Updated July 16, 2024
Looking to hire skilled customer support representatives? Our comprehensive guide will show you what customer support team members do, how to assess customer support services, and how to hire customer support services that are a perfect fit for your organization.
Customer support services play an essential role in many industries by forming a bridge between customers and your business and maintaining a positive customer experience. As the primary contact point, customer support representatives act on behalf of your business, receiving feedback and reviews, answering questions, offering relevant information about services or products, and handling complaints. These representatives may deal with customers face-to-face, through electronic communication such as emails, or by phone. Altogether, they serve as the voice of your business.
As a business owner or executive, hiring well-trained customer support representatives can directly impact your bottom line. Customer support services can help maintain positive experiences, improve customer satisfaction, build brand reputation, and increase referrals, leading to increased sales and long-term customer retention.
A dedicated customer support team can also free up your time, allowing you to focus on the core functions of your business.
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What Is Customer Support?
Customer Support: The process of assisting and guiding customers before, during, and after the purchase of a service or product.
Customer support representatives offer help when customers have trouble with a business's products, ultimately ensuring they successfully solve customer issues.
Great customer service is essential for building and maintaining a customer base. Effective customer support hiring is also essential because representatives solve customer problems, help your business maintain good relationships, and build loyalty.
Through these interactions, customer support services can help you gather insights about customer pain points, preferences, and needs. This can translate into better products and services and an improved customer experience.
Finding the right fit and equipping them for success will help build an exceptional team. Your business should always make this a top priority.
Customer Support Services by Country
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5 Benefits of Customer Support
Exceptional customer support can improve customer satisfaction, lead to repeat customers, boost referrals, build your brand's reputation, and offer valuable feedback regarding your products, services, and overall business processes.
Here are five benefits that businesses can enjoy when they provide excellent customer support to customers:
- Enhances customer satisfaction: Outstanding customer support can improve customer satisfaction and help retain them. Through the professional and timely resolution of their issues, customers will be impressed by your team and even recommend your products to others.
- Boosts customer retention: Customer loyalty to your business is critical to success. A loyal customer will likely choose your business over others and help you gain a competitive edge. Through professional customer support interactions, customers usually feel valued, particularly when staff answer questions and resolve issues.
- Delivers a valuable feedback loop: When a business listens to its customers, it can understand their needs and pain points. Based on feedback, businesses can improve their products and services and boost customer retention.
- Improves brand reputation: Excellent customer support can help enhance your brand's public perception. Customers may be more likely to forgive mistakes if they receive excellent customer support services. They are also more likely to positively rate and review your business on app stores, review websites, or praise it on social media, which ultimately improves your brand's reputation.
- Increases referrals: Most people turn to their family or friends when they have problems. Whether you are looking for a new house or a lawyer, you get in touch with the people you trust. Providing top-notch customer support services can create satisfied clients, who are more likely to refer other potential clients to your business. Satisfied customers who recommend your business online or through word of mouth can significantly improve your brand's credibility.
What Services Do Customer Support Companies Provide?
Customer support can offer beneficial services to your customers, boosting loyalty, increasing conversions, and helping you remain competitive in the marketplace. Some of the services you can expect from customer support representatives include:
- Chat support services
- Email support services
- Phone support services
- Order processing
Chat Support Services
Live chat support services are online features that offer 24/7 availability for customers to raise questions or concerns by sending written messages. Customer support representatives can use live chat platforms and bots on your website to manage real-time customer discussions. They may also chat with customer support representatives on your brand's social networks.
Email Support Services
Email is one of the most popular tools for communication, with the number of email users around the world projected to reach an estimated 4.73 billion in 2026. This support channel is excellent for customers who want to reach out to brands quickly but don't typically require immediate assistance. This channel allows businesses to respond to customers while also keeping track of conversations. Email support services are highly effective for international brands, where there may be language barriers or time zone differences.
Phone Support Services
Many customers prefer phone support for its speed and convenience. Customer support representatives can receive phone calls and offer immediate assistance to clients. This channel is direct and accessible to all age groups. It makes customers feel heard since they speak to representatives in real time.
Order Processing
Effective customer support can help your business with order processing via multiple channels. Representatives can process client orders online once customers raise such tickets through calls, emails, or chats. This ensures your business handles orders promptly, which can improve customer satisfaction and boost retention.
How To Assess Customer Support Services
Measuring customer support services is a particularly subjective matter. Consequently, to make it quantifiable, you have to look at various key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics to understand how effectively your customer support team is addressing customer questions and complaints:
- Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): CSAT is a core metric for measuring how good or bad customer support interactions are. It provides a numerical representation that measures customer satisfaction levels. While the language may vary, this KPI measures sentiments toward your products, services, or specific customer support interactions. To measure CSAT, you can ask your customers a simple question: "On a scale of 1-5, how satisfied are you with the recent customer support services?" You may also use emojis to elicit this same reaction. CSAT can help you gain insights and find patterns correlating with exceptional versus poor customer support.
- Net promoter score (NPS): NPS and CSAT are somewhat similar metrics. While CSAT measures customer satisfaction, NPS measures customer loyalty and how likely they are to recommend your business to others. This KPI allows you to segment your customer pool into promoters, detractors, and neutrals, with promoters being customers who may recommend your business to others. Detractors, on the other hand, may advise others not to use your business. A simple question to assess NPS is, "On a scale of 1-5, how likely are you to recommend our products to others?"
- Resolution time: This metric evaluates how long your customer support team takes to resolve a support ticket from beginning to end, with the length varying depending on the complexity of the matter. Quick resolution times for customer issues are an indicator of success since they guarantee prompt complaint resolution.
- Ticket volume & backlog: This metric assesses all the tickets in your support queue in a particular time frame. Tickets may remain unresolved depending on customer support team members' performance, ticket volume, or ticket complexities that require extra time.
- Average handling time (AHT): Average handling time measures a customer support representative's average time on a ticket. For example, suppose a representative resends a product to a client. AHT ends when they contact the customer with the new shipping details and close the ticket. To minimize AHT, businesses should decrease waiting times and optimize all back-and-forth communication.
- Customer retention rate: This KPI measures the number of customers loyal to your brand over time. Track this metric for customers who have contacted your business with issues. Did they return to buy your products or services again? Did your representatives handle their issues exceptionally well, making them repeat customers? This indicator is crucial when determining overall customer loyalty to your business. Businesses can also measure customer churn and purchase frequency rates to understand how well they retain customers.
What Is a Customer Support Team?
The lifeblood of any successful business, regardless of industry or size, is its staff. This is particularly true for customer support departments, where business representatives work to address and resolve customer issues professionally.
As a business owner or executive, you can cultivate an effective team by hiring or outsourcing representatives with the right skill set, training, and education.
Customer support staff often consist of representatives with diverse backgrounds, each bringing unique skills and experience on board. Here are some of the key specializations to expect in a customer support team:
- Support Agents: These teammates serve on the front lines of a business, assisting customers physically in an office setting or remotely. As the primary point of contact for most customers, customer support representatives must be knowledgeable, courteous, and approachable. Some of the responsibilities of support agents revolve around building solid relationships by professionally handling inbound requests. This may include handling customer orders, resolving complaints, and processing returns. They also identify and report customer problems to management for attention by relevant teams, such as product developers.
- Team Lead: These teammates oversee part of or all of the customer support staff. They ensure the team is meeting customer demands and the brand's goals. Team leads manage staff scheduling, deal with escalated cases, and offer guidance on how representatives can meet their KPIs. Essential skills for team leads include empathy and diplomacy, which are crucial for customer retention and supporting team members during customer support-related tasks.
- QA Specialist: These teammates ensure customer service operating procedures, processes, and best practices are followed, continuously monitoring the tone of representatives and the effectiveness of case resolutions. They develop assessment programs for staff and customers as well.
- Training Specialist: They set up customer service representatives with the necessary tools for successful service delivery. Responsible for relevant training programs that offer continuous learning for representatives. They may also design mentorship programs for new representatives with little or no knowledge of the brand's internal processes.
- Technical Support Specialist: While not every business requires this position, technical support specialists handle technical problems that may be beyond the scope of support agents. They may handle issues posing highly complex customer roadblocks, such as how to fix errors from the customer end of an application or how to install a program.
- Customer Success Managers: These managers play a critical role in building customer loyalty by nurturing relationships with new and existing customers. They relay pertinent customer information and complaints to other departments, including sales and marketing.
What To Look For When Hiring a Customer Support Company
Not every customer support representative is the right fit for your business. As a business owner or executive, it's imperative to review your options and hire the right customer support team to help you build and maintain strong customer relations. This can prove useful in achieving your brand's short and long-term goals, including gaining a competitive edge through customer satisfaction and improving your brand image.
Criteria for Hiring a Customer Support Company
- Budget & pricing
- Expertise and experience in customer support
- Proven track record with positive reviews from past clients
- Patience, empathy, and honesty of staff
- Quick thinking abilities of representatives
- Effective communication skills
- Passion that aligns with your business and customer support goals
If you need to hire a customer support company, Clutch offers a comprehensive analysis of providers that can help you transform your brand's customer support services. Clutch's informative customer support reviews, which include client testimonials, can help you make the right customer support hiring decisions.
10 Questions To Ask When Hiring a Customer Support Company
- What is your experience in customer support?
- How do you resolve or escalate issues between customers and representatives?
- How do you define excellent customer service?
- How do you improve the experience of a disgruntled customer?
- What customer support tools do you use?
- What do you think of our products, services, and processes?
- Do you offer your representatives any form of training?
- How do you prioritize your work in a fast-paced environment?
- What is your preferred method of communication?
- What is your pricing structure?
Learn how to budget for customer support services
Download our Call Center Services BudgetBuild a Successful Customer Support Team With Clutch
The customer support hiring process isn't about filling positions but finding the right team to tackle your brand's challenges, build customer satisfaction and loyalty, and ultimately drive your business forward. Customer support staff are critical representatives of your brand who can improve or tarnish your image.
With Clutch, you can enjoy the benefits of a proactive customer support team that allows you to focus on your business's core tasks. Check out our customer support reviews to find out more.
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