How can you prioritize customer support without sacrificing business goals?

Creating some baseline KPIs and understanding where your starting point is can be crucial. This gives your the ability to set a glide path to reach those goals that your company has moving forward, without over promising on goals that you may not be able to reach.

The two are entwined. A successful business is good to its customers. To that end, hire people that genuinely care and will work to connect with people, within the company and among prospects / clients.

an expanded model I call the "Loyalty Value Flywheel" > minimize effort - Reduce customer effort with self-service automation, proactive issue resolution, transparent communications, and frictionless processes > increase emotional engagement - discover peak emotional moments throughout the entire customer journey > foster community - create branded spaces for customers to connect, share creativity, learn from one another, and be recognized by company representatives for their contributions > empower advocates - empower advocates with their authentic voices in marketing and community building IMO, customer lifetime value in the form of retention and referral over many years and purchases are the economic engine at the core of this flywheel.

Value proposition and brand voice go hand and hand here. Your support team needs to have a deep understanding of the value the product is giving in order to help the customers in the most impactful way. Understanding the product gives the ability to speak in a unilateral way in the same voice, to all customers, no matter what agent is handling the inquiry.

One approach is to integrate customer support goals into the broader business objectives. This can involve adopting customer-centric metrics in performance evaluations and decision-making processes. Additionally, leveraging technology, like AI-driven chatbots or CRM systems, can streamline support processes, making them more efficient and cost-effective. Investing in staff training ensures that employees are not only skilled in handling customer issues but also in aligning their support strategies with the company’s goals. This integrated approach ensures customer support enhances, rather than detracts from, overall business success.

The amount of self service that can be provided is astounding, it can also be costly. You can automate as much as you can, when you can, so your live agents are handling the highest and most difficult tasks that automation has not yet been able to reach. Think of automation as closing the bottom 50% of your tickets, and work from there.

Segmenting users is a great way to understand what the biggest call/ticket drivers are around the business. Not every support team is a one size fits all, specializations keep your team fresh while being able to hone in on their craft and really understand specific issues the customers are experiencing.

Effective support teams start on day one. Training is one of the biggest drivers towards being able to increase customer satisfaction and overall loyalty towards a business. The days of throwing the agents in the deep end and letting them learn on the job are over. You have to eloquently be able to produce training that will work long term for your team.