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As a business owner, you know that first impressions are everything. When customers reach out to you for help, you want to make sure that you are taking care of their questions quickly and effectively. This is where a good customer support team comes into play.
However, here at the BBB, we understand that most businesses don’t have the resources for a full-time customer support team. Fortunately, modern technology has made it easier than ever to scale your customer support without sacrificing growth opportunities.
5 Ways to scale your customer support without sacrificing growth opportunities
Customer support is a crucial part of the customer journey. Without a quality experience, your company is at risk of losing customers. But if you want to scale your customer support, you’ll have to find a way to serve more customers without sacrificing quality. Here are five ways to scale your customer support without sacrificing customer experience:
1. Redesign your customer service contact points to suit your audience’s needs
To scale your business without sacrificing growth opportunities, it’s essential to optimize your customer support to align with your audience’s needs, preferences and expectations.
For example, if your customers are more comfortable emailing, texting, or calling, you can offer multiple contact points to ensure that you can address their needs in a format that suits them best.
By redesigning your customer service contact points to suit your audience and their needs, you're giving them the experience of support that feels authentic and reliable, making them more likely to continue doing business with you.
2. Improve your auto-replies
According to a SuperOffice survey, approximately 46% of consumers expecting a reply from customer support in four hours or less, nearly 12% expect one within 15 minutes or less. That means you need to consider adding auto-replies to your customer service playbook to keep up with your growing demand for assistance.
Your auto-replies should be friendly, informative, and professional, and they should be customized to your audience’s preferences and needs. They should also be designed to provide a snapshot of the type of assistance your customers can expect when they contact your support team.
For example, if you're using email as your primary form of communication and someone emails your customer support team with a question, then your auto-replies should be designed in a way that recognizes the customer's issue and that it will take X amount of time to receive a response from a customer support representative.
You could also then include some links about the customer's specific issue so that they can start getting immediate help instead of waiting for a response.
3. Invest in automation
One of the best ways to scale your customer support without sacrificing growth opportunities is to invest in automation. By automating certain processes within your support team, you're able to reduce the amount of time that representatives are spending on clerical duties (such as data entry and follow-ups), which in turn frees up more time to provide the high-quality service that your customers have come to expect and appreciate.
4. Consider adding an AI chatbot to your site
One of the most effective ways to scale your customer support without sacrificing growth opportunities is to add an AI chatbot to your site. By integrating a chatbot into your customer service experience, you can provide customers with a seamless, intuitive way to get in touch with your support team that feels more personalized than a traditional contact form.
The key to a successful AI chat experience is to ensure that the chatbot is built to provide the type of assistance your customers are looking for. For example, if your customers are looking for help troubleshooting an issue, then your chatbot should be able to provide them with a set of links to get immediate assistance.
On the other hand, if your customers are looking for a live chat option, then your chatbot should be able to provide them with a link so that they can contact a live representative.
5. Create a dedicated knowledge base center for your audience
Believe it or not - many of your customers often prefer to do the research and legwork themselves to find the answers they need. That means you need to spend time creating a dedicated knowledge base center for your audience.
The goal of this knowledge base is to provide your customers with easy access to relevant content and resources that will help them solve their issues and improve their overall experience.
This is an excellent way to scale your customer support without sacrificing growth because you can use this knowledge base content across channels to provide answers to your customers and be used as informative content to help attract more people to your business.
Learn more ways to scale your business with the BBB
Whether you're looking to scale your customer support team or want to grow your business differently, there are several effective ways to approach the problem that don't involve sacrificing growth.
For more excellent information on successfully scaling your business, check out the BBB business news feed and the BizHQ.
BBB of Southern Piedmont and Western N.C. contributed to this article.