclusion
Customers are the core of your business.
Without them, there would be no reason to have a business at all. Hence, it is more critical than ever to level up your customer support along with the products and services you offer.
Not only that, by adopting customer support software, a business has the best tools to offer superb customer service throughout the customer journey. With access to customer interactions and profiles of your customer base, you can further nurture meaningful relationships with customers by personalizing your customer service at scale.
A happy customer is a loyal customer and they will spend more with you.
This repeat business equates to more profitability, which lengthens a company’s lifespan and creates a strong brand that is recognized nationally and globally.
Now that you know the importance of a helpdesk software solution and the impact it can have on your business’ growth and success, schedule a demo with Hiver – the world’s first customer support software designed exclusively for Google Workspace.
Hiver comes packed with cutting-edge helpdesk features like automations, analytics, task delegation, CSAT surveys and more. It’s quick, easy to use and you can start responding to customer service emails and chats directly from Gmail in minutes.
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