How to Improve and Scale Your SaaS Customer Support Strategy

Are you looking for new ways to grow your SaaS company? 

Here’s an idea for you: Instead of investing even more money in outbound tactics, work on your in-house structure first.

To start, start working on your SaaS customer support strategy. 

Why is Customer Support Strategy Crucial to SaaS Business Success?

Customer support is the foundation of a successful business. 

Your SaaS customer support team is at the forefront of your company making sure your customers get what they need and solving any problems they can be having.

There are lots of studies showing just how important customer support is. Here are just a few numbers:

• According to PWC, 86% of consumers are eager to pay more for a good customer service
• According to research by Microsoft, almost 60% of US consumers will switch companies because of poor customer service. 
• Almost 90% of consumers admit that they are eager to make another purchase after a positive customer experience, according to Salesforce, and 80% of consumers will continue doing business with a company even after a mistake, all thanks to a good customer support
• Three of five customers admit that they remain loyal to a brand just because they love their customer support, according to Zendesk

I could go on, but really we all get the point here: Customer support is crucial in just about any industry.

In other words, if you are not taking your customer support team seriously, this is a good time that you shift your priorities now.

Your customer team is your most important asset.

Further reading: How First-Class Customer Service Impacts Every Aspect of a Startup 

How to Improve and Streamline Your Customer Support?

So how to make your customer support team more productive and effective in helping your customers? Here are a few fundamental steps to take:

Create and Organize Your Help Materials

Train your customer support team well. As simple as that. In fact, investing in new customers is about 20 times more expensive than retaining existing ones, according to Invesp.

Well-trained customer support team is a long-term investment.

How well does your customer support team know your product? Do they speak the same language as you and your customers? How fast can they find an article or a video that can answer a customer’s question?

A well set-up knowledge base will empower your customer team with all the resources they need to get to know your product better and quickly find a link to send to your customer.

Additionally, it is always a good idea to have your customer support team to regularly sit through your product demos to keep them informed on various features and sales points of your platform. Another great idea is to implement a Kanban board in teams to streamline workflows and improve collaboration.

PayKickstart has a detailed and searchable knowledge base explaining all the features and integrations:

Put together a Communication Strategy for Your SaaS Business

Communication strategy is the collection of guidelines your team is using when communicating internally or externally when representing you.

It consists of various policies and tutorials on how to talk about your product when discussing it on your behalf.

Encourage Proactive Support

Your customer support team’s job is not just about helping those who found time and energy to reach out.

They also need to re-engage your inactive customers, reach out to those who seem to be lost, and monitor and reply to your current or potential customers on social media. 

A useful timely reply on social media can turn an angry customer in a brand ambassador, and you just cannot put a price on brand loyalty.

How to Scale Your Customer Support

With so much going on, how can you scale your customer support team to make it more effective? Here are a few ideas:

Implement a Ticket System

Many business owners I know consider the ticket system cumbersome. 

Yet, using a ticket system for your customer support is the best way to streamline it. You can keep record of your customers’ questions, allow your team to delegate certain messages to other departments (like accounting and product development teams), identify your most active and successful team members, etc.

Platforms like TalkDesk or Zendesk are minimal and easy to integrate, yet pretty impressive in terms of functionality.

A well-integrated customer support ticket system will help you better understand your customers and measure your team’s progress as well as your company’s growth. You can even turn into a community on its own domain where customers will be able to help one another and suggest new features.

Encourage Cross-Department Collaboration

In many companies, a customer support team acts like an island that seldom talks to anyone inside the organization. This is a huge loss causing organization silos.

Your customer team will be much more effective if you integrate it with the rest of your company and let the knowledge sharing happen. Your product team, for example, may share quite a bit of ideas on how to position your product the way it is most helpful and useful to your customers.

On the other hand, your customer support team will have quite a bit of insight to share with your product development team helping them to improve your products and fix some errors.

Additionally, both your customer support and social media teams will benefit from working together because they will be able to collaborate on replying to your customers’ public questions and comments, respond to reviews, and promote positive mentions and testimonials.

There are quite a few tools allowing companies to improve cross-team collaboration. These include Slack, Trello and Wrike.

Further reading:

• How to Structure an Effective SaaS Customer Support
• Are You Overthinking Your Customer Service Approach?
• Creating a WOW Customer Service Experience
• PayKickstart’s Award-Winning Customer Support
• 10 Customer Communication Strategies That’ll Improve Your Sales
• 5 Ways to Provide a Stellar Customer Experience

Conclusion

A solid customer support strategy is fundamental to your SaaS business support because it determines your customer satisfaction, keeps your users active and improves your customer retention metrics. 

A well-integrated and empowered customer support team will help you improve your product, build customer loyalty and turn customers into brand ambassadors. Invest your time into improving your customer support strategy and you will enjoy all kinds of long-term benefits!

Ann Smarty

Ann Smarty is the Brand Manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas, as well as co-founder of Viral Content Bee. Ann has been into Internet Marketing for over a decade, she is the former Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Journal and contributor to prominent search and social blogs including Small Biz Trends and Mashable. Ann is also the frequent speaker at Pubcon and the host of a weekly Twitter chat #vcbuzz

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