Customer Support is often seen as a post-sales cost center, but it can be more strategic if integrated with other aspects of a #SaaS company under a more complete #RevOps strategy.
Customer Support is critical for #EdTech companies because teachers spend most of the day in class or doing other scheduled duties. If you rely on an asynchronous interaction, then it will likely stretch out over days and teachers will lose interest in a resolution. Teachers need just-in-time support. In many cases, the problem only requires a few minutes of synchronous support time. During this time, the Support team may learn more about how teachers use the product (i.e., Jobs to be Done and related problems).
The KPIs used to measure Customer Support need to be chosen wisely. Measuring the time to close a ticket leads to tickets being closed without gathering user background. It also leads to tickets being closed before there is a resolution. I’ve had many tickets closed out of the blue. Customer Support is a back-and-forth. Closing a ticket automatically is like a breakup over text (so I’m told). The key metric is customer satisfaction and support responsiveness. I’ve had tickets open for a week or more because the issue was complicated or I wasn’t very available. My satisfaction was based on the ultimate resolution and the interim communications.
Customer support shouldn’t be an island. Customer support can provide renewal information to Customer Success, but it is most helpful when they know more about who they are dealing with. Provide Customer Support with customer segmentation data and usage data. What segment contacts support most? What day of the week and time of day do they contact Support? How do they contact Support? What usage behavior were they doing just before contacting Support? Customer Support could be responsible for community building as a way to “feel” customer satisfaction and monitor grievances.
Customer Support can help product development too. Support can identify features that cause the most support requests. Support can identify the types of users associated with frequent support requests. I strongly believe that the one-size-fits-all UI/UX of #EdTech products does not serve schools well. Instead, I recommend EdTech products build an admin control panel that lets schools enable features for various grade levels and subject areas. This would also enable schools to roll out capabilities in conjunction with other school initiatives.
