Why Customer Support is Crucial for Your Business (Infographic)

Customer support or customer service? It’s all semantics.

Traditionally, the term “customer service” applies to the scope of dealing with questions and complaints by the customer (i.e. the human side), while “customer support” deals with product/technical issues.

Today, customer service and customer support tend to be used interchangeably, especially in online businesses like ours (a SaaS business).

For the sake of this post, I have defined customer support as the ongoing conversation dedicated to the customer at each phase of their buying process (learning, buying, and using), while customer service is a measure of how well that support is provided. Hence, you’ll see the term “customer support” come up a lot.

Most businesses today exist in multiple forms

A single business, say McDonalds, can present itself through multiple forms – a physical form (e.g. a McDonalds brick-and-mortar store), an online form (e.g. a McDelivery website), and even a mobile form (e.g. a McDelivery app).

This leads to the creation of many customer touch-points, including customer-facing personnel at the physical stores, emails, and social media channels.

The increased number of touch-points leads to an increased number of customer interactions, requiring increased customer support. As such, implementing a sound customer support strategy is an extremely important element of a business in today’s landscape.

We’ve dug up some facts and figures to show you why.

Key Takeaway

Keeping in mind the facts and figures seen above, it is apparent that good customer support not only keeps your customers satisfied, it also increases competitive financial performance and market value for your business (source: SHRM).

We’ve extracted the essence from the infographic above and translated it into 3 actionable Cs’ for you to craft your customer support strategy:

1. Concern
2. Communication
3. Consistency

In every phase of the customer’s buying process, constantly ask yourself if you show genuine concern to your customers, if you ensure that this concern is communicated to them, and if there is consistency in the communication put forth. If the answer is yes, I’d say you’re on your way to becoming a customer support superstar.

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