7 Tips for Decreasing Customer Support Costs

Want to succeed as a small business? Then make sure you have good customer support.

The statistics are clear about how important this is. Around 60% of consumers will make repeat purchases if customer support responds quickly and brings quick solutions.

The thing is, to provide this, you’ll need to shell out quite a lot. Customer support costs can take up a staggering 10% to 15% of a company’s total revenue.

Does that mean small businesses with limited budgets can no longer offer this type of good service? Don’t worry. The answer is a resounding no.

You can use several tactics to reduce customer support costs. The best part is that the quality of service your company offers doesn’t have to go down with the costs.

Let’s look at these strategies one by one:

1. Invest in training existing agents

You may be spending too much if you’re constantly recruiting new agents to take on additional customer support tasks. After all, the average cost per hire is $4700.

Why not equip your current agents with the additional skills they need instead of hiring more agents?

For every 24 of your current agents who undergo training, you only spend approximately $2250. Even if you add the amount you have to spend on customer support materials, it’s still cheaper than hiring additional agents as part of your business recruitment strategy.

You only need to spend as little as $100 at one time for the materials for your first batch of trainees. Your next batch of trainees can use the same materials when it’s their turn to attend your learning sessions.

Just make sure you make your training curriculum comprehensive so your agents can get the most out of the learning sessions.

The curriculum could cover the relevant information about your new products and how to use them. Take the time to refresh your agents’ knowledge on stress management, conflict resolution, and crisis communication strategies. Make sure you also update them on how they should speak and listen to customers.

2. Use AI-driven chatbots on your site

Businesses can reduce customer support costs by 30% by implementing conversational solutions like chatbots.

A chatbot can do everything from addressing return and exchange customer issues to responding to basic queries quickly. You wouldn’t have to hire another set of agents to take care of these things. As a result, you save on recruitment costs and salaries.

Chatbots are also the best kind of employees you can find. They’re always online, never fall asleep or get tired, and are not prone to fatigue or emotional challenges. AI-powered chatbots also collect context about each customer’s issue.

What’s more, they learn over time, so they can give customers more intelligent answers to rich queries as time goes by. In other words, for the money you pay to set up a chatbot, you can get a lot to ensure good customer support.

3. Embrace other cost-effective communication channels

One of the best ways to save on costs is to use cost-effective communication channels.

Social media is one of those cost-effective channels. It’s free to create social media accounts. What’s more, communications through social media channels are virtually free. So long as you have an internet connection, you’re good to go.

Just make sure you use social media the right way. Your target audience must know your customer support social channels exist in the first place. So, identify the right social channel for the purpose. It can be Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.

Grow your presence on these platforms. You can get more Instagram followers by promoting your profile in your newsletters and website, for example.

And when customers tag you in their posts, make sure to respond quickly and resolve their complaints.

That’s what even big brands like Shopify do.

Email is also a cost-effective communication platform. For instance, a Gmail business email account costs only $6 per user per month. After payment, your customer support team can receive and answer those customer queries.

When using email as a customer support channel, reply quickly, too. Over 80% of customers want a reply within 24 hours.

4. Consolidate communication channels

Today’s digitally empowered customers will send their support queries from any channel they find more convenient. They may also choose to send the same issue through multiple channels to boost their chances of getting a response faster.

This can lead to your customer support desk receiving overwhelming customer requests. The result? Higher customer support costs. After all, you’d need to hire more agents to man all these channels and serve all these consumers.

So, to reduce customer support costs, use customer relationship management software to consolidate all your various channels in one place. The importance of CRM software cannot be overstated. With the platform bringing together your phone calls, chatbots, social media, video conferencing, and email, you can have a smaller group of human agents servicing clients.

Besides, each agent will be able to respond to queries quickly. That’s because they can quickly find any piece of information they need from any channel when handling a customer’s follow-up query. Since each rep can serve more customers, again, you won’t need to incur additional hiring costs. You’ll save on salaries as well.

5. Automate tasks using customer support software

Multistep processes can be minimized when tasks are automated. That means you can allocate your unused resources to other important tasks.

For instance, with customer support software, your human agents won’t have to spend a majority of their time gathering information about customers from different systems. Customer support software can also help in repetitive tasks like ticketing and data entry.

Overall, as a result, your agents can focus on providing support to customers. The more customers your agent can assist, the better.

6. Implement self-service options

Here’s another strategy to decrease customer support costs: Allow customers to access the information they need by themselves.

The rationale here is simple. When customers have relevant self-service resources, they won’t have to approach your agents for assistance. So, your agents will have fewer customers to attend to. That means you won’t have to hire new agents to cater to those individuals seeking human assistance.

Besides, these self-service options can also double as your customer support training materials. So, you won’t have to spend more money on training resources. Your reps can just study your own support materials.

But for you to use these as training materials, they must have all the information your agents need. Your knowledge base should contain basic information about your products.

This is especially vital for SaaS products, which aren’t consumed on a one-time basis. Your product marketing team should also work together to create how-to guides and FAQ articles that detail how customers can make the most out of the product.

You may also create dedicated discussion forums where answers to customer questions can be found.

HubSpot provides a nice self-service help center with detailed guides, a search function, and even an AI chatbot, for example.

Also, don’t bombard your customer with too much information at the same time. It’s best to create categories based on the commonly asked questions by your users.

7. Select the right talent

The high rate of employee attrition is a concern for employers. Replacement costs can reach as high as 50 to 60% of an employee’s annual salary. That’s a lot of money. If you want to do away with these costs, you need to hire the right people who stay with you for the long haul.

So, look beyond the hard customer support skills and search for employees with essential soft skills. For instance, an applicant who is willing to learn, has good listening skills, and is patient may be a good option for you.

That means they wouldn’t mind receiving constructive criticism about their job performance. Also, they probably wouldn’t mind listening to irate customers all day. The result? The chances of them quitting after hearing an angry customer vent or getting called out by the manager are low.

To build your customer support team, you also want to look for candidates with a history of staying loyal to one company. Look at their work experience. If they don’t last a month in every company they’ve worked for, you might want to look for someone else.

Once you’ve found the right talent, take your time to properly onboard them. It wouldn’t matter if they have the characteristics of a customer support agent who’s likely to stay. If they don’t adapt to your work culture because of poor onboarding processes, they’re likely to leave anyway.

In closing

Customer support costs can get very expensive. If you’re a business just starting out, those costs can negatively impact your bottom line.

The good news is, you can reduce customer support costs with the right tactics.

Invest in training your customer support teams, use AI-driven chatbots to help your agents, and leverage customer support software to boost team efficiency.

Also, implement self-service options for customers, consolidate your communication channels, and choose the right talent to do away with the costs of replacing an employee. As a final tip, embrace cost-effective communication channels like social media and email.

Follow these tips, and you’ll have a cost-effective customer support system that will reduce customer support costs while maintaining a happy customer base.