Different time zones, continents, languages, cultures, and customs. Right brains or left brains. When clients are in need, providing help can sometimes be complicated, but is always the top priority. The support team's goal is to utilize every resource to get clients what they need, when they need it.

Quality client support combines a mixture of foresight and hindsight. Understanding how clients use and depend on your products and services helps you better anticipate future questions and concerns and prepare to provide future support before it's required. But even the best crystal ball won't eliminate every problem. Documenting lessons learned during issue resolution can help minimize or completely alleviate recurring issues.

Providing good client support requires that you listen, spend time with clients, and become an adjunct member of their team to ensure they are able to successfully use your company's products and services. 

In addition to helping customers become more efficient and productive using your products, good client support:

• Creates a strong brand for your business
• Enhances reputation
• Builds loyalty
• Showcases your company's maturity and separates you from competitors
• Creates a more personal relationship between a company and its customers

The difficulty with maintaining high levels of one-to-one support is that business success is synonymous with growth.  As a company grows its customer base, client support requirements grow in direct proportion and are constantly tasked with delivering higher levels of support while making sure clients, new and existing, are satisfied.

It becomes a cycle. Meeting client expectations is the first measurement of success, and it's accomplished by continual dialogue. Then, support raises the bar by exceeding client expectations. The tricky part is exceeding different expectations for each client, which you can only truly understand through client relationships.  It becomes a juggling act; success also equals company growth and more new clients. And the process is repeated all over again as new clients and new team members sign on, requiring consistent communication.

Ideally, companies should provide 24 x 7 support. Managing this globally may require a system that automatically reroutes calls to geographic areas where live support personnel are available.  For example, a California client calling at 3 a.m. Pacific Time would be routed to Atlanta, and if all agents there were on the phone helping other clients, the caller would be routed to an available agent in the company's London office. That goes a long way to providing clients the assistance when they need it.

Support teams rarely have control over what happens. What they can control is how they handle the situations that arise and what they do to proactively prevent that situation from impacting clients again.   

We must never forget that clients are people first and when they need customer support, they are looking for an immediate, accurate, helpful response. When we help clients achieve success in front of their colleagues, we invest in relationships that help clients overlook any product issues that inadvertently occur, feel confident about continuing the business relationship, and ultimately lead them to serving as brand ambassadors for our organization.    

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About the Author:  Clara Hoban, vice president of client support, Silverpop