How do you rate your technical support services?

A proficient technical service manager is knowledgeable on its own products and their value proposition for his client. He understands how his customer is using his products and what (new) challenges he has encountered. He builds relationships of trust with his clients by maintaining confidentiality. He is creative in leveraging solutions also outside of the normal box and tries to find the best and most economical solutions for his customers whilst creating best value for his own company.

Customer satisfaction is significant, but it's not synonymous with customer success. Satisfaction reflects contentment with the support process, while success measures whether customers achieve their desired outcomes and goals. To foster success, actively engage with customers to understand their objectives and challenges. Leverage various feedback methods to gauge not only satisfaction but also how effectively your support contributes to their success. Use this insight to refine support strategies, ensuring they align with customer objectives and drive tangible outcomes. Customer satisfaction may indicate "good-enough" technical support, but is your support enabling excellence in customer success?

Absolutely. Requesting feedback from clients not only gives insights into their satisfaction but can also demonstrate a willingness to ensure that a quality service has been provided. If there are improvements needed then it opens a dialogue on how services can be improved and can lead to clients feeling more valued.

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, customers expect quick resolutions. However, be cautious of sacrificing quality for speed. AHT should be balanced with first-call resolution rates to ensure that customers aren't bounced between agents. On the other hand, a consistently high AHT might suggest inefficiencies in your support process. It could mean that agents lack the necessary training or tools to resolve issues promptly. As with all metrics, put them in context and interrogate the data to produce actionable insights.

SLAs are the backbone of trust-building in technical support. Craft SLAs with realistic and achievable targets that reflect your team's capabilities. Be transparent about what customers can expect in terms of availability, response times, and issue resolution. And regularly track and report on SLA compliance, using data to showcase your team's reliability. When SLAs are broken, communicate openly and proactively with affected customers, explaining the situation and next steps. Implement a robust escalation process for unresolved issues, ensuring they receive prompt attention. Continuously review SLAs to adapt to changing customer needs and industry standards. SLAs are not just contracts; they're instruments for trust.

SLA’s are often an integral part of delivering outsourced services. Clearly defining responsibilities and quality requirements gives a level of assurance and comfort over business continuity. This is especially important when it’s a service which is critical to the businesses operations.

It's easy for continuous improvement ideas to become an afterthought. Create a central repository for collecting and documenting improvement ideas. Integrate it into your support workflow and schedule regular improvement meetings to review these ideas, prioritize them, and assign responsibilities for implementation. Use agile methodologies to break down improvements into manageable tasks with clear timelines. Then, monitor the progress of these tasks closely and celebrate achievements. This systematic approach helps maintain continuous improvement as an integral part of your technical support services.

While customer satisfaction comes from customers, most folks in the service industry would agree that less than 1% give feedback. So it has to be a combination of a lot of things. While we can SLA adherence is the most critical, what if the support staff rush to meet the SLA compromising on quality of service. So we have to look at reopen rates and escalations also to balance that out. FCR, FLR are good ones to track but focused feedback surveys, round tables with the customers are equally important to identify gaps to put into continuous improvement cycles.

I would like to add a very crucial skill that I think is fundamental when we are helping people. That is communication. Not being able to communicate effectively with the person you are trying to help, even if you are extremely knowledgeable in your field, will inevitably lead to misunderstandings. This also includes the ability to listen and understand the other party, not only being able to construct coherent sentences and well structured instructions. Bilateral communication is key.