Leveraging Contextual Data to Deliver Better Customer Support

"Hello, may I have your full name please?"

It's frustrating when you have to explain the same story multiple times, especially when you're being transferred to yet another person. However, with the use of modern customer service and help desk software, customer service staff can easily access a broader context of information and provide faster, more effective assistance without the need to repeat themselves. This helps to improve the customer experience and avoid the frustration of having to start from scratch with each new interaction.

The Benefits of Contextual Data in Customer Service

Having access to contextual data, such as a customer's past experiences and available options, can greatly improve the quality of customer service. By understanding who you are trying to assist, you can tailor your response to fit their specific needs and provide more personalized assistance. This is something that artificial intelligence tools currently cannot match.

There are several practical benefits to being well-informed as a customer service provider:

• Faster answers: With all the necessary information easily accessible, you can find the right answer and get back to the customer more quickly.

• More thoroughly understood questions: The same question can have different meanings depending on the person asking. A non-technical customer may have a different understanding of "an easy way to export data" compared to a veteran integration developer.

• Customized answers for specific scenarios: By understanding a customer's business and goals, you can craft your answer to fit their specific needs rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach.

• Reduced customer effort: Avoid requiring customers to repeat themselves or provide information that you already have access to. This saves them time and reduces stress.

• Faster resolution times: By eliminating the need for customers to collect and send information to you, you can reduce the amount of back-and-forth required, regardless of the channel you are using.

• Better queue prioritization: Use contextual data to quickly identify the most urgent or important conversations and use workflows and tags to bring those to the attention of available team members.

• Improved customer retention: Use contextual data to identify customers who may be considering leaving and intervene early to potentially reduce churn rates.

• More successful customers: By making it easier to identify customers who are not using all the features or getting the full value from your service, you can provide helpful product education to improve their experience.

Overall, having fast and easy access to a broader picture of your customers allows your support team to deliver truly helpful service more quickly. This includes information such as renewal dates, logins, and recent account activity.

The Usefulness of Contextual Data

In customer service, it's helpful to have access to contextual information about a particular conversation or customer. This can be extracted from external sources and displayed in a sidebar for easy reference. Some examples of data that can be useful to include in the sidebar are:

• Quick links to internal accounts or records: This can speed up support by allowing staff to easily access relevant information without having to run a separate search manually.

• Length of time as a customer: This can be a useful indicator of a customer's lifetime value, level of experience with your service, and knowledge of specific features.

• Payment plan or account type: This not only indicates a customer's financial importance to your business, but it also determines which features or services they have access to.

• Next renewal date: If a customer is approaching the decision to renew, it can be a good opportunity to review their usage and make suggestions.

• Features or products being used: This is important for understanding what specific questions are referring to, and it can also be an opportunity to educate customers and deliver more value.

• Assigned account owner or internal owner: If there is someone in your company who should be included in the conversation, this information can be helpful.

• Last login date and location: This is useful for security purposes and can also be a signal for handling as a potential churn risk in the context of SaaS.

• Version number of your product being used: This detail is helpful in troubleshooting and ensures that your answer is relevant and accurate.

• Recent order history: Personalizing responses based on a customer's order history can be useful, and if there have been recent issues related to those products, it can be helpful to vary your answers.

• Recent support conversations: If a customer has been experiencing a string of issues or has contacted you about this particular issue before, this information can help you craft an appropriate response.

In addition to adding content to a sidebar, support CRMs also offer custom fields, which allow you to make valuable data about your customer, their account, and their company visible and actionable.

Providing your customer support team with relevant contextual information enables them to spend more time interacting with customers and providing personalized assistance. This benefits both your team and your customers.