All About the Customer Part 1: Caring For Customers, One Support Ticket at a Time

4 minute read

Upland Admin

Customer Support is the backbone of any organization’s retention level. It is the department that has the highest impact on client satisfaction, as well as the highest opportunity to enhance one’s individual skills, whether personally or professionally. In general, this department produces well rounded employees that have real life experiences working directly with their organization’s products, services and overall vision. These employees typically live by core company values that contribute to the vision framework based on what the company is and where the company is going. The two key drivers of a successful customer support team are quality employees and the right core company values.

With 20+ years in Customer Support, people often ask what the best way to keep customers happy is. The answer is simple. Have a proactive mindset by preventing issues from occurring rather than dealing with problems after the fact. Organizations who do the latter often struggle with customer satisfaction and retention. A situation such as this creates a very unique opportunity for support. Opportunities to build and strengthen the trust and relationship of customers must be faced head-on and always with a positive attitude. There are certain qualities every employee within the customer support department should possess that will ensure every organization’s clients are under the best care:

  • Problem solving skills to identify what the issue is and the best way to solve it without jeopardizing the customer relationship
  • Accountability and ownership of one’s work by ensuring no external influences attribute to a failing deliverable and following it to its logical end
  • Advanced communication skills to be able to interpret and translate the client’s need as well as to escalate what is critical to managers
  • Necessary technical background and knowledge of the industry such as with SQL Queries

The right company has the right customer support values that enable employees to carefully care for customers’ needs, one ticket at a time. Here at Upland Software (Nasdaq: UPLD), Customer Support Values are at the core of our business. The following points are just some CSV’s we share with our employees that enable our team to fully understand a customer as well as their needs:

  1. “WOW the Customer”: Use every interaction as an opportunity to leave the customer WOW’ed by your dedication and professionalism.
  2. “Be Willing”: Be a partner with colleagues and customers. Team engagement delivers great customer satisfaction.
  3. “Seek and Share Knowledge”: Be the knowledge junkie that empowers you to grow as an individual, thus propelling your expertise and customer resolution.
  4. “Communicate”: Use your communication skills to be patient, humble, proactive, consistent, and honest and clear; internally and externally. This is probably the most important skill set to master and has the biggest impact on our success.
  5. “Have Fun”: Interjecting a little fun and personality into your workplace keeps the mojo running. It makes us human and approachable, as well as keeps the negative vibes at bay.

The combination of proactive, professional employees and the right corporate vision re-enforce a team with outstanding ability to achieve greater success and customer satisfaction.

In my next blog, we will dive deeper into how using this combination stimulates innovation in service delivery. We will consider the impact of leaders and mentors to drive personal and professional growth, all attributing to the overall retention of customers as well as employees.

About the Author: Daniel has over 20 years of IT/Support experience with end-users, data delivery, customer relationships and team leadership, along with extensive expertise in Business Intelligence and implementing software to achieve greater productivity and business success. Daniel currently holds the position of Customer Support Manager at Upland Software.

To learn more about Upland Software’s Enterprise PSA offering PSA, go to: uplandsoftware.com/psa

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