The Alignment of Customer and Support Expectations
Support organizations are implementing new technologies and processes to better connect customers with technical support teams, and customer satisfaction is paramount. However, most organizations admit they’re not proactively aligning their priorities with their customers’ expectations. Are the needs of the support team different from what customers want and expect? Recent research by HDI delves into the two groups’ expectations and priorities — according to support professionals — and explores how closely they’re aligned.
Survey Results
A recent online survey of 771 technical service and support professionals revealed that support organizations value the same support factors they believe to be important to their customers. Despite this, very few organizations are deliberately prioritizing and aligning these needs accordingly.
Many organizations admit they aren’t currently basing their business decisions on what their customers want from the support center. On a scale of 0–10, where 0 is “not aligned at all” and 10 is “completely aligned,” the average score is a 6.6; only four percent report that their priorities are completely aligned with what they believe their customers’ expectations to be. (See the chart below for the full breakdown of responses.)
The next two figures illustrate the importance of specific factors with regard to providing support to customers. The chart above illustrates what support professionals believe is important to their customers/end users; the chart on the following page illustrates what’s important to the support team. (On these charts, the percentages are based on the responses from the organizations the factor applies to [i.e., those that did not select “does not apply”]. For example, of the organizations that are providing support for products or services purchased, 25 percent report that the availability of support pre-purchase is a must-have for their customers.)
The factor most commonly selected as a must-have for customers is a simple, easy-to-navigate interface, with 62 percent reporting that it is a must-have for their customers, while a detailed interface ranks the lowest (67% selected it as not important for their customers).
As such, support organizations should utilize tools that aren’t complicated or difficult for customers to use.
The availability of 24x7 support ranks second, with 51 percent saying it’s a must-have for their customers. In this world of mobility, with consumers and workers requiring support on and for multiple devices, whether they’re at the office, at home, or on the road, it’s no wonder many of the technical service and support industry’s concerns relate to meeting those needs. Providing anytime, anywhere support remains a very important factor with regard to connecting customers to the support team.
Further evaluation of the results revealed that, not surprisingly, the importance of 24x7 support varies based on industry. For instance, while full-time availability of support isn’t as important for higher education (20% identified it as a must-have, while 30% said it wasn’t important), it is crucial for most healthcare organizations (72% identified it as a must-have, while 5% said it wasn’t important) and support teams in the retail industry (52% identified it as a must-have, while 7% said it wasn’t important).
Additionally, 40 percent of support organizations believe their customers require multiple options/channels to contact support, and it’s a nice-to-have for another 50 percent. Customers prefer options that provide the most comfortable means of initiating support. According to the 2013 HDI Support Center Practices & Salary Report, many organizations go beyond phone (97%) and email (89%) to include chat (24%) and web requests (online form to request support, 63%).
Similar to support’s perception of what’s important to customers/end users, simple tools are also the highest priority for support organizations, with 52 percent reporting that simple, easy-to-use tools with minimal clutter are must-haves and an additional 43 percent identifying them as nice-to-haves. Often organizations try to customize their tools to include additional features to meet all of the needs of individual customers and support staff. While doing this could be helpful for collecting information and routing tickets to the correct support team member up front, the results show that it’s simplicity in the experience that’s actually requested and required.
Again, simplicity is followed by the desire for 24x7 availability. Even the support team wants to be able to provide support to customers when they need it. Additionally, support teams want to be able to provide support to customers for any device they are using. Consumerization of IT adds an additional component; support is required anytime, anywhere, and on any device.
When asked to rank support tool features in order of importance, specifically for technologies used by the support organization, three features stood out amongst the rest. The chart above shows the features in order of percentage of respondents who selected each feature as the most important feature for a support tool. Thirty percent selected reliability as the most important feature for the tools they use to provide support. Very close on the heels of reliability are security and efficiency, with 28 and 21 percent respectively, identifying them as most important. Reliability, security, and efficiency are paramount, particularly for organizations rising to the challenge of providing support anytime, anywhere, and on any device.
As illustrated below, the value of an individual interaction with a customer is measured differently from organization to organization. How important is it that each interaction leaves a positive impression on the customer/end user? Obviously, organizations that provide support for purchased products or services might measure the value of their customer interactions differently than those that provide internal IT support. In the latter group, technical service and support directly affects the company’s bottom line; therefore, customer retention (73%) and add-on sales or up sales (32%) have more value for those organizations than it does for organizations where support does not directly impact revenue. There is, however, a commonality for the two types of support organizations with regard to measuring the value of a customer interaction: customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is the most commonly selected factor on the list.
Conclusion
More and more, customers are expecting anytime, anywhere support, and support teams want to provide that. As a result, the industry has put a lot of focus on increasing the availability of support teams. However, more channels and more options might be complicating the process of engaging with support.
Support organizations providing internal support for company employees and organizations providing support for external customers both measure the value of interactions by their customers’ satisfaction. So, keeping customer expectations in mind is crucial to success. This research has revealed that the needs of the support team and the perceived wants of the customers are far more closely aligned than would be expected. In support of both, organizations that are planning to improve their technologies and processes to improve the customer experience need to consider implementing a simple, easy-to-use interface and technologies that are reliable, secure, and efficient.
