Key takeaways:
- Customer support really, really matters
- Customers want to help themselves
- Search can help you drive down support ticket volume
- Search analytics help you identify gaps in your documentation
- Customize search results through a drag-and-drop interface
Great customer support creates loyal (and profitable) customers
We all know that customer support is incredibly important. In case you’re not fully convinced, consider these stats:
- 3 in 5 Americans would try a new brand or company for a better service experience (Source: American Express)
- News of bad customer service reaches more than twice as many ears as praise for a good service experience (Source: White House Office of Consumer Affairs)
Furthermore, it’s much easier to do business with existing customers than new ones. According to the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, it is 6-7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one.
So we know that keeping our customers happy is important but how should we support them? According to the HBR, 81% of all customers attempt to take care of matters themselves before reaching out to a live representative. Customers want to be able to help themselves, but all too often, companies do not enable customers to find what they need on their own.
Customer support search
At Swiftype, we handle a wide variety of search use cases including customer support. Swiftype Customer Support Search helps companies to get the most out of their support documentation through advanced search technology.
Swiftype powers customer support search for Twilio, Lyft, SurveyMonkey, Asana, AppDynamics, Segment, PagerDuty and many others. After implementing Swiftype, support specialists from these companies spend less time answering support tickets and more time creating new documentation.
How Swiftype decreases support ticket volume
Swiftype actually helps you resolve support tickets before they happen by suggesting relevant help and documentation as your customers file support tickets. Customers are looking for immediate answers, so they’re happy to quickly find the answer they’re looking for.
If your customer doesn’t think that the suggested documentation answers their question, they will go ahead and submit their support ticket. Over time, you will recognize trends in the support tickets that are submitted and be able to improve your documentation. As your documentation improves, customers will be able to self-service more and more.
Some of Swiftype’s other powerful features:
- Search analytics
- Drag-and-drop results ranking
- Custom weighting
Data-driven customer support through search analytics
One of Swiftype’s most helpful features is search analytics. With search analytics, companies can see:
- Overall search volume
- Words and phrases that their customers search for most frequently
- Queries that are returning no results
After seeing this data, companies can create content to directly address their customers’ questions that are going unanswered.
For example, Twilio noticed lots of customers were searching about session initiation protocols (SIP), but had never had time to develop in-depth content about that subject. After seeing the data, they developed an FAQ for SIP questions, and they saw the support tickets about them fall significantly.
Furthermore, Swiftype makes it really easy for companies to access their analytics by sending a weekly email with key metrics.
Drag-and-drop results ranking
Swiftype enables companies to customize search results on a query-by-query basis through a drag-and-drop results ranking tool. Whether they want to re-rank content based on trends they see in the search data or pin a new piece of content to the top of the search results, companies have complete control over their help center’s search experience.
Custom weighting
Swiftype gives you granular control even if you’re not technical by enabling you to adjust the weights placed on each of the fields in your indexed data. With a simple slider, you can adjust the weight placed on a field and then immediately test the impact that your change has on your search engine. If you don’t like the effects of your change, you can restore the default setting with the click of a button.
Getting started with Swiftype
Swiftype Customer Support Search enables companies to quickly help their customers find what they’re looking for. After implementing Swiftype, SurveyMonkey noticed that over 90% of people that visit their help center find the information they’re looking for without contacting a support specialist.
Interested in implementing Swiftype for your help center. You can sign up for a free trial here.
Want more information? Learn how about “How Asana, Twilio, SurveyMonkey and Lyft optimized their customer support centers”.
Do you use Zendesk for customer service and support tickets? Check out Swiftype for Zendesk.