Customer support is one of the most important components of any good business. Sadly, being able to provide effective support is both expensive and time-consuming. You’ll need to train plenty of support staff and you also have to consider if outsourcing your customer support is worth the savings in exchange for a lower-quality service. There are many concerns involved when dealing with customer support, and the last thing you want is to have a poor reputation when it comes to helping your audience with your products.
The best way to avoid this is to prevent it in the first place. In this article, we’re going to discuss a couple of effective methods to help you reduce the number of support queries you receive across all platforms. This will result in less money spent on bolstering your customer support and more money on improving and growing your business.
Strive to educate your customers
Simple step-by-step instructions can go a long way. If the product or service you’re selling has a learning curve (for instance, if you’re offering a cloud-based software solution or sell a technical piece of hardware) then it’s never a bad idea to invest some money into video production. Create a YouTube channel and upload an instructional video. Next, embed the video on your website so that it plays on the product page. Not only will it demonstrate how to use the product, but it will teach your customers how it’s used in the first place.
Another fantastic way to educate your customers is to have a knowledge base on your website. This is great if you have a fairly complicated product and receive many questions about how to use it. A simple FAQ will do as well, but a knowledge base is usually preferred as long as the answers to each question are comprehensive. Social media can also be an effective marketing tool to help teach your customers about your products.
Consider the materials included with your product
Everything from the labeling systems you use to the manual you add to the packaging will have an impact on how educated your customers will be when they receive your products. You’ll be surprised at how many people contact you regarding small and seemingly trivial things such as how to turn on an appliance they bought or how to change the settings of a piece of hardware.
A simple quick-start guide is good for any piece of tech you sell, and a label with deeper information, such as a list of ingredients on food items or medicine, can go a long to helping your customers. This will drastically reduce the volume of queries you get, giving you more time to focus on growing your business.
Final words
It’s never a bad idea to bolster your customer support, but keep in mind that you should start with the root of the problem. The cause for all of the customer queries is usually in a poorly-explained product. Luckily, this is something that you can easily fix if you follow the methods listed above.
