Building a global customer support framework for enterprises

Chapter 1: Introduction

If you've ever placed an order online, ordered food, or booked a ride, then you already know the importance of great customer support. As consumers, we often face issues like incorrect deliveries, failed payments, or pending refunds, and occasionally, conflicts that require an escalation. These are challenges we cannot handle on our own, which is were a support agent's intervention is necessary. And as customers, we expect immediate responses and hassle-free, effective resolutions from them. Knowing that a quick fix is readily available is often a crucial factor in our decision to opt for a company's services.

When it's our turn to be service providers, isn't it our duty to ensure the same for our customers?

There's a fine line between good and great customer support. Let's say you purchase a gadget online and it malfunctions in less than a month. Luckily, the store offers a no-questions-asked replacement policy, and it's still within the replacement timeframe. You reach out to the support team, and an agent issues a replacement item that will reach you in two days. Good. However, the agent closes the ticket immediately without verifying whether the issue has actually been resolved. A great support experience would have been if the agent reached out for your confirmation to ensure that the replacement gadget works as intended before closing the ticket and ending the interaction.

Let's talk about the significance of customer support in SaaS. In a competitive market where the costs for clients to switch to a new provider are relatively low, the quality of support provided can be a factor that determines whether users remain loyal to an organization or seek an alternative. In this context, SaaS customer support is often end-to-end. That is, it should include pre- and post-sale service.

ManageEngine has always been a customer-centric organization that prioritizes end users' needs. We continually strive to improve our customer support systems, and our accomplishments are reflected in the favorable customer opinions we receive through independent and professionally administered satisfaction surveys. The favorable consumer rankings we receive reinforce the unwavering trust our users have in our services.

But how did we accomplish this, and how do our support reviews continually reflect a dedication to customer service excellence? It was not an overnight journey. Let's retrace our steps.

A company built from the ground up by hardcore engineers meant early efforts were mostly from the product engineering standpoint. While we had the SLAs and achieved metrics, our approach didn't focus on holistic customer support. As the organization evolved, our perspective of support did as well. Instead of just responding to queries, we actively and continually seek input from the people who shape our solutions. We look for ways to encourage and empower customers and streamline our support operations in the process. Twenty years later, the framework we've built is an amalgamation of lessons from customers, satisfied or frustrated, and suggestions from support agents, both veterans and rookies.

SLAs are now a way for us to define service standards, ensure accountability, and set the right expectations for our customers. For instance, our in-house IT help desk enables our support teams to establish SLA rules and actions based on a priority matrix. It also ensures that we monitor violations and tickets that are near violations. The support guidance and framework provided in the SLAs allow our support agents to deliver high-quality service consistently, manage workloads, and be an integral source of best practices for customer support.

Customer support operations were provided initially through an on-premises software arrangement. With the conviction that the cloud is the future of work, our founders encouraged the switch to cloud-based software solutions. This helped us tremendously when our Indian headquarters was hit by natural calamities in 2015 and 2023, and during the pandemic. Our support teams could service customer needs with minimal technological disruptions.

In these pages, we'll uncover how a cohesive vision from our IT leaders transformed our customer support interactions. Our story discusses three main aspects of our journey:

• Laying the groundwork: We'll address the strategic importance of a customer support framework, the elements that make it global, and the fundamental differences between customer support and customer service. We'll also briefly look at the crucial, often silent presence of senior leadership and how C-suite executives can be the driving force of customer support.
• Our inner machinations: How do ManageEngine's support teams operate? We'll explore in greater detail our meticulously crafted global customer support framework that can be adapted by organizations at any stage of their journey. We discuss the key roles and responsibilities, the prerequisites to set up a global team, and the non-technical skills a support representative must possess to excel at their role.
• Support rep's digest: We'll examine a few real-life narratives of poor customer service and the underlying lessons that can prevent similar occurrences. Plus, we'll share a pivotal support experience that led to the creation of a new feature in our flagship solution. Finally, we'll talk about the role of AI in customer support, along with challenges and best practices to help organizations make the most of their global customer support framework.

Let's begin.