How should a small startup handle customer service?
- My first suggestion is that ensure your product is robust, so it doesn’t generate complaints or support mails.
- Understand the Customer Journey and find out what can possibly go wrong.
- Classify what can go wrong into following groups:
- Life threatening to customers
- Results in Customer being non-compliant
- Renders the product unfit for use
- Partial malfunction
- Noticeable loss of performance
- Minor performance loss (unnoticeable)
- Minor nuisance
- If there are too many items in first 4 categories, you better plan for 24×7 support
- Build strong help and FAQ features through videos & text Q&A in your website.
- In spite of all the above, you are bound to encounter a reasonably healthy rate of support requests :-(… That’s life.
- I don’t know what kind of product or service you are into, if its time-sensitive or offers critical services, etc then 24X7 support is a good idea even if the volume is low. But if its not that sensitive and doesn’t impact your customer’s daily life in a big way, then even if your product/service is paid (& highly paid), customers will be ok with reasonable responsiveness.
- So its nothing to do with your volumes, its to do with the criticality of your service.
- My personal suggestion is that give an personalized email id (not support@…) but (Someone’sName@….). Give phone line and set up a good voice mail message.
- Also clearly mention the expected response time for resolution.
- Set up a filter in your email box to catch keywords like “URGENT”, “CRITICAL”, and route them to a separate folder.
- Check that folder first thing in the morning as you get up 🙂
This has been working for 5 years for me! Good Luck
