What's the best way to handle customer support for digital products sold online?

1 Choose the right platform

The first step is to choose the right platform for your customer support. You want a platform that is easy to use, secure, scalable, and integrated with your sales and marketing tools. Some popular options are Zendesk, Freshdesk, Help Scout, and Groove. These platforms allow you to create tickets, assign agents, track responses, automate workflows, and generate reports. They also let you offer self-service options, such as FAQs, knowledge bases, forums, and chatbots, to reduce the number of queries you have to handle manually.

3 Set clear expectations

The third step is to set clear expectations for your customers and your support team. You want your customers to know what kind of support they can expect from you, such as the response time, the resolution time, the communication channels, and the refund policy. You also want your support team to know what kind of performance you expect from them, such as the quality, the speed, the accuracy, and the satisfaction rate. To set clear expectations, you can use SLAs (service level agreements), KPIs (key performance indicators), and SOPs (standard operating procedures).

4 Monitor and measure

The fourth step is to monitor and measure your customer support activities and outcomes. You want to track how your support team is performing, how your customers are feeling, and how your support is impacting your business. You also want to identify any issues, gaps, or opportunities for improvement. To monitor and measure your customer support, you can use metrics, such as the number of tickets, the response time, the resolution time, the first contact resolution rate, the customer satisfaction score, the net promoter score, and the customer retention rate.

5 Optimize and automate

The fifth step is to optimize and automate your customer support processes and workflows. You want to streamline your support operations, reduce your costs, increase your efficiency, and improve your customer experience. You also want to free up your time and resources for more strategic and creative tasks. To optimize and automate your customer support, you can use tools, such as canned responses, templates, macros, triggers, rules, and chatbots. You can also use AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) to analyze your data and provide insights and recommendations.

6 Learn and grow

The sixth and final step is to learn and grow from your customer support experiences and feedback. You want to constantly evaluate your customer support performance, learn from your mistakes, and implement changes and improvements. You also want to encourage your customers to share their opinions, suggestions, and testimonials, and use them to enhance your products, services, and marketing. To learn and grow from your customer support, you can use surveys, reviews, ratings, testimonials, case studies, and referrals.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?