Use CES to show that Customer Support is NOT a Cost Center

CES scores significantly impact customer loyalty and purchasing behavior

Too often customer support teams are, unfairly, stereotyped simply as a cost center and the direct impact they make on revenue generation and business growth are too easily ignored. However, customer support teams can challenge this misconception by highlighting the impact they make on improving Customer Effort Score (CES) - a metric that measures insight from your customers on how effortless they find your customer experience. Studies have found that providing your customers with an effortless experience is a strong predictor of future purchasing behavior and leads to greater customer loyalty. Customer support plays a crucial role in reducing friction through the entire user lifecycle and therefore has a direct impact on revenue generation and other business growth opportunities through driving strong customer sentiment and loyalty. Challenging the outdated view that customer support is merely a cost center.

Ensuring your help center is fully up-to-date reduces customer friction

A good help center reduces customer effort by empowering them to successfully resolve their own issues without needing to contact customer support directly. However, the frustration that arrives when a customer encounters outdated help documentation, and specifically your product visuals, cannot be overstated. The product images in your help documentation immediately convey what an article is trying to help your customers resolve. If done right, and these images are fully up-to-date, your customers will see they are in the right place and use the help documentation to resolve their issue. Which ultimately reduces customer friction. By taking advantage of a fully automatic screenshot process, customer support teams can ensure their help center remains synchronized with the latest product updates. This not only builds customer trust and reduces friction, but also has a direct impact on improving overall customer loyalty and increasing the lifetime value of your customers. Clearly demonstrating customer support is more than just a mere cost center, and plays a crucial role in revenue generation and business growth.

Use case studies of proactive support to highlight reduced customer friction

Collecting CES feedback and measuring your performance is only one part of the story. Using case studies to highlight where proactive support interactions, such as providing effective self-service support and early problem identification and resolution, is a powerful tool to illustrate the true value of customer support in driving better business outcomes. It is also important to use the information gathered to uncover meaningful insight and use that insight to identify opportunities and initiatives to further remove friction from your overall experience, and continue to improve CES. These initiatives, and improved CES, rightfully positions customer support teams as an essential component of driving greater customer loyalty and real business growth, and continues to debunk the outdated notion that support should be seen merely as a cost center.