Welcome to the first edition of the GuardHQ newsletter!

There has been a lot of talk recently on a number of forums regarding customer support.

Now while this may sound like a subject so dull that it will send you spiralling into a deep coma, it is a very important part of your business’s ultimate success.

Customer support can make or break your business. Every time you interact with your clients or prospective clients your reputation is being either built or torn down - there’s nothing in between.

Customer support is how your clients view your business!

Now let me underline that:

Customer support is how your clients view your business!
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Yes, it’s that important.
While I could literally write chapters on this subject, since this is just a little email I’m just going to cover the basics:
Let’s look at three things:

1. How do you support your customers?
2. How often are customers replied to?
3. General tips.

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How do you support your customers?
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There are a number of ways to support your customers. The two most common are email support and a helpdesk support system. For more established companies you can also add in telephone support, and even Live Help via your website.

Then we have the “help them to help themselves” style of support, such as forums, FAQ’s, and knowledge bases.

For most people you’ll need to combine a couple of these methods.

Try and use forums, FAQ’s, and knowledge bases as much as possible. The far majority of customer support requests have already been answered many times before, so make the common questions easy to find.

Another thing to keep in mind is email delivery when it comes to customer support. Take AOL for example - they block a LOT of legitimate email.

It’s for this reason that I’ll be shortly shifting my email support system over to an online helpdesk system, taking email and spam filters out of the loop completely.
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How often are customers replied to?
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When we’re wide-eyed newbies taking the first steps to creating our online business, it’s easy to do either of two things:

• Not support customers enough
• Support customers too much

Finding a balance is MUCH harder than it may first seem.

Not supporting customers enough is pretty self explanatory. We’ve seen and heard about it before - companies who take your money then run.

It constantly amazes me that the bar for customer support on the internet has been set so low that “decent” customer support is often seen as “amazing” customer support.

I used to do customer support for a vehicle tracking company in Sydney, back in the day. I offer the same level of support to my online clients as I used to when I was working for an offline company. Keep in mind that this level I really believe is a reasonable level of support. And the customer reaction to it? Amazed. They’re amazed by what I would say is normal customer support. And I have people buying my software simply because they know they’ll get the support after purchase.

Make sure your customers are comfortable with what they’re just bought. Support them enough so that they don’t have a chance to feel any buyers remorse. Your goal is to make them happy and proud of their purchase.

So what about the next part? Too much support?

This is more of a business choice. Keep in mind that customer support costs you money, even if it’s you doing the support. Does your level of income justify your level of customer support?

I’ve often found myself looking at the clock and seeing it’s 3:30 in the afternoon, and realise all I’ve done all day is answer emails and forum posts.

Remember customer support costs your business money!

Make sure you price your products well enough so that you can afford to offer the customer support needed for your particular product.

If you have a large product then you can also look at support contracts where people pay a yearly fee for support and upgrades.
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General tips
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Well this email has gone on a LOT longer than I anticipated. Still awake?

I’ll run over a few quick tips for customer support, that while simple, can still change customer perspective:

• Always address the person by their name
• Always answer ALL the questions your customer may have
• Volunteer extra information if you think it is needed
• Never talk down to a customer
• Never allow the customer to feel stupid
• Don’t over-apologise to abusive customers (you’ll just encourage them)
• If a customer is VERY abusive to you, remember that you DO have the right to ask them to speak politely.
• Don’t take things personally
• For new customers, thank them for purchasing from you
• End the correspondence with an invitation to contact you if they have any further problems

While these tips are quite simple, they can drastically change the perceived professionalism of your business, can defuse volatile situations, and will generally help stop you from self medicating and rocking back and forth in the corner sobbing quietly.

Customer support is hard work, but you can make is as painless as possible for not only your customer, but for you as well!

 

Best wishes with your business,

Sam Stephens
www.GuardHQ.com
www.DLGuard.com

This entry was posted on Friday, March 23rd, 2007 at 11:23 pm and is filed under GHQ Newsletter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.