{"id":24341,"date":"2020-08-05T18:00:46","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T17:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/?p=24341"},"modified":"2024-07-12T17:13:17","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T16:13:17","slug":"conversational-support-cx-efficiency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/conversational-support-cx-efficiency\/","title":{"rendered":"Customer experience versus efficiency \u2013 why support leaders shouldn\u2019t have to choose"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a business grows, most support leaders will be challenged to answer this seemingly trick question: can you provide a best-in-class customer experience…but at a lower cost?<\/p>\n

Not long ago, answering this question meant veering in one of two directions. If you said \u201cno,\u201d you had to find a way to justify having really happy customers at an equally high cost. Case in point: online retailer Zappos whose commitment to delighting customers has meant making their support team available for quite literally anything<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, if you said \u201cyes,\u201d you had to be willing to sacrifice best-in-class support for maybe-not-the-worst-ever support. You ended up looking a lot more like telecoms providers Comcast and Virgin Media whose support has been remarkable<\/a> for all the wrong reasons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“The reality is, there are very few businesses who can afford to operate at either extreme”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But this approach to managing support shortchanges either your company and, more likely than not, your team \u2013 or your customers. The reality is, there are very few businesses who can afford to operate at either extreme.<\/p>\n

At Intercom, we\u2019ve worked hard to find a way to do both<\/a> \u2013 to provide a great customer experience and<\/em> operate with the efficiency that our company and team needs. More than that, by balancing both, we\u2019ve been able to achieve what often feels elusive: positive revenue impact.<\/p>\n

Are you Zappos \u2013 or are you Comcast?<\/h2>\n

At some point, many support teams<\/a> find themselves leaning toward one extreme or the other. In a company\u2019s lifetime, you might find yourself spending time on both ends.<\/p>\n

For businesses that can still remember their plucky startup days, the odds are your support team is more like Zappos\u2019 than Comcast\u2019s. When customers are far and few between, it makes all the sense in the world to connect with them personally and one-on-one at a nearly real-time pace.<\/p>\n

“The problem is, as companies grow, we tend to approach efficiency and customer experience as two diametrically opposed choices”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In Intercom\u2019s early days, our co-founder Des sent 100 emails everyday<\/a>, each one personalized, to prospective customers. For many years, everyone in the company was expected to support customers in the Intercom Inbox<\/a> and, still to this day, we offer customer support sessions<\/a> where teammates from around the company can shadow our support specialists.<\/p>\n

The problem is, as companies grow, we tend to approach efficiency and customer experience as two diametrically opposed choices. Either you\u2019re all in on delighting customers, or you\u2019re doing everything you can to minimize your costs and maximize your profit.<\/p>\n

\"Seeing<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a problem we know well. One of the challenges we\u2019ve faced as a support team is scaling our high bar for customer satisfaction without scaling our headcount alongside our customer count. But what we want to gain in efficiency we aren\u2019t willing to trade for a poor customer experience.<\/p>\n

Striking a balance with conversational support<\/h2>\n

Here\u2019s the good news: that diametrically opposed choice between customer experience and efficiency is now one of the past.<\/p>\n

“Conversational support enables us to strike the balance between what\u2019s good for our company and what\u2019s good for our customers”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At Intercom, we\u2019ve invested in a modern approach to customer support \u2013 what we call conversational support<\/a> \u2013 that enables us to strike the balance between what\u2019s good for our company and what\u2019s good for our customers. It\u2019s the antidote to our two biggest headaches as support leaders: having a really expensive (or really burnt out) support team and driving away customers with a jungle gym of no-reply email addresses and painful phone trees.<\/p>\n

By doubling down on messenger-based support<\/a>, we\u2019re able to achieve high levels of efficiency and an enjoyable, personalized customer experience. Instead of being either Zappos or Comcast (or awkwardly stuck in the middle), we\u2019re now balancing the best of both.<\/p>\n

\"Balancing<\/p>\n

So, how does conversational support actually<\/em> help us achieve this balance? We use the conversational support funnel<\/a> to combine proactive, self-serve, and human support capabilities. This approach allows us to get ahead of known problems before they arise, automatically answer repetitive questions, and focus on the complex issues that require our team\u2019s expertise.<\/p>\n

When customers do need to connect with our team, we use chatbots to set upfront expectations for when we\u2019ll be in touch. We also have our chatbots suggest relevant resources like help articles that customers can use to start troubleshooting while they wait. Most customers don\u2019t mind waiting for high-quality support; they just don\u2019t want their problem sent into the void.<\/p>\n