Customer support no longer plays solo in today’s marketing arena to win over the hearts of customers. Customer service has to now step up its game, adhere to the new digital reality, and keep pace with breakthrough technology.
With technological progress, customer service and customers themselves have become more tech-savvy than ever. Alas, new technical issues arose, leading to the technical support roll-out to handle the challenge.
Customer support services and technical support play essential roles in organizations. Both perform different tasks, yet they share a common goal: help the clients solve their problems and keep them satisfied.
Nonetheless, different services require different approaches to the customers, so it’s essential to distinguish the two services and learn the fundamental principles they follow.
What is Customer Support?
As the name suggests, customer support is what shapes the customers’ experience with the brand. Brands offer clients various services to assist them in making the most cost-effective decisions and help them get the best use out of these.
How should customer support services approach the clients, you ask? There are several fundamental requirements to run good customer service and ensure your interactions with the clients yield positive results:
- Empathy;
- Expertise;
- Communication;
- Personalization.
Customer support practices bring your company’s interactions with potential consumers to the next level of the buying process. Given the scope of responsibilities of support agents, the service is omnipresent. It’s taught across all personnel who might interact with the customers at any point in the sales process.
As you can see, client support is deeply rooted in the business strategy of any customer-centric business. The ultimate goal of proper customer service is to make your customers want to come back, increasing their trust in your company.
Does having only one type of support limit your options?
Customer support alone might not be enough to handle massive volumes of technology-related customer requests.
In this case, companies should consider integrating tech support into their client service offering to keep up with the competition. Tech support ensures that the client gets the best possible use from the product or service. With the rapid development of digital marketing and technology takeover, companies don’t have much of a choice.
Also, customer service is usually not of a technical nature. For product-based businesses, adding technical support is their best bet. So, let’s break it down.
Technology issues dominate the CX issues.
Source: Statista
What is Tech Support?
Technical support, also known as IT support, help desk, or service desk, provides assistance for users who need help with a technical product or service. It can be either a hardware device or a software tool. To address as many customer needs as possible, it’s crucial to implement tiered tech support and structure it around different levels.
Such service has a more limited field of application since the customer inquiries are more topic-specific and much rarer. Technical support is not provided for every single client with whom your company interacts, but only to those who face technology-related issues. But this doesn’t make tech support any less important for the overall business success and customer satisfaction.
As a rule of thumb, tech support reps are highly competent and trained specialists who know the ins and outs of hardware and software technologies. The required level of expertise depends on the level of technical complexity of the product or service that businesses provide.
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash
Why should your company consider both?
While customer support agents provide essential assistance with any kind of issues that customers might face, they are not required to be technical experts. This is when tech support comes in handy.
Technical support and customer support have different responsibilities, but they help your company deliver the best customer experience possible when in sync. They both need adequate customer service skills to excel at their job.
Customers and technology must learn to collaborate in a new, digitally-oriented business environment. Therefore, technical support is now integral to the overall customer service strategy.
Final Thoughts
The modern marketing scene has become more digitally-oriented, and businesses must quickly adapt. Companies and customers heavily rely on technology, so there’s a massive shift in customer service approaches.
Companies can use customer support and technical support interchangeably and also as different terms. Customer support is what signifies every single interaction with your clients, while tech support is more limited to the technical issues that your customers might have.
One can say it’s like comparing apples and oranges, but there’s so much more that firms have to consider. The tasks of both services are surely different, yet they are responsible for leaving your customers happy and satisfied. They both focus on customers, so they are rightly considered as equally important and the right strategies to build robust and trustworthy customer relationships.