Product Page Q&A Integration

When you’re running an ecommerce store, most of the customer service questions that you’ll field will likely be related to the products you’re selling.  Your product details page is the most visited page on your website and the most natural for your users to engage with your business, why wouldn’t you have customer service software and content integrated seamlessly into those product pages so that your content can assist in converting sales?  It’s important that your knowledge base has APIs or widgets that allow you to integrate at least product Q&A capabilities right into your product page…see an example here:

What that will do is ensure that your the Q&A content generated from your previous customer service inquiries builds a useful knowledge base that gets distributed within your product pages and can help convert new sales.   Answerbase customers boast that up to 75% of customers who ask questions through the product page convert to a sale.   To have your customer questions being answered, but not effectively distributed to impact sales doesn’t make sense.

Duplicate Question Recognition and Management

When your customers are engaging your customer service software and knowledge base, either on the product page or through the help or knowledge base section of your website, you want to make sure that it has the ability to effectively recognize if the information they’re seeking out is already available.  The questions that the user inquires about should be compared automatically to your existing database of previous customer service inquiries and relevant matches should be presented through a predictive auto-suggest capability as the text field is being populated.

If this is done well, this should serve both your customer and your business well, since customer service questions that have already been answered should be addressed automatically with your existing content through the software.   From the customer’s standpoint, they get a  great answer to their question immediately without having to wait for a response via email or chat.

Studies show that 71% of customers prefer self-help that don’t require them to interact with a person.  Give them that option, its preferred by them and saves you time and money if done well.  Answerbase customers see that between 60-75% of questions posed by customers are answered automatically by existing Q&A content that has already been answered in the past.

SEO Friendly Landing Pages for Content

The customers who are engaging your website and asking you customer service questions are not the only people who have questions about the products you sell.  Guess who else does?   Potential customers are asking those same questions through Google and other search engines and they are ripe for purchasing the products that you sell.  This gives you a great opportunity to turn your customer service content on your knowledge base into content marketing material that can actually help you acquire new ecommerce customers!

See an example of how this works below, as a customer looking for a specific product is introduced to content from an ecommerce merchant’s knowledge base as the first organic result:

The right customer service software should have pages that are optimized for search right out of the gate, with SEO-friendly slugs, tagging, page titles, etc.   An example of an ecommerce store doing this well is Epestsupply, where they have quadrupled the organic search traffic to their site and doubled their overall traffic by growing a valuable knowledge base of content…simply responding to customer questions (self-serving plug…they use Answerbase to power that knowledge base).   This is a huge opportunity to both support your customers while also creating a new customer acquisition channel in the process.   Answerbase has studied customer results where the knowledge base content that is created simply by addressing customer questions can turn into one of their most productive channels.    What we see is that new customers acquired through customer service content has an average Lifetime Value (LTV) of up to 2x more than the overall visitors from Google, and up to 6x more than those coming from Facebook.   You can save costs on customer support while in the same breath increase your sales and conversions, now that’ something to get excited about!

Support Multiple Content Formats

Your customers will have different preferences on how to be serviced as customers, and your customer service knowledge base of information should be communicated in formats that play well to the products that you sell, generational considerations, and even down to the personal preferences of your customers (which, conveniently, will service many).   Ensure that your knowledge base of customer service content not only supports text but also allows you to post videos, images, and documents to support their informational needs.   See an example of how this can play out to most effectively service a customer’s request for information related to a product…

This will help ensure that your content addresses their specific needs with the most appropriate format(s).

Partner & Customer Community Features

This section is most relevant if you want to consider getting manufacturers, influencers, partners, service providers, or even other customers involved with creating valuable customer service content that you own which can benefit your business.   It’s not uncommon to have at least a small group of partners that you trust in that process for at least some of the content formats you support…so ensure your knowledge base software at least offers the capabilities even if you just want to test it.

A good knowledge base will not only have community features, but also allow you to identify specific groups of users and allocating special permissions to those groups.   For example, if you want to open up answering of customer service questions but only to select customers, select partners or service providers, etc.   You can get the right mix that is comfortable for your business, and ensure that your customers are showered with the best content from the best possible sources within your network.  Your ecommerce customer service software should allow your content to visually distinguish the source of the content and make that clear to end users.  See an example here on how answers from a company’s staff are specifically highlighted and pinned at the top.  See how this example distinguishes between staff answers and answers submitted by everyone else…

A good ecommerce customer service solution should have the ability to scale up and down these features as you’d need, whether you choose to open capabilities up to only a select group of influencers….or whether you’d want a full blown community with user profiles, gamification, etc.

It’s common to give customers who have purchased a product the ability to post answers to new questions about that product, but on the other side of that some ecommerce businesses prefer not to have to deal with time or cost of moderating user generated content.   There are pluses and minuses to everything, so you should weigh those out and determine what makes sense for your business…but don’t get stuck with a knowledge base that doesn’t give you the option to enable these features at any time.

We hope this post has been helpful as you consider what knowledge base and customer service software to use for your ecommerce store.   If you have any questions or would like a consultation to speak about the goals of your ecommerce site, you can Contact Us and we’ll have an ecommerce specialist help point you in the right direction.

The post Ecommerce Customer Service Software Recommendations appeared first on Answerbase.

What are the benefits of adding Q&A to your product pages?

The core benefits of product Q&A is increasing ecommerce conversion rates, product description seo, and to increase ecommerce traffic.  As you probably know, most users start their questions about products through search engines like Google, so its important for online retailers to create that content and make it available in a way that search engines will gobble it up and send those potential customers your way.

Answerbase creates an optimized page for every Q&A combination, which performs well in search results and leads those potential customers right to your product page.  This allows you to service your existing visitors, and also lead brand new visitors right to your doorstep.

Ecommerce merchants using Answerbase product Q&A have experienced:

• Up to 75% of product questions they answer convert to a sale as you engage your customers and reduce ecommerce bounce rates.
• Organic search traffic grows by up to 4x their previous levels
• Lifetime Value (LTV) of new customers acquired through Q&A generated by Answerbase is up to 2x higher than those from Google and up to 6x higher than those from Facebook.

You can view some ecommerce case studies for more information on how product page Q&A has contributed to their success.

What does Q&A look like on a product page?

You should add Q&A right on your product page.  If you have tabs on your pages, then we recommend creating a new tab which has “Q&A” or “Questions & Answers”.  If you don’t support tabs, simply list it below your product description so that users can have a chance to easily as a question about any details that you haven’t provided yet on your product page.

Answerbase’s default e-commerce widget will give the user the ability to post a question, and also see the most popular questions about the product they’re looking at…see an example below of one of Answerbase’s Q&A widgets integrated into a product page:

If a user starts asking a question that is similar to questions that have already been asked and have answers available, it will suggest that available content to the visitor so they can click on their question and view the answer immediately.

This allows them to get their questions answered immediately and get on with the purchasing process, so you can make money!

How do you add Q&A to your product page?

Answerbase supports app store integrations with ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Bigcommerce and other popular platforms for easy integration.  If you are on a home grown platform or another platform, no worries…Answerbase makes it easy to add Q&A to any product page through our Full Featured Q&A widget for e-commerce.

Once you’ve signed up for an account (or Free Trial) on Answerbase, you can go under “Integration” in your administration area and you’ll find our widget builder where you can customize a widget to reflect the same style/colors of your site.   Once you’ve adjusted the widget’s design to your liking on the widget builder, it will give you the appropriate code on the bottom that you can simply copy and paste into the product page of your e-commerce store.

Within the code. you’ll see parameters where you can have your site dynamically insert the product information so Answerbase is able to understand what product the widget is relevant to when it displays on your page.  It also allows Answerbase to promote that product to the user who asked the question and any future users who come from search engine traffic, to help you convert more customers.

We hope things are going well with business, and if you have any questions about how Q&A can help your online store feel free to contact Answerbase’s Team for a free consultation.

If you’re interested in learning more, view ALL of the benefits of ecommerce Q&A software.

The post How to Easily Add Q&A to your eCommerce Store’s Product Page appeared first on Answerbase.

You can find this new feature in your administration site when viewing a question, just click into the “Settings” tab on the question thread and you’ll see a new setting available.

This new feature allows you to enjoy the benefits of peer to peer support, while also empowering you to control the content of posts that warrant it.

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Enabling an SLA for Your Site

You will see that under your “Settings > General Settings” you now have the ability to enable a default SLA response time for your system, which will apply generally to any questions that are posted.  You can also choose whether your turnaround time will be communicated to users or not, or if it will simply be a turnaround time that is used by your team to control quality.

You can also set these response times per category or even on the question level, which helps you manage cases when there are certain questions or types of questions that require quicker attention than others.  You can find those options under the “Settings” tab when looking at a question or category.

Setting SLA Reminders

When you’ve set SLA response times for questions that come in, you can have your moderators reminded when a question has not been responded to and is either approaching the SLA or has past the defined response time.  You can enable a moderator’s ability to be assigned to content and be notified about content under their moderation settings (user’s admin profile, under the “Moderation” tab), where you can see a new option to enable SLA reminders.

Managing SLA Reminders

When a question’s SLA approaches the time that it is due, it will be assigned to the appropriate moderators based on the settings above and they will receive an email letting them know that the question is coming up to the time that it is due.  Additional reminders will be sent if the question becomes due or has gone past its due date, helping to ensure that your team stays on top of any overdue questions and manages those.

The questions will be assigned to the appropriate users who are responsible for SLA reminders, and they’ll be able to see the content that has spawned a reminder in their “My Work” area.

These tools allow you and your team to make sure you’re providing quality responses to your audience in a timely manner.  Everybody loves responsive support, so we encourage you to use these tools to help you be on top of your inquiries for the good of your business and your customers.

The post Define a SLA Response times for your site, categories, and individual questions appeared first on Answerbase.

More and more businesses today are finding customer support communication is a resource for winning brand-new customers, not just retaining existing ones. Viewed through that lens, customer support isn’t simply an expense; to the contrary, it’s a potential source of new customer revenue and a very valuable marketing channel. That’s a shift that’s putting the customer support team in a position to boost top-line revenue and influence the overall business as never before, and creating a much closer relationship between these two departments.

Let’s take a look at this relationship, what’s changed and why – and what leaders from each side can do to seize opportunity in this new environment, to benefit both teams and the business as a whole.

Influencing customers with customer support content

Technology is enabling customer support teams to create and share content online, and both customers and potential customers are demanding this content. For example, when a visitor goes to a company’s website or Facebook page to post a question about how a product works, customer support teams are proving to be the most effective resource to provide the answer – and leave a positive impression not just with the person who asked, but with everyone who reads it.

Suddenly, it’s not just marketing teams that are influencing how customers perceive the company – it’s also customer support teams. They’re no longer only resolving customer issues; they’re actively making customers and prospective customers happy in the process. That can result in getting more business from existing customers, converting prospects into new customers and turning happy customers into zealous advocates for companies (as Zappo’s CEO advocates). It’s all about being a part of the way people perceive brands and positively influencing those perceptions. This is a powerful shift that forces companies to think differently about the customer support department, and it has sparked a very rewarding connection between these groups. Let’s explore the chemistry, shall we?

Bringing customer support expertise to content marketing

Developing and encouraging a closer relationship between marketing and customer support is becoming one of the most powerful steps a company can take to increase the impact of content on customers and potential customers. As digital marketing strategist Greg Shuey once noted, “even content creators who have years of experience can struggle to come up with great content ideas.” That’s where customer support and marketing intersect, and it’s making a huge difference.

After all, customer support teams hear from customers every day – and that puts them in a unique position to know what’s important to customers, what their pain points are, which topics will resonate with them and much more. Customer support teams now use technology to track customer questions and other communications, and through analytics they gain a deep understanding of what customers care about. In this way, customer support becomes a valuable source of information to guide marketing in developing content strategy and in creating content based on that strategy. This gives marketing departments proven content they know will get the best results.

Understanding that any good relationship is a two-way street

It’s not just that customer support content can help marketing; it works the other way, too. Content marketing benefits customer service, as a Salesforce blog post has pointed out. The content marketing team is constantly developing brand and product content that customer support can use to educate and empower the customers with whom they engage.

One key to building and maintaining a strong relationship between marketing and customer service is having the right technology to make it easy to track customer interests and pain points, pull reports and effectively communicate the information between departments. When done right, both teams will be able to draw on that information to help ensure they’re always providing the most effective, satisfying responses – whether from the marketing or support side of the aisle. This optimizes the conversion of new business while also increasing retention of existing customers, with both teams working together to achieve company goals more effectively than either could alone.

As the relationship between business and customer becomes increasingly content-driven, marketing and customer support become increasingly entwined. For some companies, this collaboration is a brand-new marriage that will naturally require a bit of adjustment. But as the relationship continues to blossom and the two learn to engage and play off each other’s strengths, they’ll learn that together they can do more than ever to help win the hearts of customers (and the revenue that comes with them).

The post Customer Support and Marketing: A Match Made in Heaven…or at Least Online appeared first on Answerbase.

So how do you know if offering a community support option is right for your company? This post explores what goes into making that decision – and what you can do to help ensure success if you do.

When does community support make sense?

Online communities where customers offer support to other customers are likely to succeed in companies that sell products or services that inspire excitement and command loyalty among customers.

Two great examples are Apple and Harley-Davidson. Both have customers who are among the most zealous and loyal in any industry – brand evangelists who live and breathe the products and who are happy to spend time sharing their expertise and enthusiasm with others.

But even if your product or service doesn’t seem quite that exciting at first glance, don’t count out your customer base just yet. There just may be a critical mass of people who love talking about the subject and just need a little nudge to channel that excitement and expertise to “work” for your brand. After all, that’s the beauty of the Internet: There are people online all over the world who are excited to share what they know about every topic imaginable (and many times you don’t need a huge group to see a notable impact). Peer-to-peer support is a great way to find your people and harness their knowledge to benefit both your customers and your company.

Bear in mind, too, that community support doesn’t have to be about a specific company or product; sometimes, it’s the general field or industry that fires them up. For example, auto enthusiasts are at the heart of an active, vibrant online community at Edmunds.com, a popular site among people who are shopping for cars.

How companies are making peer-to-peer support work

Once you determine community support is a good fit for you, how do you know those excited customers will really post high-quality, reliable content on behalf of your company? They will – if you lay the right groundwork for it. Here are three specific steps you can use to help ensure your effort is a success.

1. Recognize expertise

   Customers enjoy being recognized for their efforts, and any peer-to-peer support system should have a structure in place to highlight those who contribute valuable content to the program. One common way to do so is with detailed profiles, which showcase who your experts are and what they do. Over time, the people who provide the most thoughtful and helpful answers to customer questions are recognized as “thought leaders” for your company and your industry, which helps further their own online reputation. That is a powerful incentive for people who know how to turn that online reputation into opportunity.

2. Reward time and effort

   For some experts, the satisfaction of growing an online reputation is enough – but others may be inspired by more immediate rewards. A good community-support system should be able to effectively identify top performers and give specific rewards based on their activity. Such rewards can take the form of badges and titles, as well as more tangible certifications, promotional merchandise, discounts or even prizes. One company that does all of this well is ABB Group, which allows users to redeem any reputation points earned for tangible rewards.

3. Moderate thoughtfully

   When you invite customers to be part of the process of providing information and support to other customers, it’s important to have a system in place for reviewing and approving content that comes in. It’s up to you whether this happens before or after posting; the important thing is that you have awareness of what’s coming in and the ability to manage it. This will help you keep reasonable control over the content that is presented on your site and that represents your brand to your other customers.

   At the same time, you also don’t need to over-control customer communities. In fact, trying to manage community members too tightly can backfire, as a Harvard Business Review article cautions. Moderating content for appropriateness is one thing, but censoring legitimate complaints or opinions about your product or business can lead to anger and resentment among the very people whose help and support you seek. Don’t fear criticism; instead, see it as an opportunity to improve your product and to win even greater customer loyalty and respect.

   In the end, customer-generated content and your response to it both reflect on your brand. Keep an eye on your community and maintain an active presence in it with that idea in mind.

Where to start if you feel peer-to-peer support is a fit

Feeling confident that your brand or company has the customer base that could provide a robust source of customer support information? Then it’s time to determine the form and structure you want it to take. Start by exploring your current systems to see if there is a peer-to-peer support option available that is robust enough to do the job. If not, there are tools like Jive, Lithium and Answerbase that allow you to easily add peer-to-peer support options to your customer support efforts.

The results of creating such a support system can include freeing up more time for your customer service representatives, offering your customers the best answers from the best possible sources and increasing the credibility of those answers because they come from a wide-ranging community of experts – not just paid employees of your company. As the examples of successful online community support in this post show, you may find that the benefits of offering peer-to-peer support are well worth the effort.

The post When to Offer Community Support – And How to Do It Well appeared first on Answerbase.

Save time by cross-referencing existing content whenever you can.

Building and growing a highly referenceable support knowledge base comes in handy for using existing content to answer new questions that come in. In this example from bettycrocker.com, the “Ask Betty” feature simply directs the customer to a relevant link rather than requiring a tailored response. To maximize efficiency, look for knowledge base technology that enables you to cross-reference content quickly and easily. Of course, you’ll continue to run into scenarios where need to manage a customer inquiry which requires an individualized answer; but with all the time you save referencing existing content on other questions where it does make sense, you should still be able to be efficient without compromising service.

Make it easy for customers to find their own answers (and to find you).

Did you know that 67% of customers prefer to use self-service tools before getting in touch with a service representative? To make these tools truly useful, it’s important to empower customers to find their own answers. But the key is to do that without ever making the process seem burdensome or making customers feel as if self-service is their only choice. Self-service tools like online tutorials, Q&A, videos, and other knowledge base formats that can be easily searched and browsed are all great ways to accomplish this goal. Ideally, utilize technology that’s able to quickly recognize your customers’ needs and respond immediately with relevant information to address those needs. The more you’re able to effectively connect customers with the right support content, the less likely they are to need to contact your support organization for further help. Of course, in those cases, you should make the process clear and as easy as possible for them if they feel that’s what they need to do.

Use social media – but bring your customers back to you.

Social media is an important component of customer support; after all, that’s where many customers “live” online and most often interact with brands when they go in search of answers about products and services. You need to be there to field those inquiries, and you should – but you’ll be better able to control your interactions with them on your own turf. When you respond to customers on Twitter, Facebook or other social channels, always take the opportunity to direct them back to the solutions referenced on your own website. This allows you to bring them back to an environment where you have full control over the user experience, as well as where you lead them next to help accomplish your business goals.

Be sure every search ends successfully.

When people go to search engines with their questions or problems about your products or services, be sure you have the content there to answer them. Maintaining publicly available content that’s easily found by search engines helps make sure customers get their answers from you – and not from other sources over which you have no control. For businesses whose clients log into an online portal, be sure you provide search tools that are easy to use so they can quickly find the content that will satisfy their inquiries.  Having this content available through the channels that customers are actually using helps ensure they get satisfactory answers to their questions from the real subject matter expert (that’s you).  In turn, you effectively nip the issue in the bud so they are served well without submitting a new inquiry.

Focus new support content on topics that meet proven customer needs.

When you’re creating new customer support content for future inquiries, use your time wisely: Identify and focus on the issues and questions that matter most to customers. Analytics tools like the Google Analytics Content tool and Hubspot page performance reports can help you track activity and look at how existing content is performing. You can also glean insights from your own knowledge base about what types of content your customers seek out most often. For example, our Answerbase Q&A’s Content Insights feature identifies topics in high demand and recommends new content to create based on that information.  This ensures that you have the most relevant content available to reference moving forward, satisfying the highest percentage of future inquires.

If you’re committed to delivering a satisfying support experience to your customers, there are far more efficient ways to achieve your goal than allocating more and more scarce resources to customer support. Build a solid base of content to draw from, update it regularly based on customer demand and follow these tips to make it work harder for you as a source of effective, reliable support.

The post Tips for Providing High Quality Customer Support More Efficiently appeared first on Answerbase.

1. Keep the knowledge good CSRs leave behind when they leave.

Turnover is tough enough, but it’s even tougher when good, long-term CSRs leave – and take all the knowledge they’ve accumulated over the years with them. When this happens, it just adds to the already-high cost of having to hire and train a replacement. (Estimates range from $8,800 to $15,000.) The cost of losing a seasoned CSR’s knowledge may not be as quantifiable as that, but anyone who’s experienced such a loss can tell you it’s no less painful.

Fortunately, there’s technology available today to help retain the knowledge that veteran CSRs acquire over time: a knowledgebase. When accumulated in a knowledgebase, information such as answers to common customer questions will remain available to help keep up the quality of customer service. So while you may lose a CSR whose experience and knowledge makes it easy to quickly size up and address a customer’s problem, you don’t have to lose the experience and knowledge itself. Rather, you can allow it to populate the knowledgebase, where it will be available for newer CSRs to refer to when they are helping a customer with a problem that may be new to them – but may not actually be new at all.

2. Dramatically reduce the investment you make in new employees.

There are two very important things that technology can accomplish for a company struggling with CSR turnover:

• Reduced hiring requirements: As more customer service content gets posted online through knowledge bases, tutorials, articles and other tech-based channels, customers are more likely to be able to find the information they need without even making contact with a CSR (In fact, our own clients reduce their incoming inquiries by about 30% on average). Lower demand for CSR services means you may not need to fill all the vacant positions created by turnover, enabling you to reduce hiring and training costs – and achieve significant savings for your company.
• Lower training burden: If you have established a good knowledgebase, CSRs will be able to use it as a source for much of the information they need to do their jobs. Therefore, you won’t need to provide as much training to the CSRs you do hire to replace those who leave. Access to good information to help get the job done can also help reduce CSRs’ stress – one of the factors that can drive them to quit.

3. Identify your best performers – and give them more reasons to stay.

Today’s digital world equips employers with more technology tools than ever to identify your top-performing CSRs and reduce turnover among them. If you have a knowledgebase that includes the ability for customers to rate answers received from CSRs, you can track individual performance over time. Add to that your data from post-interaction surveys and other sources of customer opinions, along with information from tools that measure CSR speed and efficiency, and it’s easy to tell exactly who’s consistently excelling overall. Then you can motivate them to stay – whether by rewarding them financially, supporting them in their professional goals or taking other positive steps. You can even use these same tools and analytics to identify underperforming CSRs and encourage them to leave when necessary. So when you do experience turnover, it’s more likely to be the poor performers that are moving along.

If you started this article thinking that CSR turnover is generally a bad thing, I hope by now you’ve come to the conclusion that doesn’t have to be the case. With the technology resources available to you today, you can respond to turnover more positively than ever before – and turn it to your advantage.

The post Use Technology to Turn Around Your CSR Turnover Problem appeared first on Answerbase.

You can establish yourself as a thought leader by consistently providing information that proves useful and credible, beginning with topics that focus on supporting people who are actually using your products or services. Once you’ve achieved that, you can move on to providing higher-level information and views about your industry more generally, not just your own company.

Both types of thought leadership – about your products or services specifically and about the larger industry – are important. The first enables you to become the one that people count on to support them as users of your products or services. And it lays the foundation for the second, broader kind of thought leadership.

We’ll talk about the best ways to reach customers and potential customers with your information and views later in this post. But first, let’s look at why it’s so important to assume the role of thought leader in your field – and at the specific ways in which thought leadership benefits your organization.

Lead, follow or get out of the way.

When you establish yourself as a thought leader, you differentiate your company, setting it apart from your competitors as the source that can best meet the demand for authoritative information in your field. This serves two purposes: It establishes your authority about how best to use your products or services, and it sets you up as a trusted source of guidance for helping plan larger strategies and initiatives.

For example, if you run a software company that serves marketing directors, once you’ve become known as the best source of information about your product or service, you can go on to become a valuable source of information for higher-level considerations like content strategy, content distribution, multi-channel marketing strategies and so forth. You learn a lot by partnering with your customers to accomplish their goals, and that puts you in a position to share what you’ve learned, which can serve your market as a whole.

If you don’t fill the role of thought leader, people will look elsewhere for someone to do it – and that’s likely to be a competitor. It doesn’t matter whether they go to a competitor’s website, a general forum or a media channel; the point is that if they’re looking to someone else, you’re missing the opportunity to be the one who controls the message that’s out there about your field and even your own products and services.

This brings to mind the old expression “lead, follow or get out of the way.” In this situation, you want to be the one who leads the thinking about your company and your industry – the source people immediately think of to go to when they need information about your products and services and how to use them effectively. Being that leader enables you to:

Retain existing customers who appreciate having readily available support content around your products and services to help them when they have questions or issues.

Enhance relationships with customers who see the support and information you provide – both about your own products and services and about related industry topics – as an added value of doing business with you instead of with someone else.

Upsell current customers by educating them about ways to meet their needs.

Attract new customers who are using search engines to find information that’s relevant to them and their needs.

People today are hungry for information. When you consistently provide content to satisfy those cravings, you become the leader they’re looking for in your field.

Top three ways to share your expertise and be a thought leader

Let’s be clear on one important point: Thought leadership isn’t about self-promotion. It’s about helping people when they need information. As one communications consultant described it, “Thought leadership is about writing what you know, sharing your expertise and addressing potential customer pain points.” With that in mind, here are three things you can do to achieve thought leadership in customer support.

1. Publish blogposts and articles to share your expertise.
   Regularly publishing blogposts and articles on your website about topics of interest to customers and potential customers enables you to engage with them directly to share information that’s of value to them, building their trust over time. For example, if your company provides IT support to small businesses, you might start by simply offering some practical guidance on how to troubleshoot a particular computer problem, and then expand into blogging about larger topics such as how to decide when it’s time to upgrade systems and software.
2. Maintain a Q&A knowledge base of helpful information.
   One of the main reasons people use search engines like Google is to find answers to questions. When you maintain an online knowledge base of questions and answers in your field, you set your company up as a source for the answers people are looking for. One of my favorite examples of this is the services referral company Angie’s List, which has built an extensive knowledgebase from which to provide expert information. Google “How much should water heater installation cost?” for example, and an answer from Angie’s List tops the non-paid search results.
3. Engage beyond your own website on social media and other channels.
   It’s important to have content on your website to establish thought leadership, but it’s even more important to expand your reach by engaging with customers and potential customers through other channels online. Instead of just posting articles on your site, put the content on LinkedIn, link to it via Twitter and Facebook, and refer to it in general-interest online forums like quora.com or more specialized communities like stackoverflow.com. This is also a great opportunity to provide a link to your own blog or knowledge base and bring people back to your environment.

A content strategy that includes all three of these things allows you to create a presence across several different channels, increasing the odds that people who are looking for information will find you wherever they look. It also helps ensure that if you don’t reach your audience in one channel, they’ll find you in another.

Don’t miss your chance to lead the thinking about what you do – which both serves your current customers while leading more potential customers to your company, products, and services.

The post In Business, Thought Leadership Starts with Customer Support appeared first on Answerbase.

Here are six examples of how you can use technology to enrich your customer support capabilities.

1. Build an online knowledge base.

When customers have questions or problems related to products or services, they appreciate being able to find answers or solutions quickly, without having to wait on hold for a representative, call back during regular business hours or schedule a service call. By building an online knowledge base, you provide a convenient source of help and information to customers. And as you enrich the knowledge base by adding more answers over time, you improve your ability to address their needs both effectively and cost-efficiently. For example, our Answerbase product has an “auto suggest” feature that reaches into the growing base of information to quickly present possible answers when users submit new inquiries. Among our clients, we’ve found that 30% of online questions on average are answered this way.

2. Provide social support.

Customers are increasingly engaging with companies on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media for customer service. In fact, 39-43% of consumers 18-49 years old use social media for service interactions. It’s well worth devoting resources to monitor and provide speedy responses to customers’ questions and concerns on social media. This may be a dedicated community manager or, for smaller companies, someone who performs the job along with other responsibilities. In either case, this is another area in which a knowledge base can help deliver service both effectively and cost-efficiently, by having answers to common questions organized for easy reference in a social media interaction.

3. Consider online chat.

Online chat with service representatives can be extremely satisfying for customers who are engaging with your company online. In fact, live chat has a 73% satisfaction rating for customer service, more than email or phone. But it only works if you do it right – which means making sure representatives are available when customers need them and not being too eager to contact customers proactively. Otherwise, online chat can backfire as customers become impatient and irritated. When done right, however, online chat can improve the support experience. And, along with traditional phone support, it’s definitely an area where a complementary knowledge base software will help deliver a satisfying experience by enabling service representatives to find information for customers quickly.

4. Enhance phone support.

Phone support may not be the first support channel you think of when you think of technology, but technology does provide new ways to enhance this traditional and necessary channel for support, as well as to help control the costs associated with it. Like online chat, phone support is a double-edged sword – embraced by customers when it’s done right and loathed by them when it’s not. Certainly not every company can afford the luxury of answering every call with a live operator, but today’s contact center technology can help take phone support up a notch without breaking the bank. Even something as simple as providing the option for a callback, or advising callers how long their hold time will be, can make a big difference.

5. Use analytics to your advantage.

One of the great advantages of technology-driven customer support is that you have a digital record of so many interactions. That’s data you can use to track and analyze how you’re doing. You can determine which channels are working, which aren’t and why; identify your highest (and lowest) performing team members and take steps to reward or motivate them; measure costs against results; and much more. It can be hard to know where to start if you haven’t done customer service analytics before, but don’t get overwhelmed – there’s helpful information available to assist in identifying and applying key metrics. As you consider different options for support software – whether for online, phone or social support – be sure that any solution you choose makes it easy to retrieve the data from customer support interactions.

6. Motivate your team.

Technology can help keep your support team in top form. Providing tech-driven resources to help people do their jobs more effectively and efficiently – as described in the first four points above – can be a major morale booster. You can also use analytics to reallocate workloads in a more balanced way, which not only makes operations more efficient but helps avoid inadvertently overworking teams. And incorporating gamification into incentive programs is a great way to provide daily motivation.

Today, technology is making it possible to deliver customer support in more ways than ever – and to deliver it better and at a lower cost. Take maximum advantage of this new reality with a multi-channel approach that combines tech-defined channels like social support and live chat with traditional (but tech-enhanced) phone support. You’ll give customers the support choices they want, and you won’t go broke doing it.

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