Customer support is termed as a series of customer services offered to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance right from the initial stage of planning and installation, training, troubleshooting, maintenance, upgrading up to the disposal of a product.

As a matter of fact, it is termed technical support in case of gadgets like mobile phones and other electronic or mechanical goods. It is further considered as one of the major data channels for customer satisfaction research and a way to increase customer retention.

Moreover, companies may offer a variety of options regarding customer support:

1. Phone support:

As the name suggests, in this type of support customers speak directly to customer support representatives over the phone. For inbound calls, an Integrated Voice Response can be programmed to route captured calls in a variety of ways. The potential goal here is of quickest resolution of a customer’s query. Also, phone support is often used for taking orders, pre-sales queries, upselling and cross-selling, troubleshooting etc.

 

Phone support

2. Live chat support:

Live chat allows the users to use instant messaging to contact the Customer Services team of any website. The procedure followed in this case is:

i) web visitor seeks assistance by starting a text chat session by clicking on a link provided on the website

ii) customer support representative interacts with the web visitor

iii) understands the requirements

iv) resolves the query and closes the interaction.

Alternatively, based on the requirements the customer support representative could also initiate a chat session with the web visitor. Live chat support overcomes the language barriers as both parties involved in the chat session may use an online translation service to communicate.

Live chat support

3. Email support:

Email is a low cost, non- intrusive means to offer web-based assistance for your customers when immediate support is not required. Its specialized applications further help keep track of a series of follow-up correspondence with a potential customer. Services offered via email support include:

i)processing

ii) polling analysis

iii)subscription services

iv)troubleshooting

v)complaint registrations

4. Remote support:

Remote support basically means solving problems of a computer at one location from a computer at another location. As a matter of fact, it is a big-time money savior for companies in terms of logistics.The need for a technician to visit the customers’ premises is exempted due to the ease of gaining access and repairing software related problems from remote locations.

Remote support

5. On-site support:

As a matter of fact, it’s not always possible to solve the problems through remote support. Here on-site support comes into play. In case of hardware related problems like repairing a TV, replacing a spare part, servicing of air conditioners etc require a person to visit the site and resolve the issues.

6. Social media:

Nonetheless, to say, social media is the greatest influence today. Also, the service providers have found that majority of their customers spend plenty of time on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc daily. So, many service providers have set up a web care team as support channel on their social media profiles for visitors’ convenience. As a result, customers interact with the customer support team through social media platforms and their queries resolved.