B2B Customer Support | 4 min read | Published September 08, 2020

Part 1: The Strategic Role of B2B Customer Support

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B2B support is the foundation for long-term successful customer engagements.

Businesses buy your products or services to help their operations run efficiently and to meet their customers’ expectations. And while robust product features are important, it is the added benefits of B2B (business-to-business) customer support that can accelerate product use and drive optimal performance to help customers reach their full potential.

In other words, effective B2B support forms the foundation for long-term successful customer engagements.

In this blog series, based on the whitepaper co-produced by ServiceXRG and TeamSupport, we explore how to position the investment in Support as a strategic value aligned to current business practices and target outcomes.

Characteristics of Leading Support OrganizationsScreen Shot 2020-09-08 at 11.54.44 AM-1

At the core of every great Support organization is a clearly defined support mission. It is not simply good enough to strive for service level performance targets and high customer satisfaction scores without pursuing an expected positive outcome from these efforts. World-class Support organizations are driven by the results of their efforts and not simply the level of effort.

Defining the Support mission and primary contribution to the business is one of the top five characteristics of leading support organizations and an important first step in aligning Support’s strategy with the overall goals of the business.

The Value of Customer Support

The full value of customer support can only be realized when you have well-defined processes, metrics, and systems that can help you manage and meet customer expectations and capture the insights learned from each customer interaction.

Each support interaction can help you understand how your customers are using your products; what help or skills they need to be more successful; what new features they need; and to identify any performance or usability issues that need to be addressed.

There are several ways that Support contributes business value.

  1. Support helps customers adopt and apply products.
  2. Customer contact with Support identifies training needs and ways to help customers become more proficient and successful.
  3. Reporting and analytics help identify trends and severity of issues so product teams can more efficiently prioritize fixes.
  4. Customer contact with Support identifies top features customers want.
  5. Support contact informs about the health of customer relationships.

In Part 2 of this series, we’ll explore the evolving role of B2B customer support.

Download the complete researched-based whitepaper, The Strategic Role of Business-to-Business Customer Support.

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About ServiceXRG

Service Excellence Research Group (ServiceXRG) helps companies retain customers, expand revenue, and achieve cost efficiencies through service excellence. Founded in 2004, the organization works with the world’s leading technology companies to transform and optimize service outcomes. It offers a portfolio of in-depth research and expert coaching services to help companies pursue Service Excellence and embrace Customer Success. Learn more at servicexrg.com.

Learn how TeamSupport helps companies create champion relationships.

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