When starting a business, one question raises very quickly:: how will I manage my customer interactions?
When we begin your journey, email is good enough: we have few customers to manage, we know them all, we even have a special relationship with most of them and there is no clear boundary between customer relations and support. Customers contact us by email, whatever the topic, and we answer them.
Then comes the next step: the number of customers increases, faster and faster, we need to make the team grow, we are no longer the only one to interact with our clients... Emails show their limit. We need equip.
The support software market mainly offers a all-in-one product, that allows ticket and knowledge base management (Zendesk, Freshdesk...).
Those tools are essential for ticket management.
Users can self-serve and find answers directly through the knowledge base (about 60% of the customer requests), the remaining 40% generate tickets handled by the support agents.
Another type of software exists, specialized in ticket deflection (e.g. Stonly).
Those tools are optional but can reduce the number of open tickets by an additional 70% compared to generic support softwares.
In addition, your support teams will need an internal tool to get user information, needed to resolve open tickets (kind of a window on your product database).
This is what a level 1 support organization might look like:
Ticket deflection tool
I had the opportunity to test Stonly and I love this tool.
Stonly offers many key features:
Self-service assistance that adapts to each user.
In-product onboarding to personally guide users through their journey.
Interactive guides to help support agents solve problems.
In-product surveys to get user feedback.
The guides, surveys, questionnaires and tutorials provided with Stonly do not require any technical product integration. You can easily integrate anywhere in your product with no code integration.
Stonly integrates with almost all support software on the market.
Stonly knowledge Base
Stonly includes an efficient knowledge base.
In addition to offering a classic knowledge base, Stonly includes the ability to create interactive guides that are more engaging and effective than static content:
Stonly Widget
The stonly widget integrates directly into your product to provide help for users:
Hotspots and tooltips: allows you to add visual cues at the right time to launch guides that introduce and explain your website or application.
Pop-up info and guides: allows to target users with insightful, proactive messages and content throughout their journey.
Knowledge Base: offers the possibility to embed specific knowledge base items, categories or guides directly into your application.
Product tours: allows you to create tours and sequences that will guide users through the discovery, configuration or adoption of new features.
Ticketing Tools:
There are many tools on the market. I have worked with 2 of them: Zendesk (the leader) and Freshdesk.
They are both very efficient and pleasant to use.
Here is an overview of the tools you can find on the market:
Zendesk
It is the leader on the market. It has many powerful features as well as deep customization features to answer your needs. All the must-have features are there and efficient (ticket management, mobile app, multi-country, numerous integrations, automations...).
Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a leader for small business companies looking for a good customer support tool.
It is a powerful tool with comprehensive features (omni-channel management, automation, customizable reporting) for a very nice customer experience.
Live Agent
Live Agent is well-known in the support software market, offering customer service management via chat only. It offers an easy-to-use support ticket management system for your agents, very easy to set up, with all the features of advanced software. Live Agent offers its services at an affordable price.
FrontApp
FrontApp positions for small organizations, with exclusively written support, that are looking for an easy-to-install and easy-to-use product.
FrontApp does everything you would expect from a customer support software: support ticket management, internal communication, automation, various integrations...
Using those tools, you should be able to manage efficiently your customer requests.
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