Tech Support: Customer Support Solutions Crucial to Overall User Experience

Customers purchase a product to lead an easier and more comfortable life. They get frustrated easily when the purchased product stops working or when it limits them from utilizing it to the maximum capacity. Many of them may not have the right technical knowledge to fix the issue themselves. Even though knowledge bases, online forums, FAQs, and social media posts can help customers to some extent, it cannot solve major issues. Customers will stop using your product and turn to another brand if their issue does not get resolved in time. This is why technical support is crucial for businesses. Focused customer support solutions address this requirement.

How Technical Support Solutions Differ From Customer Support Solutions?

Technical support or tech support is a form of customer support. It helps customers get the most out of their products.

Technical support and customer support are more or less similar. The difference lies in their approach and the nature of issues they handle. Customer support solutions follow a proactive approach. It focuses on the overall customer experience. It involves a set of practices that seek to improve customer-brand relations throughout the entire purchasing process, from pre-purchase to post-purchase.

Whereas the primary focus of tech support is to resolve technical issues related to the company’s products. Assistance is provided only to customers who require help with their hardware and software products. The tech support agents will be highly skilled and trained on the companies hardware and software products. The skill requirement for technical support agents will depend on the complexity of your products and services. Generally, there are five levels of technical support.

Why Excellent Technical Support Is Essential?

The inability to deliver a positive user experience can cost you more. Apart from losing customers and revenue, inefficient customer support solutions can negatively affect your brand reputation. Businesses need to invest in technical support to ensure quality service and after-sales support. Excellent tech support also helps users get the most out of your products. It affects the overall user experience and determines brand loyalty. 

Instantaneous support

When a new user begins to interact with your website it is important to assure them that someone will always be available to help resolve their issue. You should present them with some sort of site assistance. Or else, the user may immediately leave the website before receiving the assistance they requested. It lowers the chances of a return visit. A basic email support system may be helpful. But instantaneous technical support elements, such as an online chat or phone call service assure immediate, timely resolution of customer issues. 

Improvement through insights

Each technical issue opens up an opportunity to improve and grow. It gives you valuable insights into the business by pointing out your weak points. Excellent technical support is a win-win for both the customers and the organization. Customers will get their problems resolved while businesses can identify the drawbacks of their products and services and rectify them immediately. 

Improve CSAT

It is important to invest in technical support to improve customer satisfaction. Nothing derails the growth of your business faster than negative customers’ reviews due to a lack of quick technical support. Lack of excellent customer support solutions, to assist clients swiftly, can leave your business vulnerable to detrimental online reviews and can harm brand reputation. News about a bad customer experience spreads faster. It can reach thousands of people within minutes through social media platforms. 

Springboard to success

Excellent technical support can give startups a more professional image. Customers may consider your business as illegitimate or not capable of meeting their needs if you fail to offer reliable tech support. For startups, it is a necessity to build a good first impression with an air of professionalism through the utilization of good technical support. This is how the customer support solutions can help businesses bring about a transformational change.

Five Levels Of Technical Support

The five levels of technical support include pre-support, self-service, the first line of support (human contact), the second line of support (for complex issues) and the third line of support.

Pre-support

At this level, customers seek support on the internet. They just Google it or get assistance from online forums and social media platforms. Organizations should closely watch brand mentions in social media channels and online forums. If possible, they should also try to join online conversations and leave relevant answers to queries about their products in real-time.

Self-service

Business knowledge base and FAQs are major aids in self-service. It is important to keep your knowledge base up-to-date. Provide all necessary information necessary to answer general customer queries. Business websites with highly informative and reliable content increase website traffic. More than half of the customers prefer self-service over speaking to a representative as it is more convenient and less time-consuming.

The first line of support

If the customer cannot find the answer or solution to their tech issue through self-service, the next option is to contact a tech support representative. The 1st line of support addresses common or basic technical problems. It is not necessary to have agents with extensive technical knowledge of the product. Here the calls are analysed to identify the queries that are common and not included in the knowledge base. Businesses can add it later to make their knowledge base and FAQs more comprehensive.

The second line of support

At this level, the customer issue may be a bit complex and problem resolution will be a time-consuming process.  It requires the assistance of a tech support agent who has sound technical knowledge about the product. Both customer and tech support agents need to have a thorough understanding of the issue before proceeding to the problem resolution.

The third line of support

The customer issue will be too complicated at this level. Usually, they will need the assistance of a product expert. Each customer issue will be different and custom work will be needed to resolve it.

Customers seeking technical assistance will be dealing with issues specific to their environment. So, they might require highly personalized customer support solutions. Only human tech experts can offer more personalized and custom support. A blend of technology and human assistance works well. Automation speeds things up. Technology makes it easier to collect relevant customer information which will be helpful when the human agent interacts with a customer. But human interaction guarantees an effective solution and improves the overall customer experience.