
Customer Support: Definition, Importance, and Strategies
When you show up for your customers, they’ll keep coming back for more. Try these proven strategies to help you deliver next-level customer support online, over the phone, or in the field.
When you show up for your customers, they’ll keep coming back for more. Try these proven strategies to help you deliver next-level customer support online, over the phone, or in the field.
When customers contact your service team, they want help fast. How fast? According to our research, 77% of customers expect to interact with someone immediately when they contact a company. You need a customer support strategy and customer service software that can help you keep up.
Customer support refers to the people and interactions that help customers who use a business’s service or product. Help can include answering a question, providing training or installation, and of course, troubleshooting an issue. Customer support plays a major role in customer retention — provide a pleasant, smooth experience, and you’ll build your brand reputation and foster loyalty. Get it wrong, and you may lose customers.
Read on to learn more about why customer support matters, or navigate to one of the following sections.
Customer support is the network of services, tools, and teams a company puts in place to help customers resolve issues. This is typically focused on addressing technical problems, troubleshooting product-related queries, and providing guidance to ensure customers get the most value out of their purchases. The primary goal of a customer support team is to provide proactive assistance that is efficient, effective, and empathetic.
What is the difference between customer service and customer support? They might sound similar, but each one serves a distinct function.
Customer support is all about helping customers solve problems and get back on track as quickly as possible.
Customer service is more about the overall customer experience. The principles of customer service include building relationships with customers, making them feel valued, and providing them with a positive experience from start to finish.
Customer support is important because it’s where relationships are built and loyalty is nurtured. With a solid customer support strategy in place, you can:
Build trust: Delivering timely, accurate responses will keep customers coming back for more.
Boost brand reputation: Customers who have a good experience with your support team — whether in the contact center or in the field — may tell their friends about your brand.
Collect customer feedback: Customer support interactions provide valuable feedback that can be used to improve your products, services, and overall customer experience
Gain a competitive advantage: Excellent support sets you apart from your competitors, and may even be a deciding factor for customers choosing between similar products or services.
High-performing service organizations are using data and AI to generate revenue while cutting costs — without sacrificing the customer experience. Find out how in the 6th edition of the State of Service report.
When it comes to selecting customer support channels, the key is to look at which ones your current customers are using the most. With 77% of customers expecting to interact with someone immediately when they contact a company, it’s helpful to offer a broad range so you can meet customers wherever they are.
Consider offering these top customer service channels now:
Self-service: Our research shows that 61% of customers prefer self-service for simple issues, and it resolves an estimated 54% of customer problems on average at organizations that use it.
Self-service options include a help center (or knowledge base) and a customer portal, where users can access their information, such as past purchases, and initiate processes like returns.
Customers can also be directed to online communities where they can dialogue directly with other customers and professionals and have their questions answered. One example of this is Salesforce’s Serviceblazer Community on Slack , where individuals can join curated channels for service and field service-related topics and interact with one another directly.
AI agents: AI agents like Salesforce’s Agentforce represent the latest advancement in customer service technology and can be deployed across any service channel. Unlike traditional chatbots, which rely on preprogrammed rules, Agentforce uses natural language processing (NLP) to understand the context and intent of customer inquiries, responding in a conversational and context-appropriate manner.
Agentforce can independently resolve issues, deflect repetitive tasks, and escalate complex queries to service representatives when necessary. Like your reps, it also learns from customer interactions, continuously improving its effectiveness over time.
Live chat: Live chat is a convenient alternative to phone calls. Chat benefits both customers and support teams by enabling quick, simple interactions, reducing call volumes and costs, and allowing reps to handle multiple conversations simultaneously, thus shortening wait times and speeding up issue resolution.
SMS and messaging apps: Today’s customers often use their phones, making SMS and messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Apple Messages for Business crucial service channels. These platforms offer convenience, fast response times, and a record of past interactions.
Phone: Voice is still a top channel for customer service. And with advances in technology, AI can now bring all of the benefits of AI agents to your voice channel. Autonomous AI agents deployed on your voice channel understand the customer’s inquiry, and can take steps to resolve the issue.
Email: A majority of service organizations (90% ,our research finds) offer email support. Customers can email you whenever they have a moment, and get a record of the conversation to refer to, right in their inbox.
Great support isn’t just a nice-to-have. Our research shows that 86% of service reps say customer expectations are higher than they used to be. Here are five ways to deliver on those expectations:
Around-the-clock support, through channels like phone, email, live chat, or social media, is a way to meet customers wherever and whenever they need help. But if staffing live service representatives 24/7 isn’t realistic, an AI agent like Salesforce’s Agentforce or a good self-service site can go a long way toward helping customers with frequently asked questions and even some complex issues during off hours.
AI is opening up new ways to support your service reps and improve the customer service experience. Here’s how Salesforce’s Agentforce improves customer service:
Customers often use multiple channels to start and complete a transaction. The key is for your contact center reps, field service technicians, and AI agents to see all of a customer’s interactions with your business — no matter which channels were used — so your customers don’t have to repeat themselves. The right customer relationship management (CRM) software can help you get there.
One of the most important elements of a smooth customer service experience is speed. Customer service automation software can help you deliver faster service at scale. It offloads repetitive and manual tasks to AI agents so service reps have time to focus on higher-value tasks.
Customer service analytics can help you see what’s happening in your contact center. Do customers have to wait on hold too long? Is their issue resolved during the first contact? Do service reps need training on a particular issue? With the right data at your fingertips, you can turn customer interactions into insights and give service reps the training they need to improve your service operations. Trailhead, Salesforce’s free online learning platform, is a great resource for your team to learn valuable customer service skills.
It's an exclusive meeting place, just for service professionals. From customer service to field service, the Serviceblazer Community is where peers grow, learn, and celebrate everything service.
Excellent customer service goes beyond just resolving issues; it leaves a lasting positive impression on customers. Here are a few hypothetical examples that illustrate what outstanding customer service looks like:
Personalized Assistance: Imagine a customer reaches out to a retail company's support team because they can't find a specific product on the website. The service rep not only helps locate the item but also suggests complementary products based on the customer's purchase history. The rep then offers a discount on the next purchase as a token of appreciation. This personalized touch not only solves the immediate problem but also builds customer loyalty.
Proactive Problem Solving: A customer contacts a tech support team because their device is malfunctioning. The service rep not only troubleshoots the issue but also proactively checks for any software updates that could prevent future problems. The rep then schedules a follow-up call to ensure the issue is fully resolved, demonstrating a commitment to the customer's satisfaction.
Seamless Multichannel Support: A customer initially reaches out via chat with an AI agent to resolve an issue with their account. The AI agent, after detecting the complexity of the problem, seamlessly transfers the conversation to a phone call with a more specialized human service rep. The transition is smooth, and the customer doesn't have to repeat their issue. This multichannel approach ensures that the customer receives the right level of support without any frustration.
Even the best support teams face hurdles that can impact the customer experience. But with a proactive strategy and the right technology, you can turn common challenges into opportunities for improvement. Here’s how to tackle some of the most frequent obstacles:
Your AI is only as strong as the data it's built on. Service Cloud is built on trusted, secured data to safely maximize the power of AI.
Customer support teams can be structured in various ways to ensure efficient and effective service. Here are some common structures that organizations often adopt:
While it's crucial to set both your customer service reps and AI agents up for success, customer support software plays a major supporting role. The right software helps reps deliver quality service at scale. Here are some questions to consider as you review the options on the market:
You likely want a platform that offers these features:
One great way to research different customer support platforms, like Salesforce Service Cloud, is by checking reviews on G2 .
With a solid grasp of why customer support software is important, you can begin to identify criteria for making a good selection. Be sure to work with a broad range of stakeholders — including service reps and leadership — to come up with a list of requirements for your customer support software. From there, it’s a process of learning what various vendors have to offer, and comparing that to your needs.
While human agents are the foundation of any service team, customer support software plays a major supporting role. The right software helps agents deliver quality service at scale. Here are some questions to consider as you review the options on the market:
You likely want a platform that offers these features:
With a solid grasp of why customer support software is important, you can begin to identify criteria for making a good selection. Be sure to work with a broad range of stakeholders — including service agents and leadership — to come up with a list of requirements for your customer support software. From there, it’s a process of learning what various vendors have to offer, and comparing that to your needs.
Watch Agentforce for Service resolve cases on its own, deliver trusted answers, engage with customers across channels and seamlessly hand off to human service reps.
The key aspects of customer support include:
Together, these aspects turn everyday interactions into customer support experiences that drive loyalty and long-term retention.
A customer support person is a front-line problem-solver. Their role is to help customers by answering questions, troubleshooting technical issues, providing training or installation guidance, and documenting the details of each interaction in a customer service management system.
The primary benefits of strong customer support are increased customer loyalty and trust. It also helps boost your brand's reputation, provides a clear channel for valuable customer feedback, and can become a key competitive advantage in the market.
While the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, a help desk is often more narrowly focused on resolving technical incidents, especially in an IT context (ITSM). Customer support is a broader business function dedicated to assisting external customers with products and services. Many support teams use help desk software to manage their operations.
When connected to a CRM, customer service AI agents can access a customer's purchase history and past interactions. This allows the AI to provide tailored troubleshooting steps, suggest relevant complementary products, and create a personalized experience that shows you understand the customer's unique needs.