3 Reasons Your Startup Should Focus on Customer Support

As a startup, establishing an effective customer support process should be one of your chief priorities. Many startups make the mistake of spending most of their energy on customer acquisition and marketing, leaving little time spent focusing on service and support. What every successful startup has realized along the way is once a new customer is gained, they should be very well taken care of.

This focus on support begins with your very first customers, whose experience should leave them with an undoubtable sense of money well spent. The act of handling support when it comes to a startup’s first several customers will likely be challenging and transformative.

Here are 3 great reasons why your startup should focus on customer support beginning with the very first customer…

Gain Customer Insight

There is immense value held in the lessons a company can learn from any support interaction. These lessons will inform processes, and increase overall customer experience. Maybe there are several reports of functionality issues, or one customer unknowingly sheds light on an area that can give your startup the competitive advantage. You never know how a customer or group of customers may inform your decision making, processes, or product development.

Establish Brand Credibility & Trust

The fastest and most organic way to establish trust between you and your customers, is by providing a superlative customer experience. With social media and online viral culture, credibility can be established quite rapidly if you provide support that demands word of mouth promotion. When a customer has an undeniably great experience with a company, they want to share it with their friends and family. Before you know it, the marketplace is taking notice of how trustworthy and credible your brand is. On the flip side of the coin, if you leave customers with a bad experience, the marketplace may soon be hesitant of your company based off of a negative online review.

Build Brand Loyalty

According to Desk.com CEO, Becca Krass, “it’s six to seven times more expensive to find new customers than it is to retain current ones”, and “78 percent of all customers will abandon a transaction when dealing with bad customer service”.

These stats are telling of how crucial it is to build a loyal customer base, which can only be achieved through a great support process.

Additionally, early adapters of your brand will likely become great advocates of your products and services if you treat them well throughout the entire customer process.

In the end it takes happy customers to generate a sustainable business, and the natural way to show you care is by delivering world class support. With the right focus and adaptability, a startup will achieve effective support processes, further increasing their ability to succeed in the marketplace.