How customer support can serve as a startup's revenue generator
The unexpected power of building (or failing to build) customer-driven systems
We see it all the time - a startup opens its doors and the product begins to sell. And then, the first question comes in. It’s an ‘all hands on deck’ situation where anyone involved in the early stage startup can help with questions. But as the priorities evolve and the work changes, customer support gets left in the dust.
No one wants to contact customer support. It is an unwritten rule that if you have to reach out about a problem, you better block out at least an hour for what could be a long wait time to get in touch with someone beyond the automated support, or typing out the answers to questions through a live chat function.
But what if there wasn’t a need to contact customer support?
What is the purpose of customer support, especially in a startup?
Often seen as a business cost and not a revenue stream, customer support is an assumed ‘default’ that anyone on the team can support. In reality, customer support is an impactful data gathering source to find revenue generating enhancements in addition to being the voice of the brand with your customers.
how DO you build customer-driven systems to make an impact on the bottom line?
Put your customer’s questions at the center of your product roadmap
Why This Works
In order to begin putting the customer at the center of every decision, you have to think like a customer. Here’s what we know about the average customer:
Most are not early adopters - If you’re trying to make waves with industry disruptions or being the ‘first on the market’ with a product or service like yours, your pool of customers will be a bit small until the product gains positive word of mouth.
They have high expectations - They pay out of their own pocket and want to ensure they are getting value - even if it’s perceived value.
They are not patient - Everything is immediate today. Instant cash transfer in Venmo, two hour Amazon delivery, or two minutes and thirty seconds until you get that Ham & Cheese Hot Pocket. If you’re taking too long to solve their concerns or build the features that matter most, they’ll move on to the next industry disrupter.
They are quick to judge - All it takes is one poor experience for a customer to be turned off by a brand and immediately go to social media or begin spreading their poor experience in word of mouth.
"Over 1 in 4 customers will completely avoid a small business about which someone they know shares a negative story." Reference
They are skeptical - If it feels like a bait and switch, the trust is gone. If you don’t follow through with your promise, they’ll label you ‘sketch’.
They want effortless - They do not want to contact your support team. They want to have easy intuitive solutions or no problems at all. And if they do have to contact your support team, they don’t want to press seven different buttons to answer automated prompts, or navigate layers of ‘bots’ to get to a person that can help them.
They are particular about their money - If you do end up in a situation where you have to provide a refund or there is an issue with a transaction, they will want your full and undivided attention on resolving that issue to completion. They don’t see it as a ‘technical issue’, they see it as their money being held hostage.
Why Do This Now
Customer Support looks a bit different in each stage. As startups grow, the focus on Customer Support begins to fade. Information for the team is scattered, making time to resolve issues much longer, the customers begin complaining that 'things have changed since the early days' and eventually leave the brand or return their products.
But there’s another way to think about customer support that can make a significant impact in the early days.
Writer Simon Sinek is well known for highlighting The Golden Circle in a popular 2014 Ted Talk. This is a methodology for inspiring and aligning teams towards the same goals and mission. Simon shares that starting with “why” when leading teams and driving company goals can help you build a sustainable, thoughtful business at the heart of everything that you do. Similarly, putting the customer at the center can result in longer customer retention and increased sales.
how We Do: Intentionally build a data-driven system for how you'll work with — and scale with — your customers
When your customers are reaching out to you, they are giving you a gift, the gift of learning what they’re thinking, feeling, and hoping for from your product. How do you turn that gift into revenue?
Tools 🛠️
Having the right tools in place early, or having a plan to get those tools as the business grows is much better than trying to retrofit solutions that compete with other business priorities.
Customer Relationship Management - This is where the content lives. Between emails, chat transcripts and notes from calls, there is a gold mine of data ready to be harvested.
Knowledge Management - Although most customers don’t begin in a Help Center or looking at FAQs, these serve as a written resource your Customer Support Agents can reference when they are educating and communicating with customers. This tool is critical if you want to avoid losing legacy knowledge from your team.
Internal Processes: Feedback Loops - What happens after the customer fills out the survey? Similar to internal employee feedback, if you gather and ask for the information and then do nothing with it, trust can be broken with your customer too. If there are post-email surveys or random prompts to share feedback, be intentional about what you do afterwards.
Data Analysis - If organized early and with intention, you can begin noticing trends within the first 30 days of categorizing customer inquiries. Whether it’s highlighting the biggest FAQs that should be added to your Help Center or highlighting a clear blocker to the customer purchasing something more or extending a subscription, the data is already in your hands.
Here’s a starting point for the tools and frameworks to use at each stage.
Rules (Process) 📝
Begin with intentionality around how you think about customer. How do you envision the organization thinking, talking, and behaving when it comes to the customer? When you put the customer at the center of each and every decision, the customer will reward your intention in the long run with: repeat business, positive word of mouth and even higher spend toward purchases from you.
"Research shows that one in four customers are willing to pay up to 10% more in almost every industry if they know they’ll receive excellent customer service". 9 Customer Experience Trends & Stats That'll Define the Next Year.
Be intentional about every part of the business. When you make a new product, here are some questions to consider;
Who is benefiting from this?
What will they gain?
Why is this a good option for customers?
Where will they learn about how to use this product?
When will they need it most?
Before you launch your alpha test, use members of your team that aren’t as close to the work to review the product with fresh eyes. They are a first go of exploring your product the way a regular customer would.
Implement tools early and think ahead. How can you begin to prepare for the next stage of your business with the tools you have today?
People 🫶
Be intentional and thoughtful about the people you hire to represent the face of your brand.
Look for passion over years of experience.
Seek out people with drive and curiosity.
Prioritize their soft skill talent over their technical skills.
Expand your candidate pool by being open to individuals from completely different industries.
Restaurant industry employees are masters at multitasking while also providing a great experience and timely food service.
Retail industry employees understand speed of service (delivery) and how to take feedback without making any promises.
Corporate call center employees are efficient and often have a lot of experience categorizing customer feedback.
Be prepared to pay more than industry standard.
That TikTok Influencer may get you some new leads, but your Customer Support is already influencing whether customers return or spend more with you.
Excellent Customer Support is Public Relations.
Paying higher compensation often results in longer employee retention, giving them the opportunity to build relationships with your clients and customers.
AI will not replace your Customer Support team. It’s the trolley problem:
“There is a runaway trolley barreling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person on the side track. You have two (and only two) options:
Do nothing, in which case the trolley will kill the five people on the main track.
Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.”
There are other considerations outside of the quantity of people on the tracks to think about before any lever is pulled. These are more ethical and human considerations that cannot be programmed into AI.
According to the 2022 Gladly Customer Experience report, 73% of consumers said they wanted to be treated like a person, not a case number. AI will not be able to provide empathy and doesn’t have emotional intelligence to make your customers experience personable.
AI will be able to solve the issues that can be answered with logic. AI will help with “if this, then that” scenarios. AI will help expedite speed of service both internally for your team using your knowledge management resources and externally when the customer is navigating the Help Center. AI can even help translate languages in the correspondence your support team has with your customers.
Actually Actionable
“Nice article. Now what?”
We’ve taken the ideas above and created an action plan for you and your team.
Observe & Learn
Project 1: During the next 1-2 weeks, listen closely in meetings to see how often the customer is brought up
Meeting 1: Connect with members of your Customer Support team to hear their perspective and see some of their correspondences with your customer
Meeting 2: Connect with your product team to understand where they source their ideas from and how they prioritize future work
Inventory & Inspect
Project 2: Identify the data sources, tools and processes you currently have and if they are bringing value or being used to their fullest capacity
Project 3: Interview some of your clients and customers to find out how you can improve
Project 4: Act as a customer and contact other brands and businesses in your industry to learn how you compare
Align & Communicate
Project 5: Put the customer at the center of your mission and values & decide on the business philosophy around Customer Support
Meeting 3: Hold an “All Hands” or department meetings to cascade the message about the customer being the center of every business decision and to explain how that may impact other areas of the business
Build & Execute
Meeting 4: Product & Customer Support should discuss the best meeting cadence to share the Voice of Customer and the preferred data categorization to get the most out of the data
Project 6: Schedule out the meetings and build out the new data categorization
Project 7: Implement necessary tools to get you the most valuable data while also providing the most seamless customer experience
Refine & Repeat
Meeting 5: After trying the new processes and getting the data for a couple weeks, identify ways that process can improve or become more efficient
Before you go
Yes, your team has much more visibility to where the business is heading compared to your customers. They likely have a copy of the product roadmap that they reference and can easily brainstorm new ideas that will also bring in revenue for your business. But your customer is already giving you a headstart for the next brainstorming session - all you need to do is organize your customer support in a proactive and clear way that gets you the information you need to build the future of your product.
Forty-two percent of customers won’t return to a brand after just two poor experiences. What is your customer acquisition cost? Are you willing to pay more to endlessly acquire customers? Or, would you rather retain the ones you have?
Fifty-nine percent of customers say they’ll refer a brand because of their outstanding experience. Word of mouth can be the most elusive yet most powerful marketing tool out there. Paying to hire the right customer support talent for your team keeps this channel fed and has a direct line to your revenue and user growth
And most importantly, if you’re taking action like building new processes to eliminate roadblocks or adapting your roadmap with new features based on the gold mine or customer data, customers are more likely to stick with you longer. They feel valued because you’re taking their feedback seriously and you’re building the product they really want.
When the customer is put in the center of decisions, processes and systems, the customer and the employee are winning and we know when that happens, the shareholders win too.
Writer: Adrianne
Interested in working with Adrianne through of All Trades to transform your customer service operations? Email founder@weofalltrades.com for more on how to bring her in as an embedded operator in your startup.
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