In the SaaS business environment, it is common for startups to build and deliver amazing and complete products, full of useful and easy-to-use features while delivering horrible customer service experiences that make all the work and development of their products a waste of time.
A study conducted by Microsoft revealed that 58% of US consumers seek and switch services and products after having a negative experience with customer service.

Having the chance to lose 6 out of 10 customers is bad for any and all businesses, even more so in a highly competitive environment such as the SaaS product market, which is disputed globally. Investing in quality customer service is one of the keys to your business's long-term success.

Importance of customer service

Customer service, whether good or bad, has a variety of consequences. Consumers who have had a bad experience will not only look for another company to spend their money on, almost 68% of users also tell their negative experiences to family and friends by posting on a social network.

Basically, your business earns free negative publicity most of the time your customer feels bad about the service. The Achieving Customer Amazement report revealed that 1 in 4 consumers are willing to pay up to 10% more just for better customer service.

Marketing professor at the Yale School of Management, K. Sudhir, conducted a survey of more than 42,000 bank customers on the importance of customer service, assigned to different groups of agents for the calls. It was revealed that in the long term the chances of canceling a credit card after 18 months decreased by twofold when customers interacted with qualified customer service representatives.

The chances that customers will spend again with a company's products increase significantly if they have excellent customer service. Increasing the loyalty and satisfaction of customers, who therefore spend more generating more profitability.

What is excellent customer service?

Excellent customer service means following practices and protocols thought out and developed to maximize the value of customers' time, through attitudes that are considered pleasant. Providing knowledge, solving problems, and always surprising the user above his expectations.

Attention to “surprising expectations”, seems to be easy but it is not, normally a positively surprised user is more likely to feel valued and classify their customer service as excellent.

What are the qualities of excellent customer service?

Communication between two people will always be a challenge while they are physically in front of each other, in the context of a SaaS product or business, this challenge increases, since the noise that exists in this simple act increases, which can distort the way each of the parties will interpret the sent and received information. To reduce this noise, there are some essential qualities to make excellent customer service, check below:

Know your business purpose

Knowing the objectives and reasons for the existence of what your company provides is the first step toward delivering quality service. With the full and necessary knowledge, it is possible to differentiate what can be built into the service and which demands cannot be met, since they are not part of the purpose of your business.

Clean communication

Think of each word that will be said or written to avoid using terms and linguistic expressions that have more than one meaning, reducing the chances of the client misunderstanding what your team wanted to teach or pass on.

Be friendly always

Always portray yourself as a friendly person, it may seem strange to write this here, but many agents try to distance themselves as much as possible from the customer to avoid wrong messages. Be closer to the client, and make him feel that he can count on you to solve any problem because your team is his “friend”.

Show empathy

In an increasingly individualistic world, with the increase in the home office and with a growing demand for never expressing what one feels, a service with a demonstration of empathy wins over any customer! Empathy nowadays is an easy differential to insert in a service, invest in empathy!

Solve problems whenever possible

No matter how difficult your client's problem is if it is possible to solve it, even if it takes time or has a high degree of difficulty, solve it! A resolved problem is one more point for the customer to feel safe and supported by the service team. Do not be lazy or try to finish the service earlier, quality service also requires a complete solution to all customer problems.

Service channels

Providing multiple channels for users to get in touch with your customer service team is essential to make customer service accessible and as quickly as possible, among the most popular customer service channels there are:

Phone: It may seem outdated, after all, many big-tech SaaS no longer use this format, but there is a considerable number of people around the world who still prefer to use a phone call to be answered and resolve their doubts and problems. The telephone continues to be one of the easiest ways to receive excellent customer service, as communication is cleaner and more humane in this context.

Social Media: Half of all people on the planet use social networking platforms, whether for entertainment or work. Platforms are excellent means of entry to bring your users closer to your product and also to your service team, reducing barriers and the time they spend having to leave an app and go to your website page.

E-mail: This channel is currently the second most used, due to the fact that many companies use e-mail as the official format for internal communication, linked to the benefits of having all communications registered to avoid future problems, and it is normal for professionals to take advantage of have their inbox open and send messages requesting service within this tool to optimize their time.

Chat: If your SaaS product is linked to a website or application and users need to be within your platform most of the time, having an integrated chat facilitates the whole process. Chats are constantly being developed and a key resource is a Chatbot, reducing the need to have a collaborator on the other side of the conversation, using different artificial intelligence specific to each company. Through the chats, it is also possible to make functions available, such as the appearance of pages from your knowledge library aligned with the keywords that the user types, facilitating self-service in this case.

Ways to deliver excellent customer service

Ask for customer feedback

To find out if your service is good, average, or bad, there is no one better to assess it than your own customer, after all, he is the one who decides the quality, not only of your SaaS product but also of your service and even post-sales. Always ask for user feedback whenever you finish a service, so you can understand what the strengths and weaknesses of the service provided are, taking into account what can be improved and what should be discarded from the entire customer assistance process.

It's not enough to ask a single customer just once and think you've done your part, this feedback must be constant to help build the best possible service! A tip to facilitate this task and leverage the insights that refine your strategy is to use a continuous user feedback platform such as Changelogfy.

Using the All-in-one platform, your company can use feedback boards to capture everything your customers think about your service, brand, and product positioning. Through product announcements, each of your customers can tell you, even before they have a problem to be solved, about their user experience with the new updates.

If you really want excellent customer service, it's a great platform full of tools to help and enhance this process!

Solve problems creatively

Solving problems avoid dissatisfaction, but solving problems in a creative way generates instant satisfaction, surprising the customer who did not expect the attitude. Problems aren't always easy to solve, so let your customer service team get creative to "entertain" the customer.

Be quick to reply

The characteristic that people value the most today is time, especially when the subject is a problem that needs to be solved to avoid losing money, and time is money. Solve all the doubts that arise as quickly as possible, and do not wait to answer, as this wait can awaken your customer's desire to look for other alternatives that value his time more.

Understand that being quick does not mean wanting to shorten the problem, customers understand that complex problems require more time to be resolved, and there is a difference between taking time to respond and the speed with which your team takes to solve the problems that appear. Be quick to respond, but don't be in a rush to end customer service without completely resolving the issue.

Personalized customer service

Standardized answers, being treated like a number, being just one of the crowd. No customer wants to be treated like everyone else, they want to feel unique, and special, feel that they are interacting with a person and not a robot, and customize their service depending on the variables available.

Is it your client's birthday? Enter a "Happy Birthday!". Is the customer a professional who uses your platform for work? Use terms that professionals using your SaaS product usually use. Is the user angry, on a bad day? Be patient and understand that all his anger has nothing to do with your employee, use calmer words that do not encourage the client not to fight in the middle of the service.

Is it a new or old customer? Already familiar with your tool or do need more help than most users?

A great idea to make this task easier is to create a separate flow for different situations, so you can customize the customer service experience by offering your service team some texts and ready-made responses for each different type of user and each unique scenario.

Listen to your customer

When a customer seeks help in a customer support channel, it is necessary to listen carefully to every word he says, because his question or search for help is genuine, do not read half of the text they write and you will already want to solve the problem, read every word and understand the real issue.

Avoid creating problems on top of customer service, service is to help the customer solve an issue and not create new problems. If you did not understand the user's demand, ask them to explain it again, and ask for images, and videos if necessary, the objective is to help and not make the situation worse.

Use active listening skills when on the phone, use phrases like “Do you mean…?” or “Let me make sure I understand what your problem is.”, simple phrases, but which reduce the chances of mistakes happening.

Invest in providing excellent customer service, build a loyal user base, and see the positive results your SaaS business will experience!