How proper customer support should work: To attract and retain customers, we must not only good software develop.

Hand in hand: software and support

How many companies actually offer good support? And what exactly matters? We’ll answer these and other questions on the subject of service and support – and not just based on our own experience. As part of a study entitled „Closing the delivery gap“, we surveyed Bain & Company 362 companies and found that only 30 % of them gear their processes towards providing excellent customer service. But what is even more important is that the study also revealed that, whilst 80 per cent of companies believe they provide good support, only 8 per cent of customers feel they receive good support. We have put together a brief overview for you, focusing specifically on the five points that we, as a software company, consider particularly important and which are based on our real-world experience.

80 % of companies believe they provide good support, but only 8 % of customers share this view.

The key aspects of good customer support

Confirm support request automatically

We inform the sender that we have received their customer support enquiry and that it is being processed. Whenever a partner or customer contacts our company, whether via a web form or by email, we ensure that an automated reply is sent confirming receipt of the enquiry and containing a unique ticket number.

Always respond to customer service enquiries

Our average response time is less than three hours, compared with the industry average of 15 hours and 17 minutes. This means that the relevant department received the enquiry promptly and was able to process it efficiently.

Follow-up emails

Very few companies ask whether the customer was satisfied with the service. Feedback is very important to us in order to optimise our processes and improve our software. Once we have closed a ticket, we ask the user by email to rate us via a web form on the independent website www.kundentests.com. The invitation to leave a review is always sent automatically – without any employee being able to prevent this.

Making it as easy as possible to contact support

You can contact us by telephone, email, via the customer portal, the ‘Call me back’ button and the live chat feature on our website. This makes it easy for our customers and partners to get in touch.

Quality rather than quantity

At our company, customer support staff are not assessed on the basis of the number of enquiries they answer and resolve. This approach compromises quality and provides no incentive for outstanding service, as speed of response is prioritised. Studies show that customers prioritise quality over speed. A high-quality response is always better than an inadequate one, even if it takes longer to draft.

That’s our experience so far. As you’ve no doubt noticed, we place great importance on providing good support. You can see this, incidentally, from our reviews on www.kundentests.com read.

Any questions? Would you like to find out more about our software? In our hsp academy we impart further knowledge.

Are you a customer with a question or a problem?

Our support team Not only do we offer comprehensive training courses to suit every requirement, every level of knowledge and every sector – you can also contact us with any issues on weekdays from 8.00 am to 5.00 pm. Simply send an email to webservice@hsp-software.de or call us on +49 40 53 43 69 199.

We’d be happy to help.

support_staff

Wolfgang Schönwaldt, Erich Rohland, Julian Rumkowski, Christian Schreiner and Gideon Odoom (Senior and Junior Consultants, Support / Quality Management / Consulting)