Guide on how to streamline Customer Service in your SaaS
- kuba560
- Nov 11, 2022
- 6 min read
Customer service is the blood that keeps your customers alive and healthy. It helps with recovering from mistakes, it keeps customers loyal and happy. And it can become a serious weapon against competition. Especially in the thick crowd of SaaS companies.
But with all the other things you have to do as a SaaS founder, finding time for customer service can be hard.
How do you ensure that you provide the best customer service possible? How can you make sure that your customers are happy with your product and will stay loyal? And how do you build a team who can provide excellent customer service? How not take too much time away from development or sales?
In this guide, we'll answer those questions and a few more. Find out how you can streamline your customer support system with this guide. We’ll show you how to make it easier for customers to get help from you and harder for them to leave.
Your customer service should be at a reasonable speed.
Speed is not always your friend when answering customers’ questions.
If you are too slow, they will lose interest and find someone else to help them faster. But if you're too fast—or worse, inaccurate—they'll leave with unresolved issues or concerns. Speed is important, but it's not everything. It's also important that you get the answer right the first time. If your company gives a poor service experience, people will tell their friends about it.
So how do we strike the right balance? The simple answer is — test it! Use software to gather quantitive data. Also, keep the communication going with your employees. It helps you stay in the loop about how your customer service is performing.
Make your support staff as knowledgeable as they can be.
Give them access to the right tools, and train them how to use them. Make sure they have the ability to do their job well before turning them loose on customers. Take care of the right toolkit for your Customer Specialists. They will help customers faster and with greater accuracy.
Make sure you have the right people for the job.
To streamline customer service — make sure you have the right employees. You may think this sounds obvious, but it’s important to know you have people trained in customer service. They need to understand how to interact with customers.
It’s also important to motivate them properly. If they aren’t interested in helping out, then there will be no way for them to do so efficiently or effectively.
Give them the right toolkit.
Phone lines, computers with Internet access, headsets (if applicable) — the hardware has to work seamlessly.
It’s even better to connect it to some CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system to automate repeatable actions your employees are prone to forget in a rush to answer all the requests and resolve tickets.
One of the first things most startups optimize when their company grows is the communication inside their team. It’s not just about having a dedicated space for the team to work but also about ensuring everyone is in the loop about what is happening to the company.
The same principle applies to customer support — make sure that all your employees know what they should do to answer customer requests efficiently and effectively.
A very good tool that does just that is Slack. It’s an excellent tool to ensure your employees are up to date with all the latest developments, which means they will be prepared when a customer reaches out with a question or comment.
Slack also has a dedicated App Directory with tools you can integrate with your workspace to increase productivity, streamline communication flow across different teams and automate tasks.
Speaking of automation: do you know how many times every day your employees have to switch between your company’s email, CRM, Slack, and who-knows-what-else?
Though we don’t know the numbers, we spoke with a few Customer Specialists and usually got the same response:
A LOT.
So, we came up with Lounar! The ultimate tool that integrates your communication through:
email
SMS marketing
external Slack channels
and turns it into 1 channel, dedicated only to your Customer Success team.
Having everything in one place is nice, but it doesn’t fully resolve the issue. It’s not easy to keep track of every conversation. Especially during busy periods when the requests are flowing endlessly 1 by 1.
But customers don’t know that. In fact, 44% of customers report that waiting for a response from customer service representatives is one of the biggest sources of frustration. As you can see, there’s no room for mistakes here.
Luckily, with Lounar, our AI automation system will tag every customer's email. With only 1 click, you can tag the conversation as “resolved” or “needs escalation”. It will keep all the customer requests organized. Also, Lounar will also make sure each ticket gets resolved ASAP.
We know you don’t want to risk frustrating your customers. Let’s keep the communication flow with your SaaS clients going:
Take care of the training.
Ensure each customer success team member knows how to answer the most important customer questions. Or where to go to answer quickly.
Apart from resources, find someone to take responsibility for training new hires. It’ll ensure that everyone knows what's expected of them under pressure. Especially when there's a high demand at certain times during the day or during seasonality periods throughout the year.
Don't make your customer service/support team an extra burden on the company.
As a business owner, you don't want the customer service team to be an extra burden on the company. You want them to feel like they are part of your trusted team, and that they are valued.
The last one is probably the most important, not only from the employee’s point of view. In 2020 companies spent $8 billion more on customer service representatives compared to the previous year.
And those numbers don't seem to be lowering in the upcoming future.
So, how can you take good care of your customer support team?
Make sure your customer support team is not overworked. If they're understaffed or too busy, it can lead to poor customer communication. It will also make them feel disconnected from your company.
Make sure everyone in the company understands the customer support department's needs and is ready to help them.
If people between departments need something from each other (e.g., design or engineering), ensure they know who will help them. It makes sure there's no unnecessary back-and-forth going on between departments. That will cause a lot of delays. And fewer delays = less frustrated customers.
Optimize communication flow between departments to ensure that everyone stays in the loop. That will help to keep everything more organized when something goes wrong.
Don't use bots in situations they don't do well with.
There are many reasons why bots aren't the best choice for handling customer service issues. They can be beneficial in certain situations, but some problems need a human touch.
Bots don't do well with complex issues:
Customers who need help with complicated or technical problems will likely not get the results they want from a bot. Bots have difficulty understanding complex concepts. For example, if a customer has a question about how to get paid by their employer using Stripe Connect (and they're having trouble figuring it out on their own) — they won't get much help from a chatbot. The bot may even make things worse by giving them misinformation.
Bots don't do well with emotional responses:
A chatbot can be programmed to respond in an empathetic way when a customer is upset or angry—but this doesn't always work as intended. There are many times when customers need someone else's empathy and understanding more than any amount of programming could provide them (and you).
Maybe your company already has experience dealing with emotionally charged and technical situations. In that case, consider using more experienced agents instead of bots for these requests. They'll have more practice dealing with difficult emotions than most people expect.
Never stop improving
Make sure that you're always looking for ways to improve your customer service.
This doesn't mean making small improvements regularly. Don’t be afraid to implement major changes if necessary. If you notice that your company is struggling with a particular service, take the time to develop a plan of action so that you can fix it quickly.
TL;DR — ways to level up customer service in your SaaS
Make sure your customer service answers customers’ concerns thoroughly
Train your customer care specialists well
Give them tools to optimize their workflow
Optimize communication among all departments to resolve customers’ issues faster.
Use customer care bots sparingly.
Always aim to make your customer care more efficient
Conclusion
You've heard the old saying, "the customer is always right."
Well, this applies to SaaS businesses more than ever before. You can't afford to lose customers. They can easily switch to another platform or service offering better features and benefits.
It's important to keep your customers happy. Always make sure they feel like they're getting their money's worth when working with you.
If there are any problems with the product or service — get them resolved quickly, with as little effort on the client’s side as possible. Good customer service is a serious investment. Cared-for clients are more satisfied clients, thus — willing to keep on doing business with you.
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