Why Your Tech Startup Needs Customer Support: An Interview With Desk.com's Hana
If you really want to know how to set up customer support for your tech company, there is no better place to go than to the customer support for a customer support tech company.
In 2011, Salesforce bought an out-of-the-box customer support app called Assistly, and renamed it Desk.com. Small and medium sized businesses use Saleforce for their CRM solutions, so integrating the app was a no-brainer and has proved very worthwhile for all parties involved.
Although cutting costs on customer support may seem like a savvy strategy for your cash-strapped startup, Hana Mandapat, Director of Marketing for Desk.com, urges you to consider again. Mandapat communicates with startups and small businesses about how they're using customer service to grow their business, and how Desk.com can help them. She's seen the negative effects of poor customer service, and how they can tank a startup. I asked Mandapat for some of her best tips and strategies for startups growing their customer support, and here's what she had to say: As a tech company trying to reach those customers: how do you do it, and what's been most effective? I have the privilege of being in a role where I get direct access to those customers. Many companies pay a lot of money to get in front of their customers by organizing focus groups or hiring research firms, but I have this direct line to them. What's great about the companies I talk to is that everyone wants to be known for good customer service, especially in today's world where someone can tweet about you and everything can go bad. Our new connected world is very public and very open.
So, we reach out and have daily conversations with our customers like Luxe and Munchery. We work with these customers on a regular basis, trying to understand what they go through as a startup. It's not just the customer service part, but understanding the challenges that these guys are going through. Challenges like feeling like they don't have the resources they need, or they don't have a tech background, but they know they need to get support up and running because they're attracting more customers and don't want things to explode and get out of their control. That's really what were focused on at Desk.com: helping give small businesses the tools they need so that they can scale the customer experience and get everything in place from the very beginning. You're a juggernaut of a tech company. How do you take that customer feedback and conversation, and actually implement that into a product when you're so large? The great thing about Desk.com is that we're operating like a startup within a big tech company. Desk.com was acquired five years ago by Salesforce, which is a great position to be in. We can move fast and act like a startup with the backing of a big company.
We do that by using our own technology; our support team uses Desk.com every day. Every time a case comes in or a customer gives us feedback, we log that in Desk.com, label it, and categorize it using our reporting mechanisms, called Business Insights. We use all that data to see what the trends and insights are. We can see that maybe last week, for example, we had a lot of issues around password reset. It's very important, especially as a startup, to signal what trends are happening in our customer base so that we can take action on it. We use our own support cases and data to see what customers are requesting, and use that to inform our product roadmap. We want to make sure that we're building what our customers actually want. Another part of my job is — and I think that this is something that any startup can do — holding quarterly or monthly user group meetings. Wherever you are, get your customers together and ask for feedback. Show them a little bit of your product roadmap, some tips on how to use your product or service, and more often than not, they want to give you that feedback because they want a better experience too. What's a better way than talking to them? I was just in New York and we took the time while we were out there to do a customer meetup and build those one-on-one relationships.
This is where I think startups have an advantage over larger companies because they still have that personal touch and can move more quickly, whereas when you get into a larger company it becomes a little more difficult. Take advantage of the fact that you can have those intimate conversations, and use them as a focus group.
Also, reward those customers that have been with you from the beginning. Make sure all those customers who are doing your focus groups get in early on testing for features, and work with them when you're doing marketing. When you're taking that feedback, how do you differentiate between what customers are saying they want and what they really need? Do you find that there is a difference?
I think it's all in the discovery and asking the right questions. Someone might say, “I need this specific feature,” but what they're really trying to solve needs a different feature. I start with the basics when I talk to customers, and ask, “What are your general challenges, and what do you need Desk.com to fix?” In understanding what their challenges are, you can map out what they really need. There are different suggestions we can make, but it's having a conversation rather than saying, “What do you need? Let me build it,” because that use is for one customer.
You want to look at the trends; that's why reporting is so important on your support data, finding where the spikes are. Is there a critical mass of companies who have asked for this feature? If so, that's where you start having the conversations with those customers and asking them what it is. Here's where you can reward them with a piloted feature, rewarding your loyal customers with something that won't be rolled out to everyone. You get to ask them if this is what they asked for, and then iterate. We live in Silicon Valley so it's all about the MVP, but really where you're going to get the best product for your customers is from them. For those companies looking to increase customer service and support, how do you justify the ROI on increasing customer engagement?
Startups especially are growing and don't have a ton of resources or money, so it's typical that they think of customer support as a cost center, but that is a false notion. When you're a small company, most likely your founder is working in Gmail, but as you start growing it becomes a pain to manage all of that in a shared inbox. You don't know who's responded to what. Did you respond to the customer? What did you say? Are you telling them different things? It's easy to lose that accountability. At the end of the day, that experience is horrible for the customer, and you're losing their loyalty. As a startup, it's so important to keep those early customers on and keep them happy. You may only have 10 to 15 customers, but when they're happy they tell their friends, and that word-of-mouth and brand loyalty is so valuable for a startup. All value starts with customer service. Support agents are now the brand ambassadors; the role has changed. People have thought of support as a reactionary position, just waiting around for questions to be asked of them. Today, if someone has a problem, your support agents are your front line. They're the first point of contact, and if you can get your support team to take every action that comes in and turn them into a loyal customer, that's a win. Again, that loyalty itself will pay you back tenfold if you keep them on as a customer.
