How To Reduce The Time You Spend On Customer Support

One of the largest uses of time in an online business is customer support. This is especially true in small to medium growing business which might not have large support teams.

No matter how easy it is to find and hire good customer support agents, you'll inevitably spend hours handling customer support issues yourself throughout your business' life cycle—whether they're related to your products or services.

But how do you get the constant flow of customer tickets in check? In this piece, we will look at several ways to reduce the time you spend on customer support tickets.

Create A FAQ Page

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) are a great way for your customers to get answers to common questions. FAQs allow them to easily answer their own questions, which not only saves you time but also ensures you aren't manually answering the same question repeatedly.

It's a win-win for you and your customers. Make sure you organize your FAQ in an easy-to-read fashion, with titles that accurately reflect what each question pertains to. The more information you can provide upfront, and the easier it is for people to search through, the more likely it will be that customers wont need to contact you.

Ensure your FAQ's are clear and concise while focusing on the most common questions your customer support typically deals with. Over time, your FAQ's can be added to as new customer support trends emerge.

Create A Knowledge Base

Once you have a solid FAQ page setup, the next step would involve creating a knowledge base. While FAQ's are great for answering quick, common questions, knowledge bases are where more detailed documentation should be found.

Sometimes, your customers don't even need you—they need a set of instructions they can read or watch. So instead of responding manually to every support inquiry that comes in, consider creating a knowledge base so customers can search for their answers themselves. This saves you time, and it saves them time as well.

Not only will a knowledge base save you countless hours of support time, but Google often rewards sites with rich content such as knowledge bases by listing those pages higher in search results.

Customers are more likely to find what they need if you structure your content well. Include top-level categories, subcategories and search functionality to ensure customers find what they're looking for.

Remember that customer support isn't just about saving time but also money. When you eliminate manual processes like account creation or troubleshooting customer problems, you save your company money by removing unnecessary extra work and moving towards a more streamlined operation.

Use Automation Tools

When it comes to reducing your time in support, automation will help more than anything else. For example, tools like Zendesk, Freshdesk and many others allow you to set up automated responses and support ticket management. Tools like Segment can be used to automatically feed information into a CRM so that all of your data stays centralized and can be used to gain insights into your customers.

Then you have tools like Feederloop which allow you to have video and screen share calls with visitors while they're on your website.

The key is to ensure that your customers feel heard and that their queries are dealt with as quickly as possible. Focus first on using automation tools where they're needed most. Make sure that each customer receives a reply promptly. Even if it's just an auto-response that says you will get back to them within 12 hours, your customers will appreciate knowing they're being taken care of.

It's no secret that the world has become a more connected place. Customers expect real-time responses to queries in an interesting, engaging format. Gone are the days where it was acceptable to make customers wait several days for a response.

Video calls and screen sharing can reduce the time spent on customer support tickets by avoiding unnecessary back-and-forth conversations. Feederloop allows you to do exactly that, straight from your website. Anyone on your website can start a video call with you without ever leaving your site. This allows you to answer queries quickly without being slowed down by emails or text chats.

By seeing your customer's screen in real-time, there's no need for screenshots or lengthy explanations when trying to solve queries.

Prioritize And Systematize Your Support Activities

It can be all too easy to spend much of your day responding to customer support inquiries via email or phone when you're running a business. After all, every one of those inquiries represents a potential new sale or a valuable customer.

Whether you're a solo founder, managing a small team or have a dedicated customer support team, it's easy to get buried under an avalanche of incoming support requests.

To reduce the time spent on ticketing activities, it's helpful to define a clear process for handling requests from prospects and customers alike - and then make sure that everyone follows it when dealing with these inquiries.

Ideally, your support process should be designed to reduce your workload while still ensuring timely, complete responses to queries. When setting up a new system, start by making a list of your support activities and then prioritize them.

Educate Customers Through Email Sequences

Email and marketing automation tools like Mailchimp and Drip not only provide email sequences but also trigger based emails.

Create automated email sequences that educate new users on your product or service in an effort to empower them with all the knowledge they need before they reach out to customer support.

Additionally, you can setup triggers in your app which send out an email when a customer performs a certain action. For example, your app might provide the ability to create a team. Creating a trigger which sends an email to the user when they create a team which illustrates how best to use the team management functionality can go a long way to reducing support requests.

Conclusion

The amount of time spent on customer support often grows at the same rate as your business, sometimes even faster. The tide of incoming support requests can slow further development in other areas of the business if it is managed correctly.

The first key mitigation in this area is to create an FAQ and knowledge base. These should help reduce the most common customer support queries while serving as an area to direct customers to for self help.

The next step is to reach for automation and real-time engagement tools which will not only help categorize and automate part of your customer support process, but will also provide your customers with fast, responsive answers which is expected in today's age.