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Managing a business is more than just having a great idea. It is more that just producing a great product or service. And it is more than just having a greater return on your investment.

Even though no one would argue that all of these things are important in running an effective business, another very important element cannot be left out. Customer support is a key factor in maintaining success in business. For, even if you are off to a good start and manage to do all of the above-mentioned things, without continual customer support, the business will eventually fail. Customers are a part of the foundation of a successful business and must be managed carefully. Every business manager and owner needs to ask the question, how is my customer support? There are ways to ensure a competent customer support plan within the business, with but first, let’s look at why customer support is so necessary.

Robust Customer Support: A Necessity

The negative side of poor customer support

Business executives seem to intuitively know that robust customer support is important, but do they really know it’s essential to survival? Senior-level executives and managers may be surprised to learn these facts:

• More than three-quarters of customers quit a purchase transaction because of a poor customer service scenario. With so many options for consumers today, a wrong move in the area of customer support can mean the end of the relationship.
• Most businesses only hear a small fraction (four percent) of their unhappy customers. The remainder do not relay their complaints. This can be in part due to lack of access to efficient customer support services. The astounding consequence of these unhappy customers is that approximately ninety-one percent won’t come back.
• In the article, “Understanding Customers,” Ruby Newell-Legner noted that one unresolved negative customer service experience will take twelve positive experiences to cancel it out. This makes sense when you think about how negativity works in the public arena. The negative always outweighs the positive, unfortunately.
• We have heard the old saying “bad news travels fast.” The same can be said in business as well. A bad customer support experience will travel to twice as many people as a complement will. It is crucial for business managers to deal head-on with customer complaints in a proactive manner and bring about a speedy solution.
• It costs six or seven times more money to gain a new customer as it does to keep the one you have. Investing in customer support solutions saves you money.

The positive side of good customer support

• Harvard Business Review conducted a study and discovered a great future increase in past satisfied customers. Specifically, customers who had the most positive experiences in the past spend 140 percent more than those with a bad experience. Furthermore, the business executives interviewed stated that the money they would spend upfront ensuring a fantastic customer support service, would actually save them money in the long run. Dissatisfied customers cost them more money due to their need for ongoing support, return of products, and negative word-of-mouth reports.

• Loyal customers are a real value to a business. According to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, they will bring a business ten times more after their first purchase.

• Existing customers are “keepers” because the chances of them buying your product or service again is at about sixty-five percent. That is a big difference when compared to your chances of selling to a new customer, which is only between five and twenty percent.

• Almost three-quarters of Americans reported that they would fork out a bit more money for companies that were giving them superior customer support.

Customer Support Solutions

A help desk software is a solution for providing superior customer support. With the use of a help desk, you can be sure your customers won’t slip through the cracks. Every customer is heard and receives individualized service. Here are just three of the many benefits of a help desk software program.

Increases customer support through integration

Why is integration on the business end important, you may wonder? Customers expect everyone on your end to be on the same page with the same information as it pertains to them. For example, if a customer sends information via email or mail, then calls to follow-up about it, the customer expects the person on the phone to be familiar with the situation. However, this won’t occur smoothly if the company has different departments handling the various customers yet they are not integrated. With Vision Helpdesk software, departments are all interconnected helping provide a smooth customer support experience.

Increases loyalty through prompt feedback

When you have the assistance of a software such as Vision Helpdesk, all of your communications are gathered for you and grouped together according to category. This saves the employees from having to sort through phone calls, emails, chat requests, and Facebook posts and deliver them to the appropriate departments. The help desk automatically  does the work for you. Your customers receive the appropriate feedback from the right people promptly. When customers feel they are being heard and given good service, they will be more loyal.

Increases customer base through surveys

One very telling statistic from Lee Resources states that eighty percent of businesses believe they provide “superior” customer support, while only eight percent of their customers feel that they do. This is quite a large disparity in number. Surveys determine how your customers feel and what went right or what went wrong with their experience with the company. If you have that feedback, you can modify your customer support, products, or services as needed. The Vision Helpdesk software offers the ability to create custom surveys for your customers. Provide customers a survey link within an email and review the reports by client or survey.

With Vision Helpdesk software, your business solves customer problems more promptly and efficiently facilitating a surge in customer support. Contact us today to learn about many other great features of the helpdesk system.