4 Ways Support as a Service Helps You Scale

Whether your new business is starting to achieve your sales goals or your established brand has just released the biggest product in recent memory, there are many scenarios in which your support offerings need to scale as quickly as your sales.

Your brand may receive some unanticipated attention (like an influential endorsement or a product recall). Perhaps you’re gearing up for an expected surge (an upcoming product launch or your busy season). If you need to ramp up your customer support — and fast — there’s no better way than the method known as Support as a Service. You won’t be the only company looking externally to bulk up your support. With the customer experience management market growing at a rate of 17.5% until 2027, there may never be a better time to take advantage of (customer) Support as a Service than now. Here are four ways Support as a Service helps you scale.

Customer Satisfaction

According to SuperOffice, customer experience will continue to outshine product and price as the key brand differentiator in 2021. Yet this is just the tip of the iceberg. Forbes reports that a whopping 96% of customers will leave a company because of bad customer service. And in our experience, the definition of a “bad service” is simple. Customers get frustrated when they can’t get fast resolutions to their inquiries. They’re even more disappointed in your brand when your support team promises to fix a problem, only to later go back on their word. 

Support as a Service is an ideal way for your customers to get what they need as quickly as possible. It’s a great opportunity for you to provide them with a superior experience. Since the margins between good and bad customer service are so slim, this is an area where you can’t afford to turn a blind eye.

Augmenting Existing Staff

If you were to change your usual customer service hours to 24/7 support, what would that mean for your in-house staff? Were you unable to sufficiently fill those additional slots, your existing staff might grow tired of having to take on shifts during weekends, off-peak hours, and late into the night. This would likely lead to unpredictable scheduling, which could easily damage staff morale and increase the odds that you’ll have retention issues.

Does this mean you shouldn’t look to run your support operations around the clock? Absolutely not. If your customers crave round-the-clock availability, it’s important to balance their needs with the happiness of your employees. Leveraging support allows you to attain both goals far more easily.

Increased Bandwidth for Round-the-Clock Support

Recent research revealed that nearly a third of customers expect a response to their emails within 60 minutes. Is your business prepared to handle email inquiries within an hour? Some are. But most, in our experience, are not. This can create a gap between customers’ anticipated response time and your actual ability to offer quick replies. The modern customer demands this level of service in an age when the internet never shuts off.

One of the best ways to meet these expectations is to offer 24/7 support. And one of the easiest ways to bring that kind of infrastructure to life is to leverage support. There are a number of ways to level up to 24/7 customer support operations. While they’re all distinct offerings, each one is designed to help customer support decision-makers deliver off-peak availability, achieve faster resolutions, and drive sales.

• Weekend support and after-hours support: This might be a challenge to staff with your in-house support team, but it’s also your customers’ favorite time to contact you. It’s often difficult for your customers to spend time on the phone for service inquiries during traditional working hours. Fortunately, you can leverage outsourced customer support agents to take on and resolve all your off-peak inquiries. These requests often stream in between 5:00 p.m. and 9:00 a.m., depending on your local time zone. Note that the timeframe also includes holiday and weekend hours.
• Round-the-clock support: Leveraging support allows you to sort out customer inquiries nonstop, day and night. Behind the scenes, these outsourced agents work to ensure that coverage is present in all locations and time zones.
• Hybrid setups: Blending the above support configurations into a hybrid setup can give you the best of each world in one unified package. Hybrid setups are especially crucial when you need to augment support capabilities during busy holiday periods or peak sessions.

Offer Consistent, Multichannel Support

Ever wondered why Samsung has remained a force to reckon with in the phone manufacturing space for so long? A big part of their success boils down to the fact that they offer multichannel customer support. The best names in the business understand how vitally important it is to provide your customers with access to support not only when they need it — but where they need it. Even if their inquiries are spread out over diverse communication channels — text messages, live chat, emails, phone calls, etc. — you’ll still be able to respond to them conveniently and on time. And they’ll repay you by being loyal to your brand.

Leveraging Support as a Service is not only a way to put your customers first, it also offers value for your existing staff. By supplementing their services with experts ready to step in when needed, you’ve got peace of mind knowing that a top-notch support provider has your back.