Sales

4 Ways to Turn Customer Support Into a Profit Center

4 Ways to Turn Customer Support Into a Profit Center
Written by Shoaib Iqbal

The only way to increase business revenue is to getting more customers. Most of the companies can do this by just improving customer support.

It’s hard to overrate the importance of providing an effective and solutions oriented customer support. Customers who had the best past experiences are most likely to come back compared to those who had the bad past experience. At the same time, most of the customers will stop patronizing a business because of a bad customer experience.

The graph given below makes it clear that for increasing revenues, businesses must pay focused attention to their customer support center.

It’s easy to understand this case. For many companies, the customer support team spends more time with customers compared to sales team. And that represents an alarming situation because customer’s satisfaction is at stake.

Only keeping customers happy is not support team’s task. When a customer reaches out to support center with a problem, the support team has a great opportunity to listen to their needs and provide them solutions. A happy customer is more likely to buy more of what you offer.

Let me tell you how to turn a customer with a problem into a sale and maximize revenue growth. Let’s start by understanding what support means.

Understanding the Definition of “Support”

Support agents are individuals who like to help customers, and they keep struggling for getting more sales. While there are a lot of things that contribute for turning a support center into a profitable center. Two major things are hiring the right people and training them the right way. In support centers where sales activities are not an initial goal of support, it is often usually to change that mentality. The key to establishing a profit center is to hire right from the start with the understanding that sales is a target of the position.

Agents who are hired with sales in mind and then trained on the benefits of the full product suite can then share the right information with customers, keeping in mind that they are helping customers beyond just solving the reason for their initial contact. You need to educate your agent how your full product suite can benefit customers, and then selling those products is just another form of support.

Having a B2C business is the platform to increase current revenue. When operated effectively, customer support centers can both deliver right solutions and improve the bottom line. That’s why it’s crucial for businesses to think again about how customers support centers operate and how they can be improved. Investing quality time and resources in this department generates increased profits for years to come.

Identifying Existing Problems

The very first step is to identify the deficiencies by evaluation of your current practices. For example, if a survey report shows that a new product is causing confusion among customers, address that issue proactively. This can help you save time and money while improving your customers’ experiences. Sending an email newsletter that focuses on troubleshooting tips can be a big help to customers, along with creating a video or blog post that walks customers through correcting the issue. If you can share the same information with your customer support team, this will reduce both wait and call times.

Diversifying Touch Points

Most probably your customers already have access to your business’s phone numbers and email addresses. But online chat support is a highly recommended cost-effective medium and makes it easier for customers to reach you in real-time. Chat can also dramatically reduce wait times while still allowing direct contact. Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, also present a unique opportunity to easily and cost-effectively serve customers.

Make Support Part of Your Strategy

It’s common knowledge that long-term growth relies on keeping customers satisfied. This situates support centers as key players in ongoing success because they impact customer retention and advocacy. This also means that support centers are home to a large amount of valuable information: As a communication hub, support centers have a deep customer insights and data that you can use and share across your company to improve your offering, innovate your products and grow your business. Above all, stakeholders should position support centers as strategic assets that can provide value through an understanding of customer preferences and behaviors.


 

About the author

Shoaib Iqbal

Shoaib Iqbal is a global keynote speaker, trainer, author and consultant in Digital Marketing and Online Selling for global organizations. He is the Founder of an Online Marketing Agency, specializing in SEO since 2011.

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