So we all have this one thing that we wish we could do differently or better. Besides the fact that you are planning to take a savage revenge on your ex! Alright, Serious talks from now on. Being a SaaS company, what's the one thing you wish you could amend?
I know you'd probably have a long list of things to do. If you are a startup that is looking to deliver rational and poignant customer support solutions at an affordable rate without skyrocketing your budget; then you've reached the right place. Worry not, we've got you covered. We'll give you pointers on how to provide stellar customer support which is cost-effective and carved to perfection. Without further ado, let's dive in!
Effective ways for customer support cost reduction
All business owners comprehend the prevalence of high customer support costs. The following are effective strategies companies have followed to cut-down costs effectively.
- Enabling live chatbot process to provide customers’ simple queries with instant solutions.
- Follow an iron-clad hiring process to onboard only the right people to your company.
- Invest in Onboarding and training processes for employees which would give customers a highly knowledgeable base.
- Offering Self-service support to customers.
- Raising issues through social media which customers are familiar with and also gets quick responses.
Rather than investing a lot on each aspect mentioned above, there is yet another effective way which could solve most of the problems under a single roof. It is all about quality over quantity. Community building is a meandering process, have patience and invest quality time, you will witness your community grow over time steadily and organically.
How can an online community save dollars on customer support?
Let's be real! You can't spend a lot on expanding your customer support to meet burgeoning demand, especially when you are in the nascent stage of developing your company. So why not do something about it, when you can? Sounds surrealistic? Check out how top SaaS companies carried out brilliant ways with reduced customer support costs.
A solution to cut down your customer support costs effectively is to start an online community for your brand. Hold your horses! Not only does it help in minimalism, but there are a plethora of benefits of having a branded online community and it could reprogram the conventional way of your entire organization optimizing its ubiquity, cut down your costs, and also help you reach a wider range of audiences.
Okay, we'll tell you how it can help your organization, keep reading and you will be appalled!
Why and when should you direct your crowd to your online community?
Like mentioned above, do the analysis, try to get the information about the most and repetitive asked questions by your customers, and see how many hours and money spent on resolving those simple and common issues by your customer support.
Reality hits you hard when you realize you are wasting a lot of time and money on redundant questions. This is the time -- to allow your customers to embrace your community. Not sure what your customers are seeking from your community? Here are different ways to find out what your customers expect from you.
When you guide your customers to an online community platform where other customers discuss and help each other out, your customers are satisfied and they also spread the word about your brand that they find very interesting.
This way you can decrease a significant volume of traffic to your customer support tickets and also it results in happy satisfied customers. Two birds and one stone. Mission accomplished!
Allow your customers to connect with brand advocates & ambassadors
Make your brand experts and peers be a part of your online community. They can not only give a solution to any customer's problem, but they can also give ideas from a customer's perspective because they are such experts at it.
Allow your customers to connect with brand experts, peers, and advocates in your community, ask a few questions depending on their needs, they can either find a solution for their issues or ask a bunch of questions related to their issues, your brand experts would be able to solve most of your customer's conundrums.
Allowing customers to engage with peers will make your customers feel special and it will implicitly pave a way to boost your brand sales and customer loyalty! Another pro of having a brand expert is that he can help you prioritize the most important tickets for your customer support team. Somebody, please keep a count on the list of pros of having a branded online community, cause I'm losing track of it.
Online community is a classic masterwork!
Integrate your community with your support system
Just because customers can find your online community helpful doesn't mean you should rule out having your entire customer support team, because it's obsolete! It's a big NO! An online community works as a portal to segue your customer's problems and can send the support tickets along with an entire thread to a support representative, who can look into the history of customer's issues. This makes the dirty work easy for both the customer and the support team.
So integrating your community with the support system will help you have a more methodical, precise, and organized customer support system.
BONUS: Integrating community with support allows you to let off the steam of the customer support team and cuts down a lot of time and expenditure.
Post the status updates on a few redundant questions and issues
When your support team is frequently bombarded with a shortlist of issues that they have been receiving from a lot of customers, then post an update in the community stating -- " We've been asked the following questions by our customers often, and we thought we would post our answers/solutions here(If you have any) or else -- Working on this high-priority issue to resolve it within 24 hours, we kindly request you to hold on a little longer and while we work on it, we appreciate you for your patience!"
Why make your customers wait for hours? When you could give them a solution right away with the help of your community. Easy-breezy! Just like that, you will provide many of your customers with a solution. If that's not the case, at least they will be patient just because of the status update. This again saves so much time and money for your organization. And also your customers wouldn't be disgruntled since they have an update on the intricate issue. Less dissatisfied customers.
Statistical data and a few pointers
Having an online community is beneficial in many ways, especially community and support systems are considered partners. The following are a few statistical data and important factors of having an online community.
- Having an online community will improve your support costs by 33%.
- Hundreds of queries can be solved by directing customers directly to the most resourceful community.
- You can make your customers feel special and privileged by striking up a conversation with your brand advocates in your community.
- Having an online community will increase brand awareness, boost sales, customer engagement, and satisfaction.
- A community can decrease about 28% of support tickets volume.
- It enables customer success, loyalty and provides valuable insights into your product.
It would be such a disappointment if you aren't still convinced to start your own brand community. If you are looking for options to choose from a list of community building platforms, then why not start with us? We provide a free 30-day trial. We make community-building process simpler and fun.
We also have weekly fun and candid conversation with a bunch of community enthusiasts, Sounds exciting? Then grab a cup of coffee(preferably cold coffee) and join us here. If you are looking for a preview of our past interesting conversations in cold coffee and community, then check out here.