What is at stake?
Customer service includes the assistance and advice provided by a company to its customers or users, as well as the processes established to ensure good service.
Why is it important ?
➡️ Contrary to common perceptions, customer service is not limited to solving customer problems. It starts as soon as a consumer encounters your company and uses your knowledge base to find answers to their questions (even before becoming a customer!). This is the distinction between proactive and reactive customer service.
➡️ In 2022, 73% of executives observed a visible increase in customer service requests, and three-quarters of them expect this volume to rise further in the next 12 months. (Source: Customer Experience Trends in 2023, Zendesk)
➡️ During the Pre-seed stage, the startup is typically still seeking product market fit, which means it does not yet have a consistent and substantial flow of customer tickets to handle, though there may be a few that necessitate building initial processes. Therefore, this is a crucial moment since once these processes are defined and consistently used, they are likely to remain in place until product market fit is achieved and can be scaled shortly afterwards.
Three key steps to take
1️⃣ Accessibility: Provide easy-to-find contact information (chat, phone number, email, etc.): this reinforces the feedback loop, allowing continuous customer feedback for improving products/services.
On average, website visitors who chat are 82% more likely to convert to customers and pay 13% more than those who don’t. (Source: Intercom data)
2️⃣ Humanity: Allow consumers to contact real humans. Promote empathetic and personalized customer support with real individuals (providing names, faces, etc.).
3️⃣ Quality: Prioritize conversations over one-way communication.
70% of consumers spend more with companies that offer a seamless and personalized customer experience, without any hiccups. (Source: Customer Experience Trends in 2023, Zendesk)
- An individualized email from a person rather than a generic automated one allows recipients to reply.
- Allow targets to participate in surveys to co-create the upcoming features of the product/service.