Information technology services that lack even the most basic customer support collect a slew of criticisms and drive customers away. It’s because the foundation of the entire industry is not only built on innovation but also in management and support.
So whether you’re a small team developing a new application or a huge enterprise profiting from automation, there’s no denying that customer support is vital to all organizations. Having reliable customer service guarantees that each incoming request—from inquiries from potential customers to questions from present patrons—is responded to and handled efficiently.
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In your IT business, quality production and adequate marketing strategies are not enough. You need to address your core customer service and discover why is customer service important in information technology:
Customer is king. We’re all familiar with that. Exceptional customer service support is rewarded with happy customers, which, in turn, lead to repeated sale and increased brand loyalty.
The Global State of Customer Service reported that 90% of over 5,000 respondents said that customer service affects purchasing decisions and brand loyalty.
If the quality of your customer support is highly commendable, customers are more than likely to share positive feedback about their experience and interaction with your brand. They can do so by word of mouth, through review platforms or better yet, recommend you through their social media channels, which is extremely good for you if you’re establishing brand awareness.
In addition to this, when rewards for reviews motivate buyers to spread the word about your customer service, it is mandatory to have the best ongoing customer support.
Although sales representatives are mostly charged with upselling and cross-selling, this method of raking up revenue is not entirely exclusive to them. Thanks to the fact that customer support specialists stay connected with customers, they can also be the star player in this significant field.
Employees who work with your company’s customer support system have sufficient knowledge on resolving the issues surrounding your products and services. They know how to fix them, but most of all, they assist your clients whenever a problem surfaces with their purchase.
Sometimes, the solution to these hurdles lie in some extra features or require an upgraded subscription that provides them access to exclusive perks.
Representatives from information technology support can genuinely bring up these add-ons and upgrades and help customers while securing an upsell.
As for cross-selling, they can talk to clients and check if they need additional tools that can boost their satisfaction with the current products they possess.
Customer lifetime value (CLV), the total revenue you can acquire from one customer account, is an essential metric to anybody operating an enterprise. Fostering this value translates to more frequent purchases and stronger support from your client.
According to Criteo, CLV holds more weight than brand loyalty, since it provides a more precise view of a customer’s true value. Although extremely essential, the research says that two-thirds of its respondents admit that they could still maximize CLV by learning and improving in-house skills and overcoming tracking costs.
Focusing on your ongoing customer support is an excellent strategy to enhance CLV. If clients have a remarkable experience with your service and support teams, they’ll be more likely to buy from you again or at least share their positive engagement with other potential purchasers, which strengthens the rapport of your consumer base.
To relate to our second point, this established trustworthiness enables you to upsell and cross-sell with less friction. New patrons will believe your representatives are recommending products they truly need, and in turn, both your customers and employees will enjoy a seamless purchasing experience.
Providing exceptional customer support is anchored on knowledge shared across your organization’s departments. Your staff must also be aware of its leaders’ expectations. They also need to be able to connect various goals with each other through communication, so that they can move forward in a single direction.
Collaboration is the key to achieving this. Unless your company wants to throw all its gathered data to the fire, development, information technology support, retail and management should not be working in a silo.
Data management is a crucial aspect in developing a robust customer service strategy. To improve customer experience, support staff must have a gateway to a broad range of information regarding each client. In turn, customers must also be empowered to help themselves resolve these issues.
Be that as it may, information is often misspent if employees don’t put their heads and hands together, so to accomplish this, organizations acquire a customer service system equipped with collaboration tools that foster productivity and effective teamwork.
However, if you’ve decided to make your ongoing customer support remote, you’re best to equip yourself with team collaboration solutions you can find on the 12 telecommuting pros and cons to consider when adopting remote work.
We’ve mentioned in our previous point that effective customer service support in IT services relies on efficient data management. Companies that optimize knowledge management successfully establish customer satisfaction. They do so with a customer service system that is equipped with features such as automatic updates, dissemination and access to data. They also share mastered solutions and relevant information regarding an item or a function among departments.
This produces contented clients because as soon as they pick up the phone or register into the automated chat or shoot an email, they get help from a well-informed representative who absolutely knows their history and demands and can swiftly recommend a solution. Time is of the essence here, since downtime can really cost your business a lot.
Being able to organize information also provides clients with tools to get by on their own. Today’s consumers are too tech savvy to be fully facilitated; hence, companies need to rethink their strategies and begin to promote customer collaboration.
For instance, forums are a good place to independently find information they need to troubleshoot their problems. This also results in an information technology support that is able to deflect tickets and allot more time and energy in fixing more complicated issues.
Customer perception is extremely important.
Let’s say you’re offering mobile device management to organizations who want to set up a bring-your-own-device program. You might limit your brand association to providing services that reinforce IT security. Your values may be centered on the urgency of cyber security. However, your clients might avail these services because they link your brand with OS updates, device monitoring as well as troubleshooting and repairing remote machines. So, you should direct your marketing strategies to those aspects too.
Your information technology support team can supply you with answers to these detailed questions. Instead of wasting resources on regularly surveying customers, your employees can do the honor of inquiring while engaging with clients.
Their response can provide you with plenty of insights on improving your services, changing your marketing strategy, setting your goals and educating your employees. Without customer service support, your brand can be left in the dust when it comes to rapidly evolving consumer trends.
In order for patrons to successfully navigate the increasingly complex IT environment, they need to work with customer service support to effectively resolve their issues and maximize their resources.
Additionally, the quality of the support provided to customers has a great impact on their brand loyalty, and because of this, more and more enterprises in the information technology sector are relying on a customer support system.
To collect requests and reach out to clients, organizations use special tools to oversee different types of customer service in a cost-effective way. They utilize solutions that can monitor requests and evaluate how these requests were handled. They also have functions that save time by eliminating the need for emailing involved employees and switching it for simple notifications for team members.
At Madha Hosting, we offer managed IT support and remote management alongside our slew of IT services. We know that exceptional customer service is a competitive advantage and we are willing to help keep your customers loyal and always engaged with your brand.
