Customer service as a service (CSaaS)

[ilya]

Hi all

I hope you are doing well today.

In the past couple of months I have been looking into the world of customer support and customer service as a service. And I found out that there exists very little competition on first sight, such as: http://influx.com/ . Many other "customer service" services originate from gurus and domain experts selling themselves, books and tapes.

I have been a software developer and seller for about 5 years now and been in online business for 7. Early on I realized that most digital indie sellers have bad support (taking hours/days to reply), so I focused on providing the best support. And even though I did not have the best product (tech wise), I still generated loads of business; simply put, people preferred me because of my service to them.

Right now I would like to turn my experiences into a full-time business in the customer service niche. I come from a "product" business, but this one is primarily "service" oriented, thus it has lower margins I assume. My initial idea is to find clients who need help with customer support and establish a framework/ set of rules. Another idea is to offer a Live Chat plugin/app that comes with one or more assistants who learn the business and become part of the team (remotely).

Is there anyone who has experience and can share some insights that could help me get started?

Kind regards,
Ilja

 

[SamHamdan]

May i know what form of customer support are you planning to establish framework-set of rules for?If i understand u correctly you're referring to the digital form as in email/live chat/social media, is that right? Or u have other forms of customer support in mind such call centers & face to face support?

 

[ilya]

May i know what form of customer support are you planning to establish framework-set of rules for?If i understand u correctly you're referring to the digital form as in email/live chat/social media, is that right? Or u have other forms of customer support in mind such call centers & face to face support?

Hey

I want to primarily focus on email and live chat only.
Business owners should be responsible themselves for phone and face to face support IMO, they should be the primary voice and face of their brand - an external party cannot replace them at doing that. But digital channels do allow us to do that.

 

[SamHamdan]

Yes i hear you but that is not the case, even small-mid businesses nowadays are outsourcing their phone support (If they felt the need for one in the first place) as they lack the tools (employees + space + training) to create an efficient customer service environment.

Anyways Its nice to see that you are going to focus on one part of this process but have you ever considered developing a platform (cloud based) for contact centers compatible with voice, live chat and email? I will DM you a link for a similar business so you can understand me better.

 

[The Byre]

Yes i hear you but that is not the case, even small-mid businesses nowadays are outsourcing their phone support (If they felt the need for one in the first place) as they lack the tools (employees + space + training) to create an efficient customer service environment.

News to me! The last time I called our plumber, he answered the phone.

customer support and customer service as a service.

Customer support as a service, which services to support the service of customer support services, as they seek to support the service of customer support services, otherwise supplied by customer services support.

Or is it the other way about?

 

[ilya]

News to me! The last time I called our plumber, he answered the phone.


Customer support as a service, which services to support the service of customer support services, as they seek to support the service of customer support services, otherwise supplied by customer services support.

Or is it the other way about?

Funny guy you are
I am not talking about plumbers actually, maybe I should've stated that explicitly.
I am more focused on tech companies (software, SaaS, digital products).

 

[tech.sense]

Tech industry is moving towards chat bot and virtual receptionist...remote CS is dying market

 

[ilya]

Tech industry is moving towards chat bot and virtual receptionist...remote CS is dying market

If you are reading headlines then yes. Chat bots have a certain degree of usefulness.
But I still prefer to talk to a real person when I have an issue and not bot.
If you do a survey of people who have a problem, and ask them if they prefer a real person or a bot then you'll quickly have an answer.

Chatbots are cool for quick FAQ kind of stuff, but if we have an issue with e.g. hosting then we need a human touch.

 

[The Byre]

Funny guy you are .

Yoda - is that you?

I am more focused on tech companies (software, SaaS, digital products).

Tech support that reads from a script is worse than worthless.

 

[ilya]

Yoda - is that you?


Tech support that reads from a script is worse than worthless.

Yes Father, that is me.
I am against script reading as well, it's the worst. But I never experienced a script-reading support guy, in my cases at least, they always had a solution. If they didn't then I asked for a refund.

 

[The Byre]

Good - right answer! The sad part is, most tech support is useless dweebs reading from prepared scripts!

The hard part is finding people who can actually understand some sophisticated package and the problems it may have interfacing with the outside world.

 

[ilya]

Good - right answer! The sad part is, most tech support is useless dweebs reading from prepared scripts!

The hard part is finding people who can actually understand some sophisticated package and the problems it may have interfacing with the outside world.

You may be right, but I have yet to encounter a clown reading a script.
I did encounter such people in sales, but not CS yet.

In my niche/industry the biggest problem is that people cannot keep up with support.
Most businesses are single owner shops, so they need to do dev, sales and support; so after several weeks they start lagging and a great product goes down the drain. I also found out that this happens in medium/large companies, which is why I would like to take some action.

 

[Noah]

Tech industry is moving towards chat bot and virtual receptionist...remote CS is dying market

Funnily enough... I just raised a bug report with my bank about their online system : when paying an existing payee, if you hit the wrong button at the wrong time (intuitively, actually the correct button) it arbitrarily interrupts the process with "Add a new payee" and you have to re-start the payment process.

The response I received from the bank (via e-mail, NOT quoting any part of my original report) was "Sorry you are having difficulty adding a new payee; have you tried clearing cookies/different browser/facing south-east/switching it off and on again?"

I was incredulous : I suspected only an automated response could be so stupid, but I'm sure my bank doesn't use this, so it must have come from a human being.

So for now at least, humans provide more entertainment than chat bots, so I'll prefer the former.

 

[The Byre]

I never experienced a script-reading support guy, in my cases at least, they always had a solution. If they didn't then I asked for a refund.

I have never known things to work like that.

I have a machine here, complete with dedicated Apple Mac, for which there is only subscription support available, but which in reality is just a call-centre in the Philippines, with flunkies reading the same script that is available on-line and in the docs. Fortunately there are thousands of other users on-line that know the machine inside-out and that nowadays is for many types of software and hardware, the stark reality.

 

[ilya]

I have never known things to work like that.

I have a machine here, complete with dedicated Apple Mac, for which there is only subscription support available, but which in reality is just a call-centre in the Philippines, with flunkies reading the same script that is available on-line and in the docs. Fortunately there are thousands of other users on-line that know the machine inside-out and that nowadays is for many types of software and hardware, the stark reality.

This is exactly the type of problem I want to fix.
Not many businesses can survive without a decent level of CS, and some fail because of terrible support.

 

[The Byre]

This is exactly the type of problem I want to fix.
Not many businesses can survive without a decent level of CS, and some fail because of terrible support.

But companies like that, do things that way, because that is the very, very cheapest way to provide CS. They are not some small outfit, but have over one thousand employees.

It is the small companies or medium sized companies that (in my experience) provide the best CS and technical support.

 

[ilya]

But companies like that, do things that way, because that is the very, very cheapest way to provide CS. They are not some small outfit, but have over one thousand employees.

It is the small companies or medium sized companies that (in my experience) provide the best CS and technical support.

That is true and a good insight.
How would you go about improving such a scenario?

 

[The Byre]

By taking the CEO and the CFO outside and giving them a good beating (in that case, they are both pudgy Americans, so it shouldn't prove too difficult!)

Failing that, be like the tiny company iZ-Technology in Vancouver. We bought the largest machine they made back in 2002 and we bought it with all the trimmings. Tech support was always free and was a real engineer with a real engineering degree. Up-grades were cheap, the most expensive was (I think) about $500, not counting new CPUs and new drives, which we bought in the UK. 15 years later, despite all the technical advances being made in that sector, it is bang-up-to-date and gets used every day.

Back then, it was an eight-man company. Today they employ about double that number. Their products are still the best in that sector and the best money can buy. They will never become large, they will never 'scale-up' into Chinese based mass production and their machines are only suitable for those companies for whom the cost of equipment is either irrelevant, or for other reasons, demand the best.