The release is not the end of software development. Continuous and uninterrupted support is needed to reach customer satisfaction and lead a product to success.
From today’s article, you will get some IT support tips that help you take your communication with the clients to a higher level, always keep them satisfied, and boost your business this way.
A Ticket System: The Best Way to Communicate With Clients
This is a partially automated system for responding to customer inquiries. It helps solve the clients’ problems conveniently and promptly. The system registers clients’ requests and assigns identification numbers to them automatically. This makes tracking the task execution easier. Additionally, closing a task and sending notifications to clients about solving issues can also be automated. But direct contact for details clarification, search for solutions, and the solution itself is carried out by support managers.
A ticket system is a very profitable and convenient solution for IT support that has the following advantages:
- It helps customers apply requests easily and quickly. Usually, a customer can contact the company directly from his personal account or just via his email.
- It makes working with the clients’ applications transparent. The majority of systems allow posting a link to the client’s personal account, where he/she can create tickets, track the status of their execution, and view the history of interaction with the support department at any time.
- It helps assess the support department’s work quality. Thanks to a ticket system, it becomes possible to monitor the time of the first and last response and an average order closing time. These parameters are key in the support managers’ work effectivity measuring and are needed for controlling their performance.
Set Up a Dedicated Email Address: Do Not Miss Customers’ Requests
Small companies that do not have large support departments can do without a ticket system. But in this case, they need to create a separate email especially for receiving applications regarding problems with the use of a product and responding to them. This will help not to miss customers’ issues among numerous messages regarding other topics that are sent to the main email address of the company.
Moreover, it is possible to integrate an autoresponder into a dedicated email. Thanks to it, clients will make sure that you have received an application.
Respond Personally to Save Clients’ Loyalty
Calling a customer by name shows that your company appreciates every client and respects him/her. This is the best way to make communication more trustful and efficient.
But personalization is not only about names. It is also about the history of interactions with the company. Before responding to a certain issue, a specialist should first study the previous referrals of the particular client to the support department to understand his/her peculiarities and needs better. This will ensure giving the most accurate and satisfying answer and providing the best help.
Provide FAQs: Help Clients to Solve Problems on Their Own
Answering the most frequently asked questions right on your website helps to:
- Increase the loyalty of new customers. Some users having problems with a new product may simply give up using it instead of contacting support. If they immediately find the answer to their question themselves, they will continue to use your product.
- Reduce the workload of specialists. Since the answers to the most frequently asked questions have already been given on the website, there will be fewer requests to support.
- Make it easier for specialists to do some part of the work. Not all users read FAQs. Sometimes, although less often, people will still contact support with typical questions. But in such cases, a manager can simply copy the answer to a frequently asked question from the specialized section of the website. This will greatly speed up the response time.
- Improve SEO. You can use the most frequent search requests while creating FAQ sections. This will attract more traffic from search engines.
Create a Forum Where People Can List Their Issues
This convenient way of providing support to users is useful for:
- Decreasing the load on the support department. Since the answers to all questions are given publically, users can find solutions to their problems using the search through a forum. Also, old users take an active part in helping new ones. Therefore, sometimes other users are the first to answer the questions, and support managers do not need to do this.
- Saving regular customers. Forums are intended not only for solving problems. They also engage people in discussing your products or services and sharing their experiences. So, the users create a community that grows over time. This boosts brand awareness and increases the loyalty of regular customers.
The only shortcoming of a forum is that it is not appropriate for urgent questions. Those who post their questions on a forum cannot be sure when they are going to get a response or whether they will get an answer at all. So, the people who need to have their problems solved immediately will need to contact support managers.
Let People Know When an Issue Will Be Fixed
It is important for users to know when exactly they are going to have their issues solved. Specifying the terms of problem fixing helps to:
- increase confidence in technical support;
- reduce the number of repeated requests from the same customers with the same questions;
- decrease the number of angry emails demanding to solve the problem faster.
The Importance of Feedback
If you do not get feedback from your customers, you cannot be sure that they get a positive experience from interacting with your products or services. Clients’ opinion is the key piece of information that will help you understand how a brand looks in their eyes, as well as ensure that you are providing exactly what end-users want.
If you ask clients for feedback, you will have an opportunity to:
- Improve your products or services. You can get information about the shortcomings firsthand and do everything to eliminate them. Also, you can add new features if you see that many clients need them.
- Increase sales. You can use the advantages that users most frequently mention in their feedback to create a unique selling proposition.
- Save customers. Asking for feedback shows clients that their opinion matters to you. This increases their loyalty. Moreover, you can fix some shortcomings to prevent customers from being disappointed with your products or services.
Adding Real-time Chat
This channel of providing support has the following advantages:
- The most competent assistance. With written form, unlike a call, a manager has the opportunity to consult with colleagues and give the most comprehensive collective answer.
- Quick response. Managers sometimes see emails after quite a lot of time passed from their receiving. Therefore, a client does not get a response to an email immediately. This can lead to dissatisfaction with the work of the support department. As for the live chats, they are much faster. Therefore, people will be more satisfied with support due to a quick response.
- Convenient quality control. It is easier and faster to look through the log of answers than to listen to call records.
- Increasing loyalty. Companies that have live chats on their websites look more trustworthy.
- Boosting sales. Live chats can be used not only to solve customers’ problems but also to help them choose products or services according to their needs.
Use Software to Keep Track of Clients
Storing the essential details about customers and the history of their interactions with your company makes it possible to personalize communication with them. And this increases loyalty and helps to retain regular clients.
Final Thoughts About IT Support Tips And Tricks
Our technical support tips will help you optimize the work of specialists, make it more efficient and convenient, and keep clients satisfied. But if you have no possibility to establish and maintain your own in-house IT support department, think of giving this job to outsourcing specialists. Experts from JoinSoft are aware of all the tricks every IT support pro should know and can take professional care of your customers.
