Unlocking Value: Customer Support as a Catalyst for Business Growth
By Bernadett Lesueur, Account Manager at Glassboxx
Customer support and its role within an organisation has evolved so much during the last decade. It went from purely complaint handling to a strategic goldmine if utilized cleverly. It has become a key resource that provides valuable product feedback, identifies technical issues, and drives sales by building customer relationships. This proactive approach helps the entire company succeed.
Customer support is on the front lines, directly interacting with end users and hearing about their problems. This gives them a unique, real-time view into a product’s technical health.
Customer Support teams receive a continuous stream of bug reports and complaints about system performance. By categorizing and tracking these issues, they can identify patterns and recurring problems that point to underlying technical flaws in the product’s design. This data is crucial for the development team to prioritize what needs to be fixed. By tracking support tickets, a company can quantify the impact of certain issues, redesign their developmental roadmap. A survey of developers found that nearly two-thirds (62%) have found out about errors from users reporting them through customer services (‘Fixing Bugs Stealing Time from Development’, Rollbar, 2021)
During my almost decade long customer service career I have worked in numerous industries: hospitality, travel, events and healthcare. Customer services is viewed very differently in all of these areas and based on my experience no other industry has the warmth of publishing. This might be because most publishers start out as passion projects or because people seek out a career in publishing for the love of books, but no other industry I have experience with allows for so much flexibility and transparency. At Glassboxx, all departments have an open door policy. This policy allows for the controlled flow of information without secondary messengers allowing for clearer and quicker communication. Personally I feel this creates a safe working environment where professionals can grow and ask questions eliminating a high number of mistakes.
For the past couple years I have been working for Glassboxx, a B2B company with a human touch which makes it a real unicorn. The company managed to integrate customer services into a heavily tech based product created for publishers, which gives us a huge technical advantage. From a sales perspective even a B2B company is heavily reliant on end user feedback and happiness. With customer services incorporated into their packages Glassboxx manages to bridge the gap between the readers and the developers. This shortens response time and paves the developmental roadmap.
Following interviews with a cross-section of employees, it was determined that adding customer service to our packages was a needs-based decision. We found that not all publishers possessed the in-house capabilities to manage customer service to their desired standards. This insight led to a natural expansion of our product line. This strategic move provides Glassboxx with a complete 360-degree view of the product, creating a direct line of communication both with publishers and readers. Our team investigates every query, collaborating across departments as needed to resolve issues. The Glassboxx customer service team works directly with all other departments, distributors, and publishers. This highly personalized approach significantly contributes to customer satisfaction and retention, while also strengthening our relationships with publishers. Personalisation to such an extent does not come without its difficulties. Each new partnership requires a period of adjustment, a learning curve during which initial data and procedures may contain extraneous information. This “noise” must be filtered to enable teams to identify and focus on relevant insights.
Customer support is a primary and essential source of bug reports from the field. While a large number of the “bugs” they receive from customers may turn out to be usability issues or user errors, they are the vital first line of defence that captures and triages the real-world problems that technical teams need to solve. Technical Support and Development working closely with Customer Services allows Glassboxx to release updates and new app versions using a preemptive approach rather than a defensive one. I firmly believe this puts Glassboxx ahead of the game.
When establishing a relationship – may that be with a client or an end user, being prepared is vital. Publishers are more receptive to our ideas if the end user feedback is positive. Customer Services feeds back to the Product and Publisher success team on a direct line. This provides a full picture which allows the relevant teams to design personalised, successful strategies increasing direct revenue for publishers and creating a loyal customer base.
The evolution of customer support from a mere cost to the business to a strategic asset is undeniable. As highlighted above, a proactive and well-integrated support function is a crucial resource for any organization thriving to improve, providing invaluable feedback that shapes product development and a direct line to the customer that drives sales and loyalty. By embracing this transformation, companies can leverage their support teams to not only solve problems but also to build stronger relationships, foster innovation, and ultimately, secure a competitive edge in the market. In conclusion I believe we can state that Customer Services drive technical development as well as influences sales.
