Happiness Hack: Leverage phone support and gain customer trust
At Aircall, as a phone software company we see from our customers that phone is widely used and appreciated by startups.
If you’ve ever wondered which customer support channels you should invest in, you know there’s no easy answer to that question.
So how do you choose your support channel(s)? Email or SMS? Twitter or phone or chat? And more importantly, where should you put it on: on your homepage? At the end of your FAQ? In your customer’s interface?
Our hypothesis is: having a phone support can catapult you to (SaaS) stardom — read this post to discover why having a phone support is key for SaaS businesses.
For instance, at Aircall, we provide a phone system, which our customers need to have up and running 24×7. They absolutely cannot bear a 24h interruption of their phone system. In this case, having a phone support makes a lot of sense — and can even be a GO / NO GO argument for running to a competitor.
So we’ve asked some great SaaS out there and came up with this easy questionnaire to help you decide once and for all what YOU should pick, based on your business and customers.
Phone support as a business differentiator
The trend has been there and well established for a few years now: demand for SaaS enterprise applications is exploding. According to a Goldman Sachs study, the worldwide B2B SaaS market is expected to generate $50.8B in revenue by 2018.
Startups are increasingly numerous to try and get their share of the pie, so the question arises: how to differentiate yourself in this lucrative yet crowded scene?
I’ll give you a hint: from the first time your prospect hear about you to the daily use of you wonderful product (obviously), it all comes down to your interactions with your Customers. And what a better way to truly understand their desired outcome and drive them to success than talking directly to them? Having a phone support can propel you to the top.
Phone support for pre-sale inquiries or post-sales nurturing
Is your service fairly easy to understand or do you need a Ph.D. in advanced-technology to set it up?
If you answered the latter, putting your support upfront, in the pre-sales process, can help you boost website visitors’ conversions. Your support team will actually be part of your sales process, so make sure you train them well and you provide them all information and tools they need.
Start by implementing a chat solution, or even better, display a phone number on your homepage, and engage the conversation with your visitors. And don’t forget to track and follow-up with your prospects — close.io is a great solution for that.
For a self-service application, questions will mostly arise after signing up, for further personalization of the tool for instance. Some of the questions may be tackled by buffing up your FAQ and self-service resources. But I strongly recommend adding a point of contact inside your app, such as intercom. And once again, don’t forget the phone option: only by talking to your customers will you be able to really understand their usage, help them reach their desired outcome, get feedback, and create this sacred link that will last forever.
Leveraging phone support for earning your customers’ trust
Are you selling a heart monitoring solution, a virtual bank account or a medication app? In other words, how much trust does your product require for a prospect to sign up?
Read the rest of the post here…
Now the only thing you need is the right tool. With Aircall, you can set opening hours, define call cascading rules, and finally collaborate on customer calls.
