When customers encounter a technical glitch or problem and have to reach out to customer support, they’re already frustrated. It’s not enough to just deliver quick resolutions to their problems with the right technical expertise; you need the right people and tools in place to enable a customer experience that’s empathetic, proactive, and seamless.
More than ever, customer experience (CX) needs to be entwined with tech support. As applications and digital products become increasingly central to customers’ daily lives, technical support has grown inseparable from CX. Even if you solve a customer’s technical issue, for instance, you could still lose their business if doing so takes too long or is too arduous a process.
It’s important to strike the right balance between customer care and tech support to ensure you’re answering customers’ questions and solving problems as quickly and easily as possible. Investing in both can lead to higher CSAT, better first call resolution rates, gains in productivity, shorter hold times and increased revenue – all at a lower cost to you.
Customer care, tech support require different skillsets
They’re both key parts of a business— customer care and technical support associates are your front line and often the face of your brand. But whilst these two teams should work in tandem, it’s also important to acknowledge the differences between the two.
The main differences between customer support and tech support associates lies in their experience and training. Customer support associates are trained in how to help customers on a human level – with empathy and understanding – and strive to deliver a great customer experience. Tech support associates focus on challenges related to products, services, or systems and have the technical expertise to solve those problems quickly.
A customer support associate might help customers with tracking shipments, issuing refunds, or answering questions related to a warranty when there’s a problem, whereas technical support associates may focus on password resets, product replacements, navigation issues, and fraud support.
Tech support also has the ability and the in-depth knowledge to resolve issues and ensure proper functioning on demand. They can offer remote assistance tools such as screen sharing to diagnose or resolve technical issues.
Don’t assume a customer service associate can do a tech support associate’s job, or vice versa.
It pays to focus on CX and tech support
To deliver the type of experience that will keep customers loyal to your brand, your customer support and technical support teams need to work together. You can’t focus on one or the other; you need both.
As part of their day-to-day work, both teams gather insights into customer pain points, complaints, or suggestions, which makes them well-positioned to pass this valuable feedback on to relevant departments for product improvement and innovation. This feedback loop helps your company reduce the amount of time spent repeatedly fixing the same errors over and over.
Make sure you have data analytics tools that make it easy for these teams to turn feedback into actionable insights, and workflow processes in place that let findings be easily shared among departments.
Another benefit of marrying CX with tech support is that, with the right technology in place, your customer should be able to seamlessly flow between contact channels and between CX and tech support staff. Representatives should get accurate up-to-the second information about customers, their history, and their preferences.
Find a partner that specialises in both
Making sure your tech support operation is infused with the right CX focus isn’t easy, but expert help is available. Working with a partner that specializes in both customer experience and tech support lets you tap into the tools, technology, and people you need to take each to the next level.
When your tech support and customer care are left in expert hands, you’re free to focus on the core competencies of your business and what you do best.
