Fast and effective support will be a competitive differentiator for companies looking to win over digitally transformed customers and employees, new research has revealed.
According to a study by IDC and LogMeIn titled Support Services as a Competitive Differentiator, nearly 67 per cent of consumers said that customer satisfaction was more important than price when doing business with a company.
However, nearly 30 per cent of companies still say that reducing the cost of support is more important than customer satisfaction.
Increasing customer expectations
The study found that customers rank better communication and fast problem resolution among their top priorities for customer support.
While an overwhelming 89 per cent of respondents believe that having a support agent they can communicate with is the most important aspect of a support experience, companies are challenged to meet this goal due to the various nuances of each user and individual devices.
In fact, almost one-third of respondents said that support took a long time to resolve their issue, while 24 per cent said the problem was never resolved.
Furthermore, 64 per cent of consumers said that good support experience result in advocacy and additional purchases from the company, and 60 per cent said they share bad experiences.
Expectations for internal IT are also on the rise
In nearly all the topics surveyed, employee experiences and expectations of their internal IT teams matched those consumers have of customer support underscoring the importance of efficient support across the board.
In addition, faulty internal IT support is costing companies in productivity of employees.
When users don’t receive effective support, 52 per cent said they waste time because they can’t perform their jobs. In addition to not doing their jobs, 45 per cent of the time they pull another colleague away from their own jobs and ask for help.
Developing an effective support strategy
Companies are facing a variety of hurdles when it comes to developing a modern and effective support strategy, according to the research.
These challenges range from decreasing or stagnant budgets for support tools (41 per cent) and lack of executive support (20 per cent), to and inability to scale with current tools and technologies (42 per cent).
Even for those that have made some changes to their internal processes or invested in technologies (50 per cent of respondents), only 25 per cent have been able to drive strong relationships due to the lack of adaptability and intelligence capabilities.
The survey also found that technologies like remote support are helping alleviate some of the pain customers associate with support today.
Nearly 75 per cent of organisations reported using remote support solutions within their environment, and 85 per cent of end users saying these technologies helped resolve their issues more quickly than other methods of support.
