The right way to personalise your Software Support
Change the general perception of support and create sustainable personal relations with your customers.
IT staff has never been the greatest fan of customer support. Unfortunately, that often results in frustration on both sides: customers and employees. The IT Support is traditionally only contacted for upcoming problems. That’s why support is mostly seen as a stressful touch-point. Often, users are scared of long waiting-times, various time costing explanations and missing understanding of the issues.
To change the negative perception of IT support, the creation of a positive relationship with the customer is essential. Instead of connecting the support to a part of the problem, it should be seen as a part of the solution. Therefore, it is important to built personal relationships with clients and show them, that you care about them and their issues.
Conversations
Other than the traditional ticket flow, where requests had to be sent and categorised every time, companies, such as Intercom are focusing on a more modern system: The real-life customer support experience. Customers benefit from easy accessibility on the webpage and receive information, without searching for various email requests. Thus, the chat functions give the possibility to start conversations, instead of the simple exchange of tickets.
Customised Support
The implementation and digitalisation of the business world opened completely new opportunities for businesses to communicate their message. In the days before the internet, many different communication channels needed to be activated, to reach the client sufficiently. Now, all the ways to communicate are bundled in one place, which makes the customer communication a lot easier for companies.
Furthermore, the reaction time towards customer complaints is a lot shorter now. Companies can engage with their clients within minutes now, if necessary. According to Leanna W., IT consultant at Workbridge, loyalty from customers increased, when they started to respond to their questions faster.
“Our customers became more loyal to us, as we began to respond quickly to their questions” -Leanna W. (IT Consultant at Workbridge Associates)
Personal Touch
In addition, modern communication systems make it easier to give messages a personal touch. The customisation of color and characters gives customers a visual support to the message. In addition, the usage of smilies and gifs makes messages more unique and information easier to understand. Often it is difficult to explain something, while showing would only take a few seconds. Personal connections can be built easier with the employee, who is answering the request.
Ongoing engagement
Customer engagement is important to build good customer relations. In order to increase the engagement of clients and to make them happy with your support, it is also important to focus on the people behind the incoming requests. Being nice and generous shows empathy and is especially important, when it comes to disagreements with the customer. An ongoing engagement can be created through the tone and voice, but also through the format of the communication with the customers. There are various messages strategies which can help you to engage with your customers.
An appropriate context and medium create suiting messages for different clients. In addition, focusing on the individual and adjusting messages individually creates a more personal and sustainable communication with the client. In the IT sector this factor is often not included in the scope of support, but actually has a lot of potentials to help grow your business.
