customersupport

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” So begins the classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. It refers to the premise of the story: A time of despair and suffering on one hand, and joy and hope on the other. And it’s how we began our story of two B2B customer support departments.

In Chapter 1 we meet Jack who is suffering with a customer support department that still struggles with silos between support, sales, and product teams, using e-mail to manage support tickets, and no visibility into the history of the customer issues; and Emily, whose customer support department works collaboratively with sales and product teams to resolve issues, provides tools and resources that help educate users making the most of the solution, and focuses on building relationships rather than closing tickets.

We continue the story in Chapter 2.

Jack is hearing word that the company just lost another big account. His customer support team is starting to doubt their ability to support those that need it. “Should we have seen it coming?” “We’re trying to provide good service, what can we do better?” “I know it’s not our fault, but we just don’t have the tools we need to solve complex issues when we’re so bogged down with a high volume of basic tickets.” “I wish we could get more help from the product team.” Sales is blaming customer support for losing the customers they worked so hard to bring in.

Emily and her B2B customer support team use a B2B customer support software