Are you ready for 2020?
By Françoise Tourniaire, Founder and Owner of FT Works and Member of the ASP Executive Advisory Board
It’s this time of the year when we think, or rather, we know that we are walking into a brighter future. Here are 5 ideas for improving your support operation:
- Use support data to improve the product/service. You know you want to, you know you could. What’s stopping you? Is it poor data quality? Improve and streamline how you track case information. Is it a lack of proper reporting? Fix it! You can use similar tools and a similar approach to influence how products are sold, and how customers are onboarded. Good data provides confirmation for the stories you already collect.
- Kill stupid metrics. You know you have some lurking around: new KB articles (what about quality?), portal page views (really?), daily updates to P1 cases (so easy to game!), and many, many more.
- Provide proper training to the team. There’s never enough time, and rarely enough money, right? So do you prefer providing mediocre support to customers? Be creative. Brown bags sessions and other low-key approaches can compete favorably with formal training. Here’s a completely free idea: ask the support engineers to bring “though customer” stories to the staff meeting and discuss/mentor around them.
- Get reliable customer feedback. If your customer satisfaction survey has a low response rate (anything under 10%), you might as well throw it away. The magic formula is often: use a one-question survey (shorter is better); send it to everyone (customers have proven they are very good as disregarding overly-frequent surveys), and act on the results (yes, you need to contact all customers that report being dissatisfied, and quickly, too.
- Try something new. Aim to run at least one experiment at all times. 2020 will likely be the year of support AI. Give it a go. Go kick a tire or two with a vendor.
If FT Works can help reaching your goals, or clarifying them, let me know. And tell us (in the comments): what are your 2020 goals?
Francoise Tourniaire blogs on customer success and technical support topics on the FT Works website.
This post was originally published on ftworks.com
Related Posts
ASP Announces Best Support Websites of 2021
Press Release August 26, 2021 Hot Springs, AR 71913 ASP Best Support Websites of 2021 Announced Al Hahn, Executive director of the Association of Support Professionals (ASP) today announced the winners of ASP's Best Support Websites 2021 competition. The top scoring websites were, (In Alphabetical Order:) NetApp Nutanix PowerSchool Red Hat Extra praise was garnered by Nutanix and PowerSchool for being best
The Power of Communities
Customer Success + Support: A Natural Partnership The Association of Support Professionals held an online conference Oct 6, 7 and 8th that looked at the benefits of aligning Customer Success and Support activities. During these three days, experts talked about how Customer Success and Support can work together for both the Customer and the Company. This blog highlights the first session from Mikael Blaisdell, Founder & Executive Director, The Customer Success Association.
You Need Excellent Self-Support for Your Digital Transformation
Customer Success + Support: A Natural Partnership The Association of Support Professionals held an online conference Oct 6, 7 and 8th that looked at the benefits of aligning Customer Success and Support activities. During these three days, experts talked about how Customer Success and Support can work together for both the Customer and the Company. This blog highlights the first session from Mikael Blaisdell, Founder & Executive Director, The Customer Success Association.
Customer Success + Support: A Natural Partnership
Customer Success + Support: A Natural Partnership The Association of Support Professionals held an online conference Oct 6, 7 and 8th that looked at the benefits of aligning Customer Success and Support activities. During these three days, experts talked about how Customer Success and Support can work together for both the Customer and the Company. This blog highlights the first session from Mikael Blaisdell, Founder & Executive Director, The Customer Success Association.
ASP Announces Best Support Websites of 2020
Al Hahn Executive Director ASP Best Support Websites of 2020 Announced ASP has held a support website competition for the past 22 years. Each site is judged by five independent judges who have been vetted for relevant experience. They score websites in 22 areas. This year the top five are listed below. Top Five Scoring Websites (In Alphabetical Order) Ivanti NetApp
3 Questions to Ask–and 3 Ways to Improve Your Surveys Today!
Have you ever wondered if those surveys companies relentlessly send are missing the point? You’re right. Most surveys are so flawed they’re broken. In this post, I’ll look at three ways to improve your surveys—because if flawed surveys are everywhere, possibly yours have a few problem areas too!