The App Developer’s Handbook to In-App Customer Support

Customer Service Tips To Consider

Back in the day, customers could call the toll-free number for customer support or leave an email to the webmaster. Today, however, there are millions of apps and billions of users. Answering every phone call or email can get impossible.

That, however, doesn’t mean customer support can be taken lightly. Quite the opposite, really, now’s the time to take your customers more seriously than ever. It is the empowered customer’s age, and not paying personal attention to each may drive them to switch you for a competitor.

The solution is to provide easily accessible, quick, and on-demand customer support that is also economically viable. In-app customer support is one of the best ways to reach out to your users’ largest number and give each one personal attention. Here are the different modes of customer support you can deploy on your app. Read through and weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each to see which one best suits your business.

Modes of Customer Support

1. Live Chat

Live chat is quickly replacing phone-in customer service as the go-to option for customer support. It is decidedly cheaper and has several other advantages. The first being, that live chat is a proactive solution, whereas phone support is reactive. A customer phones in because he is experiencing a problem, so you can provide a solution when the customer is already upset. With live chat, you can gently ask customers if they would like any assistance, and the customer may engage with you and solve a problem even before it begins to cause trouble.

2. FAQ Page

An FAQ page is a great way to answer common, frequently asked questions that allow users to easily find solutions. Time and again, FAQ pages have proved to be extremely beneficial to both customers and businesses. Using them in your app can help users easily find answers to common questions regarding navigational elements, transactional procedures, and technical workarounds.

3. Self-Service

Self-service is gaining precedence like never before, especially among the Millenials and Gen-Z. Customers feel good when they can successfully solve their problems. Text and video tutorials, guided navigation, and resource pages that answer common questions can serve as self-service solutions.

4. Forum/User Community

Setting up a forum or user community is another multi-faceted approach to customer service that offers remarkable advantages to both you and your customers. Customers feel a greater sense of relief when interacting with other people who experience the same issue and trust their advice more. You get to provide a customer service solution at a fraction of the cost of phone support and increase social engagement, reinforce stickiness, and build an engaged community.

5. Email and Phone

Email and phone support need to remain an option for those customers who want to get in touch with you. Even if you have the above customer support channels deployed, you should always actively display your email ID and phone number, because that is simply indispensable. Some customers and some issues will always need personal attention and human contact.

Here Are Some Tips to Improve Your In-App Customer Support

1. Enable Customers to Get Help without Leaving Your App

App abandonment is your enemy, so you definitely don’t want to be the cause of it. If a customer needs help with an issue, he shouldn’t have to leave your app and open Google to type in their question, as they may get distracted and not come back to the app.

So be sure to provide help options within the app to quickly have their concerns taken care of and be right back to use the app from where they left.

2. Gather User Data and Avoid Asking Mundane Questions

Having a user successfully signed on to your app is a major battle won, so be sure to make use of that advantage. Use data that you already have, such as name, age, location, and purchase history, to provide personalized solutions to your customers. By not doing that, you ask users mundane questions that can leave them with a sub-par experience.

3. Have a Resource Page or FAQ Page

After having hundreds, probably thousands of interactions with customers, you begin to see problem patterns. Some questions come up repeatedly, and some common problems that bother multiple people. So if you could answer those questions and concerns on an FAQ page, users could find an answer for themselves and solve their problems without talking to anybody. Be sure to update the page as you encounter new problems.

4. Set up Automatic Follow-Up to Ensure Complete Satisfaction

After interacting with a customer, via phone, chat, email, or any other means, be sure to follow up with the customer. You could do this the next day or next week as appropriate, but your job isn’t nearly complete unless you’ve followed up to ensure that the customer is indeed free of the problem and back to using the app without a hitch.

5. Use a More Human Language

The kind of language you use when communicating with your users, especially while providing customer support, plays a pivotal role in shaping your customer experience. Using a friendly conversational tone instead of scripted machine-like language when providing help, be it on chat or FAQ, can make a world of difference to how your customers perceive your business ethic. Using a friendlier, more human language makes the customers feel cared for and form stronger connections, helping turn them into loyal customers for life.

Wrapping Up

With the changing digital landscape, consumers now have access to a world of options. Consequently, they have a high benchmark of customer satisfaction, and businesses need to keep up. Even with the best products and competitive pricing, you could seriously lose customers if your customer service is less than stellar. We hope that this article has given you a fresh perspective on in-app customer support, so you give your customers the best service every single time.

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