SaaS companies thrive on repeat buyers, who in turn thrive on good customer support. 

It won’t take more than one bad experience to compel 51% of users to cancel their subscription, according to NewVoiceMedia. And while 72% of customers will tell six or more people about a pleasant experience, poor support will have 13% of users telling 15 or more people who not to buy software from. 

In fact, one study by Slideshare found that a bad experience with customer service was the primary reason for a canceled subscription among 67% of respondents. So, even if you have the best software on the market, it’s not going to keep people coming back if you can’t provide the assistance they need. 

With this in mind, let’s take a look at the best practices to offer superior SaaS customer support. 

Accessibility

Perhaps a user is confused about certain changes made in a recent update. Maybe they’re having compatibility issues. They could have found a bug that you weren’t aware of. In any case, it shouldn’t be difficult for them to let you know. 

Make sure that your support service is easy to reach. It’s also important that customers can use a contact method that’s convenient to them, be it email, live chat, or social media. Those details should be clear and visible wherever you’re present – both on desktop and mobile devices. 

Don’t forget to clearly state the times during which your team is available. Ideally, that would be 24/7, or at the very least, during business hours. You don’t want to keep customers waiting too long, which brings us to our next point.

Self-Service

Not every user wants or needs to talk to a support agent. Sometimes, they’re just looking for a quick answer or solution. 

Knowing the most common questions and problems that come your way, you can develop a knowledge base or FAQ for your website. This can significantly reduce the number of messages that your team receives while helping customers effortlessly find out what they need to know. Make sure that it’s informative, responsive, and easy to navigate. 

You can take this further by setting up a community forum where users can discuss and resolve issues amongst themselves. This is a good way to identify the biggest problems your customers face and send feedback to your development team accordingly.

Live Chat

Your users have high expectations when it comes to the quality and responsiveness of your customer support. Most of them are probably not willing to wait hours (and definitely not days) for a reply to their email. 

Providing a live chat service can help to remedy this problem. Users can have their questions answered and problems solved almost immediately, without having to take any additional steps after reaching your website. Most live chat services are far more affordable than a support hotline, while also being an effective way to onboard new users.

Staff

At the foundation of any effective customer support service is a good team. 

Given the complexity of your product, it’s important to have educated and knowledgeable staff who know what they’re talking about. At the same time, they need to have adequate communication skills and an ability to build relationships.

They need to know how to deal with stressed, rude, and angry users in a diplomatic manner that upholds the values of your company. Ensure that these qualities are present among the rest of your organisation as well, with a particular focus on those who are likely to interact with customers. 

This is a good time to discern the difference between customer support and customer service. The former refers to staff who respond to queries, while customer service is responsible for improving engagement. Tasking certain employees with identifying trends in the messages your users send is a great way to reduce ticket numbers. 

Standards

More on the above point, it would be a mistake to assume that all of your support agents have the same approach to their job. This is why it’s important to have standards for how they treat customers. Here are some considerations:

  • Response times. 
  • Refund discretions.
  • Handling certain situations.
  • Greeting and welcoming customers. 
  • When and how to send follow-up messages.
  • Tracking requests and avoiding missed tickets. 
  • Categorising issues and assigning them to the right department. 

It would be wise to have published service level agreements that users can see to gain peace of mind knowing that your company upholds certain standards when it comes to customer support. Here, you can provide a FAQ of sorts with answers to questions regarding issues such as how you deal with downtime and how fast you respond to requests.

Transparency

Being part of the ‘big data’ industry, SaaS companies tend to be perceived by customers with a certain level of weariness or suspicion. Some users think that they’re being charged a high price for something that costs much less to provide. 

Your support service is an ideal place to reduce this kind of scepticism. This is done by being transparent about your policies and pricing, with a particular focus on how you handle customer data. The following practices can help you keep your users at ease:

  • Downtime notifications.
  • Advance notice of changes in terms or fees. 
  • Information about how you spend customer money. 
  • Making it easy for users to cancel their subscription. 
  • Answering questions asked by prospective customers. 

Staying in touch with your customers and monitoring what they say about your company on public channels such as forums and social media will help you identify and address any other sources of scepticism. This is key to maintaining a strong reputation. 

Central Platform

One way to make your support team’s job much easier is to stick to a central platform upon which you can handle all enquiries, whether they’re sent via email, live chat or social media. There are several advantages to this approach.

Aside from saving time, it will spare your staff from having to log into numerous platforms to stay on top of their respective requests. Another benefit is being able to see how your team is performing. Regular analysis will help you identify room for improvement. Having a central platform also makes it easier to flag and escalate tickets. 

Feedback

The customer support process doesn’t end when you close the ticket. There’s one more step, which is asking for feedback. This is key to finding out whether the support you provided is satisfactory and how you can make it better.

Customers will also appreciate the opportunity to send that feedback, especially if they weren’t happy with the support they received. The data you collect can help you build a more comprehensive knowledge base and a better chatbot, which can reduce tickets and improve the morale of your support team. 

With enough information, you’ll be able to automate routine functions and significantly lower the workload faced by your team. This will only become more important as you gain customers. There’s always room for improvement and being open to any feedback that comes your way is key to identifying it. 

By following these practices, you can make leaps and bounds in providing the best possible support service any customer can hope to interact with. Be sure to spend some time on this, as the level of effort you put in can make-or-break the success of your SaaS company.