MBA1749 How Fast Should Your Support Response Time Really Be?

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Before we begin, let's define support response time in the industry. There is what's called first response time and resolution time. First response time is the amount of time it takes for you to respond to a customer for the first Time. This does not include, you know, your auto email that goes out says, hey, we got your email. This is the first message from you or your support team actually responding to your customer or potential customer. This could be via email, this could be chat, this even can be phone support. Now it's really important for us to define first response time because it's really important to know what stat, what are we actually tracking when it comes to customer support. At the end of the day, if you're a customer and you're reaching out to a business, you want to hear from them, you want to know they're on it, that they're working on it, that you're going to get an answer. That's really the most important thing. When it comes to the response time and customer support, there are other statistics like time to resolution, meaning how long does it take for you to actually resolve a problem and close the conversation. That's a great statistic to follow. It's another lesson altog but I wanted to make sure that we are differentiating between the two and in my opinion, first response time is really, really important in any industry. Okay. Some purchases are more long tail, meaning that it takes a while for you to buy something. So the decision you're making takes some time. Like say for example, you're buying a car, you're going to do a lot of research, you're going to spend a lot of time before you actually pull the trigger and buy the car versus buying, let's say a $49 a month soft. So a lot of people argue that, you know, in those industries that take a while, they're larger purchases. First response time is not really important. You can get back to people in 24 hours, no problem. I'm here to say no, it is a problem. Why? Because whether I'm buying a $49 software or I'm buying a $40,000 car in the moment when I'm reaching out to a company, this is a golden moment for you as the business because you have somebody reaching out, asking questions. This means they're interested, they're buyer, they're shopping around. You want to win them over so you can continue the conversation and build upon that relationship. Whether that conversation is going to go on for a while before they make a purchase or after a five minute conversation, they're going to be ready to buy. Every customer is going to be different, every business is going to be different, every product's going to be different. That whole when they're going to buy is not really in your hands. What is in your hands is that you're there for them when they have a question. So you can build that relationship. In our own business, Webinar Ninja, our software business, we've seen that when our first response time is under five minutes, we see trial conversions go up. We see that our retention goes up. That means we keep more customers because the customers that reach out to us get answers quickly. We see higher NPS scores, it directly impacts our business. So naturally, we try to even get it lower than five minutes. When we see it even lower than three minute response time or a two minute response time, those impacts just multiply. And it makes perfect sense now that you know this, because, hey, when a customer reaches out and they get an answer quickly, they get somebody to speak to, whether it's on chat, whether it's on email or whatever, they feel like they're taken care of. They feel like they can trust this company. They feel like the ball is moving, things are happening. And here's a little secret that you probably already know, but you maybe need a reminder. Your buyers, your customers are shopping around, okay? They're probably already using an alternative product or service. So when they reach out to you and they get a response quickly, that's the first signal. Hey, these people are pretty good. They're professional. They're on top of it. I'm not used to this kind of service. This is the reactions we get at Webinar Ninja, like, hey, my current webinar provider doesn't respond this quickly. This is crazy how good your service is. And it becomes a reason for them to buy. Sometimes you and the competition in their mind are neck and neck. And you can really convince them with just that, with one advantage, your response time, your customer support. So you're convinced that you need to respond to your customers as fast as possible. You need to get your response time down. But you might be saying, hey, Omar, I'm a solopreneur, or I have a small team. We can't respond to messages that quickly. Especially 24, seven people are messaging just around the world. Now, you might be saying, hey, Omar. Okay, great. This is wonderful. I know I have to keep my response time down, but I'm a small team. I'm a solopreneur. How can I provide near instant response time or, you know, three or four or five minute response time if it's just me or a small team, Especially if I'm catering to a global market, I can't be on my phone 24 7. And that is true. But you can work towards that goal. First of all, a lot of people over complicate customer support. They think, oh my God, I need a team of agents and some sort of call center. And they needed all this management and they need all this stuff. No. Okay, in order for you to have 24, 7 support, you need three agents. Eight hour shifts times three, right? That's it. Now maybe you can't offer 24, 7 with three agents. Maybe it'll be 24, 5 because they need to have a day off or a couple days off for a weekend. Right. But it's a start. Okay, so if your response time now is 24 hours, then try to bring it down to 12. Hire one more person to help you out with that. Even though part time they just get through all your emails or your chat messages or your inbox in four hours a day. Once you got it down to 12, guess what the next challenge is? Get it down to six hours, then three, then one hour, then 30 minutes, then you get the picture, right? Take it in steps. And that's what I did. You know, I was doing all the customer support in the beginning. When we launched webinar ndj, I answered every single email. I didn't have that many customers in the beginning. You know, I had a few hundred, but that's a blessing because I didn't have to handle that many support tickets. But as things grew, I started to hire, you know, part time help and then full time help. And then we built out the team and then we got a manager and then now we have a team of nine people at customer support. Now there's a few things you can do that I recommend that can lower your support tickets so that your response time is quicker because you'll have less support emails or chats to handle. Number one, have a robust knowledge center. A place where you can put articles, support tutorials, FAQs, places where you can answer questions by yourself, like self service for the customer. We really love Intercom, how it integrates with the chat. So their knowledge base in their chat is integrated. Meaning that if a customer chats and sends a message, hey, I have a question about this. Intercom will automatically use their AI to suggest help articles in your knowledge base. They have to do with that topic. So they might be able to solve their problem themselves by just reading the knowledge base. Another option is what's called answer bots. Now I'm not a big fan of bots in customer service, but they can reduce your number of tickets by programming your customer service tool like Intercom to Give answers to common questions. So say for example, a customer asks, hey, how do I reset my password? You can program the bot, say anytime somebody says reset password, you can suggest this answer where it says, hey. You can reset your password by following these instructions here. Or if it's a pre sale question like hey, how much does this cost? You can program it to send them to the pricing page. It does take time to build these bank of questions and answers for these bots, but I've experimented with it in the past. We don't currently use it, but in the past we've used it when we had a huge influx because of a launch or because of an influx of new customers. And it does reduce your support conversations from 25 to 30%. So it definitely can help. Next, the first customer service agent you hire, whether they're part time or full time, get them to document everything they do into what we call SOPs, standard operating procedures. These are basically just Google Docs of how to do everything that they do, how to answer all the questions, how to use the software, all your, you know, protocols. Why? Because they're going to train the next person you hire and you want the knowledge of how to do something not in somebody's head. It's actually on some sort of document so that you can hand it over to somebody else. What if that person calls in sick? What if that person leaves your company for some reason? You don't want that knowledge to go with them.

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To wrap up today's lesson. Your support response time can be a huge differentiator and allow you to stand out from the crowd of competitors. I'm telling you this from experience. We have been able to attract a lot of customers at Webinar Ninja simply because our customer support is better. A lot of people neglect customer support and it's one of the things that keep customers happy. It's really expensive to bring in a customer, so keep them happy by giving them great support and keep them with you. Not only does keeping the customer happy keep them a customer, but it keeps them buying. If you offer them other products and services, they'll buy because they are having a great experience. If you want to learn more about how to sell more to your own customers, people that have already bought from you, make sure you check out Friday's episode. Well, that wraps up today's episode. Thanks so much for listening. If you love today's episode, share with somebody on social media, take a screenshot and tell them what you love about today's episode on whatever platform you love to use, whether Instagram or Facebook or Twitter. Your choice. Before I go, I want to leave you with this Customer support is the pulse of your business. They're the frontline workers, the people that are going to see what's working, what's not, if customers are happy, if they're asking for certain features or certain programs, or they're looking for more. Keep your finger on that pulse because if you listen closely, you can find the next steps you could take to improve your business. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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