As a startup trying to establish a reputation and develop a brand, the first impression your customers have of your business means everything. If you want to grow, you have to create a customer service experience that builds customer loyalty.
The first step is setting customer expectations at the sales and marketing level. That’s the easy one.
The second step is living up to and exceeding those expectations at the customer support level. That’s the hard one.
So how do you deliver smooth, reliable, scalable and delightful customer service when you’re a new company with limited employees, time, money, and resources?
You deploy the right support tools. The kind of customer service tools that are priced and designed to grow with your business. Software that will keep your startup’s customer support nibble and running like a well-oiled machine with no bottlenecks.
You can start with these:
1. Call Center Software
What is it?
A phone call is still the most personalized customer service channel that startups shouldn’t ignore. Studies show customers would rather talk to your company’s customer service on the phone when they need their complicated issues to be addressed.
Startups should have a call center in place or at least a business phone system that can keep your team connected and sounding professional.
Support team call centers are powered by software like Zendesk Talk.
Why is it awesome?
Embedded in the Zendesk support ticketing system, this customer support software for startups offer productive, personal phone support. This tool enables your customer service teams to resolve issues faster, analyze, measure, and improve phone support operations, and thus, offer unparalleled customer experiences across channels.
How much does it cost?
Zendesk Talk team plan costs $19 per agent per month. Need a more affordable and less complicated call center option? Try one of these virtual phone systems.
2. Help Desk Ticketing System
What is it?
A help desk ticketing system is one of the best customer service tools. It allows customer support teams to monitor customer issues from start to end. Featuring labels, shared inbox, custom fields, filters, canned responses, and much more, help desk software enables customer support to tackle huge piles of trouble tickets, effectively manage, assign, and resolve tickets.
Why is it awesome?
Ticketing systems like ProProfs help desk software enables effective ticket management and resolution. Once customers submit a request or ask a question, tickets generate automatically.
Agents can see who is working on what and automatic ticket notifications are shared internally and with customers. Customers are well aware of the updates on their tickets.
Beyond issue resolution, ProProfs help desk helps with automating workflows, centralizing information, prioritizing important tasks, and tracking metrics such as average response time, total ticket resolution time, first response time, and much more.
How much does it cost?
ProProfs Help Desk team plan costs $39 per month (annually).
3. Self Service Portal
What is it?
When it comes to minor issues, customers increasingly prefer to resolve issues by themselves. As 70% of customers expect websites to feature self-service portals, startups should work towards establishing such portals.
Self-service portals come with self-help functions that empower customers to find information, request services, and resolve their issues without being behind a customer support agent. Different types of self-service portals include online communities, manuals, frequently asked questions, and tips.
Why is it awesome?
Tools like Papyrs Knowledge Base enable you to keep all related information in one place. Build pages with rich and dynamic content. Only then can you share all types of information in the form of notes, documents, instructions, manuals, files, procedures, tooltips, etc. These pages together form the knowledge base for your business.
You have full control over its privacy settings. You may either keep the pages private for internal use in your team or make them accessible to the public.
How much does it cost?
If you are a startup, you may opt for the $99 per month plan of Papyrs.
4. Live Chat
Customers love to instant online live chat. Over and over again surveys show customers prefer this instant medium of communication.
Integrating live chat software options, like ProProfs Chat on your website goes a long way in boosting interactions with your customers and lending them an experience that leads to increased sales.
One business that uses live chat creatively on its website is Stylehive. The company uses agent photos and sends proactive, targeted chat invites to visitors based on a specific page that visitors open.
Besides serving as a customer support software for a startup, live chat helps buyers to make quick buying decisions. For instance, they can chat online with a fashion consultant and choose the outfit that suits their body type the most.
Why is it awesome?
ProProfs Live Chat is awesome because it enables you to view customer information in real time. It becomes easy to monitor website visitors and track interactions. Not only can you capture your visitor details using a pre-chat form, but also use post-chat feedback to understand the needs of your customers. It also comes integrated with Google Analytics.
How much does it cost?
ProProfs Live Chat costs $32 per month for the whole year.
5. Survey Tools
What is it?
Surveys designed through survey making tools, such as Survey Monkey, enable businesses to gather customer feedback along with different touchpoints. This feedback is useful for startups to gauge the quality of customer service it provides to its customers.
Using this feedback, a business can improve the customer journey and build trust around its brand. This is particularly important because statistics show 65% of business often comes from already existing customers.
Further, it has been established that acquiring a new customer often costs more than it does to retain a current one.
Why is it awesome?
Design and send professional surveys fast with Survey Monkey. The survey making tool features customized branding, survey quality metric, sharing via email, web, social, etc.
It supports projects, teams, and organizations through collaboration, shared asset library, and survey logic. It also enables you to perform deeper data analysis.
How much does it cost?
The Team Advantage plan costs $25 a month, per user, billed annually.
The Bottom Line
Whether you are a startup or have been in business for several years, the key to growing your business successfully is delivering amazing service to your customers. In order to keep your customers coming back for more, you need to ensure they are treated well all the time.
As customers become more sophisticated and demanding, employing the right customer support tools can keep your team nibble and your workflow flowing.
Editor’s Note: This article is part of the blog series Run Your Business brought to you by the marketing team at Unitel Voice, the virtual phone system priced and designed for startups and small business owners.