Why You Need to Quit Pinching Pennies and Invest in a Good Support System
Having worked with hundreds of software applications—both for my clients and my own companies—I’ve had the privilege of navigating countless customer support conversations. Unfortunately, I’ve seen the quality of service deteriorate over time. While customer service representatives (CSRs) may be polite, the overall standard of performance has, in many cases, become unacceptable.
A recent experience highlights this problem:
I was managing a project for a client using a calendaring solution. The sales team had multiple methods for adding new leads to the system, one of which involved the calendaring tool. I wanted to know if there was a way to check the availability of salespeople, then send a generic calendar appointment to the CRM, where it could be routed to whoever was available. This would ensure leads were evenly distributed across the team.
The software lacked this feature, so I reached out to see if there was a workaround—perhaps syncing a group calendar instead of individual calendars.
Initially, I interacted with a bot. It collected some basic information, apologized for not being able to help, and promised to connect me with a human. The bot ended the conversation by asking me to rate the experience, but I chose not to respond—I was still unclear on how to judge this interaction within the broader support context.
24 hours later, I received a reply: “Thanks so much for reaching out. Can you give us more details around your query?”
Great. At this point, between the delayed response and the lack of relevant information, I was growing frustrated. It felt like the CSR was overwhelmed, perhaps rushing through tickets to meet a quota. I replied, “Please ask specific questions about my issue so I can provide the necessary details.” I’ve been through this before—don’t waste my time.
12 hours later, I was surprised to receive another response (I had expected at least a 23-hour wait). The CSR asked specific, relevant questions—so I answered in detail, hopeful for progress.
8 hours later, I received a response from a different CSR. This person hadn’t bothered to read my detailed message. Instead, they sent a couple of links and a copy-pasted response with a keyword from my original question. Frustrated, I replied, “Please re-read my detailed response. Your reply does not reflect the time I spent explaining the issue. You likely won’t find the answer by copy-pasting from your KnowledgeBase. Critical thinking is required here—our paying client urgently needs a quick and accurate resolution to this problem.”
By this point, I was losing hope, and my client was growing impatient. The next response I received was even more technical, discussing features irrelevant to my client’s needs. It went on like this for two more days. Ultimately, the issue was never resolved, but I did receive a survey asking how my support experience was. In a nice touch of irony, the subject line of the email labeled me a “non-client,” despite my repeatedly explaining that I was acting on behalf of one of their clients.
Customer Support as Part of the Customer Experience
Customer support is a critical part of the customer experience. Just because you’ve secured a client’s credit card doesn’t mean their experience with your company can be neglected. Yet, this seems to be the norm in some industries. I’ve encountered companies notorious for poor customer support, many of which outsource it to third parties that lack the expertise needed to solve problems effectively. Then they add insult to injury when they expect customers to pay for support—yet deliver subpar results.
As a business leader, remember that your customers are your best salespeople. One HR company I’ve worked with secured all of its new business through customer relationships alone—no significant marketing investment was needed. Because they were referrals, new clients closed quickly, and the company growth exceeded expectations.
According to research, new prospects referred to your business are 4 to 5 times more likely to close, and they’ll do so much faster than cold leads. Your customer acquisition cost for referrals is much lower, and it creates an opportunity to develop a loyal, long-term customer. Being intentional about developing an effective referral program is a wise investment for any company.
Yes, providing exceptional customer support that meets the needs and expectations of your customers can be a costly investment, but losing a customer—especially one that makes vendor recommendations, like I do—can be far more expensive. Simply put, I will never recommend a company that provides poor support.
Integrating Customer Support into Customer Experience
Creating a memorable customer experience will never happen by accident. Like a sales process, like a marketing plan, like other functions in the company, it starts with a goal – not necessarily a process. You’ll want to define what the outcome of your customer’s experience should be, and why that is important.
For consideration – doing things for the sake of doing things doesn’t cut it. While not every reason will be directly related to cash flow, there needs to be a reason beyond, “it would be pretty cool.” You want to make sure that any investment – time, money, resources – has a positive return.
Once you’ve established your goal, you’ll decide what the values are that will support the goal. It would be wise to do market research and identify the things that would be strategically significant to your organization in addition to understanding your customer expectations. Note that there will be ideas that pop up that may not be of any value for your customers or your company that you should quickly get rid of.
Goals might include:
Respond to all issues within 30 minutes by email or phone. This lets customers know that we want them to have a good experience.
Ensure that customers feel they are valued when submitting a support request. Customers are extremely frustrated when they feel like they are just a number.
Stay in touch with customers about their issues every day. Customers want to feel confident that their concern is as important to us as it is for them.
Earn a 5-star rating with every support request. This will help other customers understand that value that we stand for in the marketplace and helps us stand out as a brand.
Enable escalations and management / leadership notifications. This provides “checks and balances” to make sure that we are doing the right things the right way and have a mechanism for making leadership aware of high priority items.
While you might be tempted to determine “how” to accomplish all of your goals initially, your next step will be to understand and document the process or journey. You’ll find that in looking at the experience from a “big picture” perspective (rather than incrementally), your components will be better aligned and come together for you more efficiently.
Here are some examples of “how.”
Customer reaches out for support (don’t worry about how they reach out right now)
Support team reviews support requests. Asks relevant, clarifying questions if needed
Support team checks existing issues that may be related
Support team informs customer that the request has been received, restating their understanding of the issue and desired result
If customer agrees, support team lets customer know when to expect to hear back from them
Etc.
NOW is when you would consider “how” the tasks are performed. Not necessarily the software platform, but rather, how to communicate with customers, how to check current and prior issues, how long certain tasks should take, etc. When selecting a software, it is important to get a software that works around how your company works, rather than changing the company to work with the software. Software is a tool – an enabler…even if we are talking about AI.
Finally, if you are going to use software, select the right software that will enable your process, while keeping in mind your goals and the experience you want your customer to have. Then customize the software to meet your needs, establish your training program, and finally train your team.
As with any idea or concept, understand that the way you start out isn’t necessarily the way that things will end up. Be prepared to review, update and improve the process regularly to ensure that it meets both your customers’ and your company’s needs and expectations. Your company’s customer experience could be your company’s strategic advantage.
In Conclusion
When building your company’s customer support function, make sure that you treat it as part of the customer experience. Keep in mind that your customer’s support experience is going to be the lasting feature that they are going to remember. If the experience was great, they are more likely to recommend your offering, assuming it meets their needs. If the experience is awful, there is a chance that they will complain. Doing it well can give your company an advantage and pave the way to long-term customer relationships.
Aepiphanni is a Strategy and Operations focused Business Consultancy dedicated to providing Fractional Growth Leadership, Management Consulting, and Business Transformation to business leaders and entrepreneurs looking to enhance or expand their companies. As trusted advisors, we specialize in delivering forward-thinking operational and strategic solutions that empower our clients to navigate and overcome the challenges of business growth.
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