Why Customer Support is the Lifeblood of an Organisation

It is well documented that a failure to offer excellent customer support, leads to poor retention rates and lower customer satisfaction. Considering a business cannot operate without customers, implementing quality customer service should become the integral part of any business.

The problem is that sometimes software companies can get so excited about building an innovative and superior product or application, they forget the role customer service plays. This is understandable considering the nature of the beast- technology. Technology is always changing and adapting and consequently, there becomes this constant need for companies to continuously innovate in order to ensure their product doesn’t become obsolete.

However, software is one of those things that while designed to make life easier, can sometimes have the opposite effect for those unfamiliar with said software . Despite this, technology has become so ingrained in our culture, that regardless of whether you’re a software pro or a technological newbie, you’ll often be required to use multiple software programs both professionally and personally.

Naturally every software program is different and with multiple people using these systems who have varying levels of technological knowledge, offering the necessary support to cater to these varying needs is crucial.

In fact, research from the Nielson Norman Group has shown that when searching for a product online, the average page visit lasts less than a minute. More specifically, it is within the first 10 seconds from when a prospect lands on your page, that they form their overall decision. The study went on to list that the most common criteria used to make this decision. These criteria were how easy it was to navigate through a website, how easy it was to understand the product/service offered and in regards to software service, whether it offered adequate customer service tools; online help tools, tutorial videos and demonstrations etc.

For aXcelerate, this research highlights the importance quality customer service plays in software and reminds us why ‘ Providing service with H.E.A.R.T’ has been our business mantra for the last 25 years.

SaaS (Software As A Service) – a prominent software licensing and delivery model, state three key areas to ensure a software company has an integrated and comprehensive approach to customer service. The first is website functionality, and ensuring your website is easy to use, allows customers to easily get the information they want and most importantly makes it easy for clients to be able to enquire about or trial the software. The second area is interaction- making it very easy for customers to interact with your team. Thanks to the high level of accessibility technology provides, customers often use or look at a product outside standard business hours. Consequently providing a range of options for customers to reach your company is highly beneficial. Furthermore, SaaS insist on being swift with responses; they argue a general rule of thumb is to get back to a customer within 24 hours.

The final area SaaS list is the importance of support; customers want to know that there is someone they can rely on when they have problems. Many companies do not have the financial or physical resources to supply 24/7 physical support, so they suggest implementing the following:

– Phone support during business hours

– A FAQ page on your website

– A ticket system to help manage support requests

– Tutorial material on your website including articles and videos

As we’ve grown, we’ve continued to develop our own customer service strategy. A big part of this has been actively growing our client engagement team over the last 5 months. While many of our clients have no doubt already spoken to them, aXcelerate would like to officially introduce Ty Kennedy, Jacob Lehr and Finn Jones. Both Jacob and Ty have extensive experience in both IT communications and customer service, while Finn has come on board as part of our traineeship program. While studying for a Certificate III in IMDT (Information Media Digital Technology), Finn also spends five days a week in our support team, learning the key components of both aXcelerate and customer service.

All three staff members have been hard at work learning the ins and outs of aXcelerate and getting back to support requests that come through, as quickly as possible. They have also been regularly updating our FAQ and help pages to ensure that our clients can easily access the support they need, from a variety of channels. We welcome Ty, Jacob and Finn and are very excited and grateful to have them on the aXcelerate team.

To find out more about customer service and how to implement different strategies within your organisation, read further SaaS recommendations.

Finn Jones

Jacob Lehr

Ty Kennedy