2. Choose the right tech stack
Giving your support team the right tools and resources ensures maximum efficiency and productivity. What do we recommend for the optimal SaaS customer support tech stack? A customer relationship management system (CRM) to store data, a knowledge base to serve as a repository for all product knowledge, and a virtual agent to automate and optimize aspects of your customer support.
Centralize your customer data with a CRM
Firstly, you’ll want a CRM. This software stores all your customer data and allows your agents to quickly draw information from it, enabling the personalized customer experiences your customers want. Since your customer data is all in one place, it also becomes easier to analyze that data at scale and draw conclusions about your customer base.
Enable self-service with a robust knowledge base
Secondly, implement some sort of knowledge base. Think of your knowledge base as an online library of information about your product. It houses everything from product documentation to how-to guides to the answers to your most frequently asked questions. It can serve as a first line of defense for your customer service team, allowing your customers to look for answers themselves before contacting support. This type of option is actually preferred by 67% of customers, so not only does it reduce incoming tickets, it provides a better customer experience.
Maximize ROI with an AI chatbot or a virtual agent
Last, but certainly not least, adding an AI chatbot or a virtual agent to your tech stack will help you make the most of the other tools you’ve invested in. An AI chatbot can live on your website and allow your customers to get instant 24/7 help. A chatbot solution can surface articles in your knowledge base and answer frequently asked questions, significantly curbing the number of incoming tickets, but a virtual agent takes this a step further.
A virtual agent can automate responses not only on live chat, but also on email, social media, and even WhatsApp. Furthermore, it can automate processes in the backend of your systems to help your team work smarter, not harder. It can triage requests, route them to the right agent, and enrich them with information it gathers from your customer to make life easier for your agents.
To truly get the most value out of your existing technology, you can integrate your virtual agent into your tech stack so it can fetch data from your CRM and other back office systems. This means that some processes are automated end-to-end, with no human involvement needed, maximizing your support team’s efficiency.
Learn how to wow your customers with entirely automated, no-touch support on Zendesk.
"The main challenge of working with SaaS customer support is that the inquiries they receive can be very complex, and so, in turn, is the help they provide. That can be difficult when building out automation workflows, but when done correctly, it can take a lot of work off the shoulders of the support team."
- Ethan Scott, Customer Success Manager, Ultimate
3. Develop customer-centric processes
Your customer support processes guide everything you do, so it’s important that they keep your customers’ best interests at the forefront. The best SaaS support processes are proactive rather than reactive and are developed by listening to customer feedback and key success metrics.
Be proactive, not reactive
Simply reacting when a problem occurs won’t cut it for SaaS customers in 2023. Providing proactive solutions that prevent problems from occurring, or at least informing your customers of a problem before it can escalate, is the way forward. The best way to reduce reactive communication is by ensuring excellent onboarding. By teaching your customers the ins and outs of your product right at the beginning of your journey together, you decrease their dependency on your customer support team.
Next, be sure to continue this proactive approach by informing your customer base of regular updates. Send out email newsletters or have your customer success team contact your customers directly to inform them of new features or updates to the product so they know how to use them right away.
Finally, when issues do arise, be sure to notify them before it can become a bigger problem. This serves double duty to curb incoming contacts about the issue and reassure your customers that you are aware of what’s going on and are taking care of it.
Collect customer feedback
Customer service interactions are a valuable opportunity to get your customers’ opinions. Collect feedback and reviews to see what your customers love and what your customer support team could improve upon.
Give them lots of opportunities to give that feedback: include links at the end of livechat conversation or emails interactions to customer feedback surveys. Use the surveys to measure things like customer satisfaction (CSAT) or net promoter score (NPS). Then use this information to change your processes and offerings.
Monitor it, measure it, and make it better
Speaking of metrics… make sure you’ve determined certain aspects of your support that you’re keeping an eye on and working to improve. Establish KPIs and monitor your performance against them.
Some SaaS customer support KPIs could include:
- Reducing average handling time (AHT)
- Increasing first contact resolution rate (FCR)
- Lowering transfer times and rates between departments
- Increasing automation rate (if you have an automation solution)
- Improving your NPS and your CSAT
By monitoring these metrics, you can discover if your support team is able to resolve problems efficiently and effectively and if your customers are happy with the support you provide. If they’re not happy, you have a data-driven roadmap of what you need to improve.
Examples of SaaS customer support best practices in action
Zendesk
Zendesk is literally in the business of customer support, so you know their customer support is stellar. This top-notch CRM software provider checks off pretty much every best practice on the list with a robust knowledge base, 24/7 multilingual support, a virtual agent powered by Ultimate’s industry-leading AI, tools that are built-in to their software to track the most important metrics and KPIs, and more. It’s no wonder Zendesk tops the list of best customer support providers and best customer support software lists alike.
Slack
Slack has become the ubiquitous messaging platform for businesses, especially for other SaaS companies and start-ups. Part of their success is due to their incredible customer support. They offer self-service support with a huge amount of useful troubleshooting articles. Slack also encourages feedback from its users so they can alter the product to suit their customers’ needs. It’s personalized service at its best.
ActiveCampaign
Leading SaaS platform and marketing automation solution ActiveCampaign is trusted by 150,000+ businesses around the world. And for good reason: their happy customers can receive customer support in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese, can contact customer support via any digital channel, and can rest assured they’ll receive instant support from the company’s virtual agent 24 hours a day.
How to deliver SaaS customer support success in 2023
Good customer support truly underpins any good SaaS company. With ever-increasing competition and high customer churn rates abounding for SaaS companies, successful support teams make sure their team has everything they need to be successful, implement the right technology to maximize productivity, and establish customer-centric processes that they improve upon. Following these best practices for SaaS customer support will help you retain customers, stand out from the crowd, and see success in 2023 and beyond.