The quality of the customer experience is a determining factor of a successful business. 50% of consumers tend to switch to an alternative brand after one bad experience. Should there be an additional negative incident, this figure rises exponentially.

Add this to the higher cost of acquiring new customers compared to retaining the existing customer base, and one thing is exceedingly clear:

Customer experience is a key driver of business growth with the potential to make or break your business.

Benefits of working with customer support for product managers

Customer support is an integral aspect of a customer experience. It should, therefore, be a key concern for:

• eCommerce site owners
• New product managers
• Professionals in the product management field

If any of the above describes you, you should constantly work to make your business more customer-centric by refining the experience you deliver to customers. Think of consumer experiences from a holistic perspective, considering every step of the consumer journey from end to end.

Product managers, in particular, should strive to make exemplary service and customer support a reality. That’s because product management is the point of intersection between the business and the user.

Today we’ll explore some insights that can help you make your business more customer-centric and accrue benefits such as:

• Improved customer satisfaction
• Improved customer retention
• Higher chances of referrals

Rethink Customer Support

Before we can offer solutions, we must identify the problems that warrant them. And prior to establishing the problems, it’s imperative that we clearly identify who’s experiencing them.

That’s where many product managers, product teams, and customer support teams go wrong. They fail at adequately providing customer support due to their positioning.

Anyone within the company is susceptible to blind spots. Why? It’s simple — you have the advantage of an insider’s perspective, but your customer doesn’t.  

This means that there’s a great deal that you may not be picking up on from the customer’s perspective. Find these missing puzzle pieces and gain a broader view of the bigger picture.

User Analytics

Regardless of its nature, every business needs to understand its consumers. User analytics allow you to clearly identify who your customers are at the most convenient point of contact.

Map out their entire customer journey with session replays, and gain unparalleled insight on when, where, and how users use your product.

Heatmaps & Screen Analytics

Heatmaps and screen analytics are crucial, as they enable you to pinpoint the user intent that’s motivating your customers. It’s essential to understand your customers’ user intent to provide them with precisely what they want and need.

Considering that most consumers expect businesses to have a deep understanding of their unique needs and expectations, this is especially important. Instead of resulting in a call for support, doing so minimizes the chances of customer issues occurring in the first place. In addition, the heatmaps and screen analytics contribute to the low bounce rate by giving you the data necessary to enhance your user experience.

Funnel Analytics

Funnel analytics are a powerful way to gauge customer experiences. They help you understand why users drop off and allow you to compare the experiences of customers who drop off with those who don’t. That way, you can identify bottlenecks, problem areas, and onboarding, activation, or conversion issues.

Join the Customer Support Front Lines

Another way you can improve customer support services is by immersing yourself in the day-to-day work of customer support representatives at your company.

As a product manager, you understand the product from the inside out. But, on the other hand, the support agents are well-equipped to offer technical support when a customer support interaction arises.

Spend some time working alongside the team and learn the responsibilities of a customer support representative. Work through their process, observe their approaches, and understand the challenges they encounter.

The outcome will be a more streamlined and unified approach when dealing with all customer-related matters.

Take a Deep Dive Into Customer Complaints

When customers experience issues, the customer service team is their first contact point. At this point, the only thing more frustrating than the issue at hand is an underwhelming response.

This is why you ought to look more closely into customer inquiries. What’s their nature? How long do customers typically have to wait for assistance? What issues keep recurring?

Collecting this information will significantly benefit you and the customer support team to improve communication on standard channels or process customer complaints.

For instance, over 50% of customers from different age groups typically reach out to customer support via phone. Working with your support agents on an efficient workflow for handling phone calls can help you resolve issues faster.

Adding a live chat support feature could also be something you want to consider. It makes accessing support from the customer service department easier while offering a personalized approach.

Digitize Your Tech Support

According to HubSpot, 90% of customers rate an “immediate” response as important or very important.

In many cases, however, there are various issues to address and a large number of customers to please. Therefore, delivering timely resolutions and fast customer support can be an uphill task for customer support agents.

For this reason, you should consider taking up support automation.

Support automation refers to building processes and systems that minimize the need for agent intervention/involvement in delivering service and support to customers.

This approach helps achieve the balance between minimizing pressure on customer service agents and delivering the best customer support and overall experience.

69% of customers prefer to resolve their issues on their own at first. And yet, less than a third of companies offer self-service options such as a knowledge base. So, make the most of digitization and build knowledge on user experiences and the issues they encounter.

Conclusively, you should enrich the support your customers receive by blending your experiences, those of the customer service team, and your strategy with technology.

Conclusion

As a product manager, there’s no shortage of issues to keep you on your feet all day and keep you up at night.

Thankfully, we live in a time where there are just as many solutions to help you and the tech support teams you work with along the way. Tweak processes to improve efficiency, solve problems more effectively, and, most importantly, provide excellent customer support.