Guest blog by Tom Sweeny at www.servicexrg.com
Making it easy for customers to get help depends upon the channels available to access support resources and request assistance. Many companies offer assistance by phone but there is a clear shift towards electronic channels.
Assisted Support
The time, effort, and costs required to provide assisted support make it imperative for companies to find ways to expedite issue resolution and bolster efforts to prevent issues.
Companies offer a variety of channels for customers to request assisted support. These include interactive channels like chat and phone, and passive methods such as e-mail, Support communities, and web case submission. Customers have embraced electronic channels and are relying less on assistance by phone.
Key Trends
- 83.1% of companies offer both phone and electronic channels for support. Only 14.9% offer electronic-only support contact methods.
- Support case submission by web-based form is the top channel used, followed by phone and e-mail.
- Phone support use has declined by 8% as electronic channel use grows.
- The use of chat has grown by 26% while use of e-mail has risen by 24%.
- The reasons customers request support assistance are equally distributed across three primary categories of “How To,” “Bugs or Performance Issues,” and “Installation, Configuration, Setup.”
- Most support interactions are reactive, although proactive engagement is on the rise.
Best Practices
From case open to closure, case management and resolution processes must be efficient and effective.
- Apply structured data collection to assure that submitted cases are complete.
- Encourage adoption of web-based case submission.
- Apply intelligent automation to triage and routing of new cases.
- Deflect as cases are created.
- Collaborate. Both internal with other teams and external with other vendors
- Leverage case closure automation.
- Completely document closed cases.
- Trigger knowledge process upon case closure.
Key Metrics
It is important to track how your customers engage your Support organization as well as the types of issues they need help with. Consider using the following metrics and measures:
- Cases by Channel
- Assisted Issue by Types
- Support Access Point
Want more insights about assisted support best practices and metrics?
For insights about how support is changing and the opportunities and imperative for 2021 please review ServiceXRG’s latest study: Support Transformation: The Guide to Essential Practices and Metrics. This report examines current trends in Support delivery and offers tangible guidance for Support, Success and Service professionals to meet growing expectations of both customers and company executives.
For further information contact ServiceXRG
ServiceXRG provides coaching and guidance to help companies optimize support performance and apply best practices.
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