Part II: Optimizing Your Company’s SaaS Support

How to Optimize Your Company’s SaaS Support

Over the past few years, it has been prevalent how organizations reaped numerous benefits from adopting software as a service (SaaS) business models. Evidently, SaaS revolutionized how professionals from managed IT services in the Philippines deal with IT problems. Furthermore, this innovation also improved the scalability, flexibility, and mobility of businesses.

Although it’s undeniable how the dawn of SaaS changed the business world, it also raised new challenges for company owners—one of them is the challenge of establishing a reliable SaaS support system.

To help you in this matter, here is a list of best practices you can follow to improve your company’s SaaS customer support:

    1. Make Sure That the Support Widget Is Easy to Find

No matter how much developers try to create the perfect software, bugs and issues are inevitable because of human error. Although SaaS developers have relentlessly looked for ways to provide updates and patches for the overlooked vulnerabilities, the inconvenience these problems cause can be frustrating for customers. The last thing frustrated customers want when they encounter problems in your website is a support widget or link that’s difficult to find. That’s why it’s essential for businesses to be mindful of their support widget’s placement on their website.

When it comes to SaaS websites, it’s important to remember that simplicity is better than complexity. So if you’re eyeing to get customer feedback, then creating a user-friendly website should be your priority.

 2. Answer Customer Questions Promptly with Live Chat

When you take a look at the marketing environment today, you will see that consumers now have high expectations regarding customer service. Unlike before, customers nowadays demand that their concerns are heard and addressed right away. That’s why it’s important for business owners to devise a strategy to accomplish this.

The best way businesses can achieve this goal is by providing a live chat system for their customers. This customer support channel enables users to ask questions and get real-time answers easily. Hence, it is a great way to improve your company’s SaaS support system.

3.Create an FAQ Page to Help Self-Service Users

Most often than not, the first thing a customer does when they encounter challenges while using a SaaS company’s tool or feature is to visit their frequently asked questions (FAQ) page. You may not realize this but most end-users prefer self-service support over speaking to a company customer service representative. For this reason, it is ideal for business owners to make their FAQ page relevant to customers.

The first step you can take to do this is to study the common questions customers usually come up with when they use your services and create in-depth content about it. Not only will this foster a good user experience, but it will also help you reduce the number of support tickets your company receives.

4. Formulate a Long-term Fix for Support Requests

Another way that you can optimize your company’s SaaS support services is by learning from experience. Giving quick fixes to the support tickets you receive won’t do you any good if the issues keep recurring. With that said, it’s essential that you examine each ticket you receive carefully and deal with the root of the problem—it can be bugs, missing features, or confusing features. By doing this, you’ll be able to improve your SaaS accordingly and provide a long-term fix for the concerns that your customers encounter. Hence, it is certainly an effective way to improve your company’s SaaS support service.

5. Categorize Customer Issues

Apart from formulating long-term solutions for IT issues, it’s also helpful to categorize the problems customers encounter every day. The best way that organizations can execute this is by automating the categorization of requests. Although customer requests are usually directed to the company’s customer support team, they’re not the only ones responsible for these tickets. Every issue involves a specific department. That said, it’s essential for companies to categorize the support tickets they receive and delegate authority to the departments that are involved if they want to improve their SaaS support. 

6. See to it That All Support Requests Go to One Place

Because of the advancements in technology at present, customers are now able to contact and engage with your SaaS support anywhere—email, Twitter, Facebook, Live chat, etc. In order to provide good customer service, it is a necessity for organizations to engage with their customers in various ways through different mediums.

One of the dilemmas that they faced while doing this is the challenge of tracking previous customer conversations. Most companies that dealt with this issue effectively integrated support platforms and channels that place messages in one place. Apart from tracking previous conversations, this has also helped numerous businesses track the issues that they have resolved in the past.

7. Set A Customer Support Standard

One of the best ways that business owners can ensure high-quality customer service to their customers is by setting a standard that will direct your support team’s operations. Through establishing this set of rules and regulations, employees will get a guide that they can turn to as they deliver your company’s services. With that said, it is undeniable that it is a great way to optimize your business’ SaaS support.

To assist you in setting a customer support standard for your company, here are a few of the common factors that most business owners based on in making their standard:

• Employee response speed.
• Method of how customers should be greeted.
• How and when do you perform customer follow up.
• Track requests and make sure that nothing escapes through the cracks.
• How you respond to specific situations

8. Hire The Right Support Staff

Every SaaS company has the capacity to thrive if they have the right staff for their customer support team. As business owners, it is your responsibility to ensure that the staff you hire are enthusiastic and hardworking. By doing this, you’ll be able to get the peace of mind that the customer service your employees provide is top quality.

If you ask professionals from IT consulting services, they’ll be able to attest to the fact that no high-end SaaS application feature can ever compare to good customer service. For this reason, it’s important to be careful with the people you hire for your SaaS support team.

9. Anticipate Your Customer's Future Needs

As you can see, there is a great variety of competing products existing at present—each of them offers different business perks to users. That’s why if you want to stay ahead of the game in SaaS support services, it’s fundamental that you know how to anticipate your customers’ future needs. The more you can predict and proactively resolve customer concerns, the better the overall user experience you can give to your customers. Other than that, anticipating future needs can also help your customer support service leave room for growth. With that said, it is unmistakably a wise way to optimize your services.

10. Build A Trustful Relationship with Your Customer

Evidently, customer support teams that build trustful professional relationships with their customers thrive best in the business world. When you provide end-users responsive and personalized customer support on the channels that they prefer, you will be able to connect to them at another level.

Customers want to feel like they are genuinely cared for. That’s why trustful relationships are considered by experts as a key element in enhancing your business’ SaaS support service.

11. Ask Customers for Feedback Regarding Your Customer Service Agents

In order to improve the quality of your services, it’s essential that you ask for feedback from your customers. By asking them to review your services after their sessions, you will be able to gain insight into your customer support system’s strengths and weaknesses. Aside from that, this also allows you to assess the performance of your employees as they help you run your company. Make the most of your customers’ feedback about your services to improve the end-user experience your company’s SaaS delivers.

Why Good Customer Support is Necessary for SaaS Companies

The development of the SaaS models over the past few years clearly made it easier for developers to introduce new products to the market. Because of this, more and more companies made use of SaaS business models to help their organizations thrive. As the companies that made use of SaaS increased in number, SaaS vendors started to sprout up all around the world.

At present, it is evident that the competition between SaaS companies is tight. Even though this is the case, these companies can still get the upper hand by ensuring their customers’ satisfaction. One way that businesses can do that is by making available good customer support services.

Over the years, it has been seen that the SaaS companies that prioritized customer satisfaction we're able to thrive and retain customers despite the competition. That said, it is crucial that you make the delivery of good customer service your top priority if you want to ensure your business’ success.