Dan Martell - Build Your SaaS Customer Support System

00:00:00.080 Hey there, Dan Martell here,

00:00:01.080 serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.

00:00:03.520 In this episode, I'm gonna share with you

00:00:05.040 how to rock your customer support process.

00:00:09.120 Be sure to stay at the end

00:00:10.080 because I'm gonna share with you an exclusive worksheet

00:00:12.720 that's gonna allow you to audit

00:00:14.640 how you're doing on different levels of service,

00:00:17.000 understand the strategies available to you

00:00:21.240 to upgrade those and then build an action plan

00:00:23.880 to help you move that forward.

00:00:25.400 Let's get into it.

00:00:30.000 Customer support is probably one of my favorite things to talk about. Here's why. I believe,

00:00:45.040 you know, as I've scaled multiple seven-figure companies in the SaaS space, software as a

00:00:50.140 service, even my last company, my venture-backed company, Clarity, I personally did support for

00:00:57.580 for two years.

00:00:58.420 Here's the reason why is as a software guy,

00:01:01.360 as a product guy, I've realized that most

00:01:04.620 of the opportunity sits inside of your support tickets.

00:01:08.140 The opportunity to learn from your customers,

00:01:10.140 to guide product strategy,

00:01:11.560 to understand marketing channels and hooks

00:01:14.340 and people talk about growth hacks.

00:01:15.780 I think the gold mine of any question you have

00:01:19.060 about your business lies inside of your support tickets

00:01:23.680 and most CEOs and founders quickly,

00:01:26.180 it's like the first thing they delegate to somebody else

00:01:28.080 and they never review them.

00:01:29.220 So I'm not saying you have to do support,

00:01:31.560 but be sure to dive into those tickets on a monthly basis

00:01:35.040 and scan them because there's so much insight.

00:01:37.840 But what I wanna share with you today

00:01:39.160 is how I was able to scale me doing that for two years

00:01:42.360 and really always being involved in support

00:01:44.980 to make sure that I've created the best customer experience

00:01:47.600 because obviously you could see it could create a bottleneck,

00:01:49.940 but instead we are recognized

00:01:51.460 as having some of the best support in the industry.

00:01:54.240 And today I have the privilege of coaching

00:01:56.340 some of the smartest founders implement these strategies

00:01:59.160 to create support processes that allowed them

00:02:01.740 to scale their customer experience

00:02:04.480 within their own company.

00:02:05.800 So these are for me, the five key strategies

00:02:08.760 that you need to build world-class customer support.

00:02:11.600 Number one, customer outcomes.

00:02:13.880 So if you think of your customers that are reaching out

00:02:16.520 for whatever issues they're having,

00:02:18.480 often it's either gonna be, you know,

00:02:20.220 obviously a technical issue

00:02:21.480 that something's supposed to be working,

00:02:22.920 it's not working the way express,

00:02:24.660 or they're trying to get an outcome.

00:02:26.740 And what I've discovered is for most companies,

00:02:28.720 there's probably three to five primary kind of states

00:02:32.740 or outcomes or goals they wanna achieve with your solution

00:02:35.900 that they're running into roadblocks.

00:02:37.960 So what I would suggest is you sit down with the team

00:02:41.480 and map out those outcomes

00:02:43.420 so that you can then build playbooks

00:02:45.600 to ensure that you get customers

00:02:47.580 to receive that value a lot faster.

00:02:50.300 At the end of the day, I call it core value.

00:02:52.680 When somebody comes into your solution, your product,

00:02:55.280 you've got literally days, if not less,

00:02:58.420 ideally in the first time user experience,

00:03:00.380 to get them to achieve an outcome with your solution

00:03:03.140 if you want the chance to earn their business long-term.

00:03:06.100 If you're not mapping out their outcomes

00:03:07.960 and you're not building a process

00:03:09.620 to really guide them through achieving that core value,

00:03:13.200 then you're gonna run into churn and retention issues

00:03:16.340 or even just lack of what's called expansion revenue,

00:03:19.420 people buying more product

00:03:20.640 because they're succeeding with your solution.

00:03:22.980 So number one, map those primary outcomes.

00:03:25.840 What do you think customers ideally are trying to get

00:03:28.660 as an end state and what would be the steps

00:03:31.000 that they would follow to get that?

00:03:32.620 Number two, support support.

00:03:35.040 It sounds funny, but the way I think about it

00:03:38.040 is we need to build a training process

00:03:40.840 to support our support team.

00:03:42.840 Meaning that too often we're changing our products,

00:03:45.880 we're enhancing flows, we're tweaking settings.

00:03:49.980 And many times we forget to tell our frontline support team

00:03:53.440 and then they've got to deal with the repercussions.

00:03:55.580 So what I like to implement is a cadence,

00:03:58.380 a rhythm of training so that we have a place

00:04:01.960 maybe every two weeks where we can add things

00:04:04.880 that have changed in our products,

00:04:06.140 tweaks to the way we're thinking of our solution,

00:04:08.880 anything that needs to be communicated

00:04:10.340 to frontline support people and also just core training.

00:04:13.480 Like every support team member should have different tiers

00:04:16.900 of seniority and experience

00:04:19.640 And it should be based on like their understanding

00:04:22.280 of how the product works

00:04:23.480 and allow them to have a training track.

00:04:26.000 We wanna support the support team

00:04:27.760 so that they can upgrade their skills

00:04:29.740 and be more aware of the lower level details

00:04:32.600 of how your product works

00:04:33.440 so they can support a broader audience of your customers

00:04:36.840 in a faster way possible.

00:04:38.380 So building out a repeatable process

00:04:41.760 for training your team, supporting the support team,

00:04:44.520 making sure they understand how escalation works,

00:04:46.800 making sure they understand how customers

00:04:49.060 or using those core outcomes

00:04:50.520 or trying to achieve what your solution,

00:04:52.080 that's how we ensure we have the best support team

00:04:56.040 possible for our customers.

00:04:57.860 Number three, flow escalation.

00:05:00.340 So what that means is it doesn't matter

00:05:03.360 what kind of business you are.

00:05:04.240 You have kind of tier one level support requests.

00:05:06.780 These are things that are configuration setting,

00:05:09.880 just unawareness, they missed something,

00:05:11.560 they didn't read the whole instructions, whatever, tier one.

00:05:14.100 Tier two is a little bit more involved, right?

00:05:16.180 Where something should be working,

00:05:18.720 but it's not, and maybe it's the way the product is designed,

00:05:22.300 but the support person just doesn't know

00:05:23.820 how to configure it properly

00:05:25.020 based on what the client's asking, that's tier two.

00:05:27.380 Tier three for me is known issues, bugs, challenges,

00:05:32.860 something that can be replicated,

00:05:34.240 but it just doesn't make sense and we need to escalate.

00:05:36.860 So we have tier one, two, and three,

00:05:38.540 and it needs to be very clear to your support team

00:05:41.060 how those challenges or issues or tickets

00:05:43.960 are escalated into each tier.

00:05:46.620 This is the critical step that's usually missed

00:05:48.820 to create something world-class,

00:05:50.360 is on a daily basis,

00:05:52.000 you need to have somebody accountable on your team.

00:05:54.440 It could be one person across all tiers,

00:05:56.400 but somebody daily needs to review the number of tickets

00:05:59.940 in those support queues, those different tiers,

00:06:02.040 and make sure they're being moved forward.

00:06:03.740 Here's why.

00:06:04.580 I've discovered building software companies for 20 years

00:06:07.800 is that most of the engineers,

00:06:09.900 especially your support engineers,

00:06:11.900 they're busy doing things.

00:06:13.660 They kind of cherry pick.

00:06:14.780 They wanna do the things that are interesting to them.

00:06:17.100 And they put off kind of like

00:06:18.700 the annoying, frustrating customers.

00:06:20.520 And I get it, no customer is frustrating.

00:06:22.320 We love all our customers equally.

00:06:24.380 That's usually not the case.

00:06:25.780 And we need to make sure as a leader

00:06:28.000 that our support team has accountability

00:06:30.400 and on a daily basis, it's a must.

00:06:32.660 So tiers of one, two, three, frontline, middle,

00:06:36.300 kind of more challenging and then obviously deeper technical,

00:06:40.040 you know, trying to figure out this is core issues

00:06:42.920 and then having somebody accountable daily

00:06:44.500 to make sure each one of those tickets are moving forward

00:06:46.740 and not left behind.

00:06:48.500 Number four, measure the metrics.

00:06:50.600 So customer support is probably one of the easiest

00:06:53.480 outside of marketing to really measure

00:06:55.500 how things are performing.

00:06:57.240 So if you haven't looked at some of these core metrics,

00:06:59.580 the top ones are typically time to first response,

00:07:02.300 average time to open tickets,

00:07:04.380 and I would say customer satisfaction

00:07:06.500 or kind of like an NPS score.

00:07:07.860 You can Google the different mechanisms to report on that,

00:07:11.620 but if you're using a support software,

00:07:13.500 I guarantee they have this as part of their reporting

00:07:16.080 in their dashboard.

00:07:17.380 And what I would recommend is every week

00:07:19.120 as part of your leadership team,

00:07:20.400 you're reviewing those key metrics,

00:07:22.080 you're setting some targets and some goals

00:07:23.880 and you're making sure you're monitoring against those goals

00:07:26.280 so that you can get better and faster.

00:07:28.680 Support like any other area of the business is an engine,

00:07:32.260 you're trying to make it increase throughput

00:07:35.060 and having the data points to understand how you are today,

00:07:37.820 the baseline so you can improve it is critical

00:07:40.700 to creating a great customer support experience.

00:07:42.880 Number five, productize the knowledge base.

00:07:46.240 So if you currently have support tickets coming in,

00:07:50.680 you're probably starting to see patterns,

00:07:52.960 repeatable things that people ask for.

00:07:54.900 Here's what I've discovered,

00:07:56.520 is the fastest way for you to get more bandwidth.

00:07:59.420 And this is what I was world-class at, two things.

00:08:01.540 One, documenting and backfilling the lessons learned

00:08:04.920 from a support point of view

00:08:05.760 that I was interacting with clients on

00:08:07.480 so that I could put those in the knowledge base.

00:08:08.980 That's the public facing kind of directory

00:08:12.420 of kind of like how to, you know, questions that come up.

00:08:15.880 And then the second thing is using automation and snippets.

00:08:19.220 So if you haven't looked at like a hot key snippet tool,

00:08:22.320 there's different ones for Mac and Windows machines.

00:08:25.480 I'll let you Google kind of what's the current flavor

00:08:27.880 of the week, this week for those tool,

00:08:29.580 but just like shortcut snippets, text expander type tools.

00:08:33.800 It allows support teams,

00:08:35.120 you can create like pre-canned response, et cetera,

00:08:37.100 to just quickly respond high quality,

00:08:40.160 engaged, personalized templates to support the customer.

00:08:44.540 But my big thing is, this is what's hilarious,

00:08:47.120 is when I work with clients to scale their businesses,

00:08:50.380 you know, again, customer success being a core area

00:08:52.420 and support within customer success,

00:08:55.020 I ask to see their artifacts,

00:08:56.680 the tools they've created to support their support team.

00:09:01.340 And what happens is often those tools internally

00:09:04.580 are what should be put externally.

00:09:06.480 They are the checklist, the reference guides,

00:09:09.860 the training that if they would just flip it a little bit

00:09:13.040 and put those resources public,

00:09:15.280 they would allow their customers to self-serve.

00:09:17.440 Most companies today,

00:09:18.620 this is some research that I found online,

00:09:20.680 that most companies, 85%, would prefer to self-serve

00:09:23.900 because usually it's like 10.30 at night

00:09:26.800 and they're dealing with an issue

00:09:27.640 and they just wanna figure out the solution.

00:09:29.080 Emailing support makes no sense.

00:09:31.040 Scheduling a call makes no sense.

00:09:32.720 So using the tools like video screen capturing software,

00:09:38.000 if you're not doing that, that's just crazy.

00:09:39.540 So like being able to record your screen,

00:09:41.640 share that as an audio and video message to your customers,

00:09:44.420 encouraging them to send things back to you,

00:09:46.440 keep it under three minutes.

00:09:47.540 You have to give some cues,

00:09:48.420 if not you'll get 25 minute narratives

00:09:52.020 of their support issues.

00:09:53.480 But having that rich interaction, grabbing those things,

00:09:58.240 putting them public so your customers can self-serve

00:10:00.960 and really productizing.

00:10:02.280 Think of your knowledge base like a product,

00:10:04.400 like an asset that you invest in, that you plan for,

00:10:07.380 that you coordinate with the product team

00:10:09.700 to make sure that they give you a heads up

00:10:11.560 on releases and milestones

00:10:12.880 so that you can get that knowledge base articles

00:10:15.140 ready to go.

00:10:16.140 To me, that is just a core,

00:10:18.380 that's when I know a company's really banging

00:10:20.660 on a customer support level,

00:10:21.960 is when I check their knowledge base

00:10:23.440 and I can tell it's being updated,

00:10:25.120 it's frequent, it's relevant,

00:10:26.920 it's really the taxonomy is really well designed.

00:10:29.760 that's when I know somebody's looking at that as a product.

00:10:33.260 So quick recap, five strategies

00:10:35.320 to rock your customer support process.

00:10:37.500 Number one, focus on customer outcomes.

00:10:39.920 Number two, support, support the team training, et cetera.

00:10:44.040 Flow escalation, having those three tiers.

00:10:46.480 Measure your metrics so you know how well you're doing,

00:10:49.160 how to get better in five product types and knowledge base.

00:10:51.900 Take those internal tools and put them out to the world.

00:10:55.800 As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,

00:10:57.060 I wanna share with you an exclusive resource

00:10:59.040 called the Customer Support Upgrader.

00:11:01.240 In it, it's just a simple one-page worksheet,

00:11:03.560 but it's got a list of really cool things.

00:11:05.860 Number one, it's got kind of the core areas of support,

00:11:08.540 everything from the knowledge base to your calls,

00:11:10.380 to your email systems, et cetera,

00:11:12.300 allow you to essentially rank on those dimensions.

00:11:15.500 And then I'm gonna give you a list of key strategies

00:11:17.980 that you can use to get even more bandwidth

00:11:20.440 to help you prioritize the next three upgrades

00:11:23.720 that you can implement in your customer support team

00:11:25.820 to take it to the next level.

00:11:27.160 and you can use that worksheet every quarter

00:11:29.240 to keep upgrading and enhancing your service,

00:11:32.300 the quality of the experience to your customer.

00:11:34.600 That's my gift to you.

00:11:35.600 You can click the link below to get access to that.

00:11:37.640 And if you liked this video,

00:11:38.480 be sure to smash the like button, subscribe to my channel.

00:11:41.180 And if there's anybody you think this video could serve

00:11:43.420 that you care about, feel free to share it with them directly.

00:11:46.060 As per usual, I wanna challenge you to live a bigger life

00:11:48.660 and a bigger business, and I'll see you next Monday.

Dan Martell - June 08, 2020

Build Your SaaS Customer Support System

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript