A current person in charge explains the job content and rewards of SaaS customer support

Hello.

I'm Goto, currently working on
the 100-day latte art on Twitter *I belong to the Web Services Division.

The difficulty level and the excessive milk consumption put a strain

In-house side job system lifted! Story about starting a cafe within the company

Now, to the main topic

you have of the job of "customer support"

In this article, I, a current customer support worker, will provide a comprehensive explanation based on my own experiences, covering the overview of the work involved in customer support for web services, the difficult aspects, and the rewarding aspects of the job.

I feel that customer support for web services is a job that many people find very difficult

Many people probably have the impression that customer support is a job that anyone can do, where they respond according to a set template

In fact, that's what I thought before I started this job, but to be honest, I suffered a rude awakening after joining the company

If you are considering working in the IT industry or are interested in customer support work, we hope you will find this information useful

SaaS customer support job description

 

Did you find the image of the customer support woman soothing? I was

Let me continue

First, I will explain the job content

Customer support involves accepting inquiries about service implementation and any questions or bugs that arise after implementation via phone, chat, email, etc., and assisting users in resolving their problems by suggesting ways to use the service and explaining any unclear points.

(It may also be called customer success or inquiry handling.)

The means of contacting customers is often determined by the size and nature of the service

I mainly email , so here I will introduce the work involved in customer support that assumes correspondence via email.

The difficulty of working in customer support

As I mentioned at the beginning, I think many people have the impression that the job of customer support (responding to inquiries) is "easy," but I feel that it is actually more difficult than people imagine.

However, I believe that this is a job that anyone can probably handle if they put in the effort

I've been struggling to think of an example to describe the difficulty of working in customer support, but I think it's probably about as difficult as doing flip

Well, I've never managed to do a back flip in my life

In other words a job that's not something you can do right away, but that most people can do with proper practice .

By the way, "being able to provide customer support" is defined here as "being able to respond to all inquiries responsibly."

I know that my argument sounds less convincing because I've never been able to do a back flip, but let me continue a little longer

 

Now, I would like to talk about how difficult customer support work is, based on my own experience

There are very few inquiries that can be handled using templates

When it comes to responding to inquiries, I used to think that it would be okay to just reply using a template, right?

Templates such as "When this question is received, give this reply" had been prepared even before I joined the company, and I also create templates as needed so that I can respond immediately to common inquiries, but even so, from my own , I feel that only about one in four or five inquiries can be replied to using a template

Especially when dealing with systems such as business systems that are highly versatile and can be configured in complex ways, a wide range from customers in a variety of industries , so no matter how many templates we prepare, it will probably continue to be very difficult to handle everything using templates alone.

However, the more experience you gain, the more you will develop your own template procedures for when there is no template, and your response speed will gradually improve

(And I've started to slack off on creating templates a little. That's not good.)

It's hard to remember the tool specifications

I think the first thing that almost everyone who works on web services for the first time encounters is the process of learning the service specifications

What does it mean to remember specifications

For example, as a user, it shouldn't be that difficult to learn the basics of using spreadsheet software such as Excel

So what if you were to "master every aspect of using a spreadsheet software and be able to answer any question about any function immediately"

This is not an easy thing to do, is it?

The specifications of many tools may not be as complex as those of a spreadsheet, but at least if you are providing customer support for a web service in a professional capacity, you need to have an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the specifications of the tools you are using.

Immediately after joining the company, I was encouraged by my senior colleagues to thoroughly use the services they offer, learning how to operate them, and at the same time, I was given the opportunity to start with simple inquiries, which gradually helped me to become proficient

Please note that specifications change with feature updates, so once you memorize them, it's not the end. Because of this, I still don't have a perfect grasp of all the specifications, so I respond to customer inquiries after verifying operation as necessary

Difficulty in communicating with engineers when sharing information

Whether or not customer support staff will handle these matters may vary depending on the environment, but if there are any questions that cannot be answered without checking with an engineer, or if an investigation is required within the system, the support staff will request an engineer

This is not limited to engineers, but when sharing information about a system with team members, new support staff often lack the information they need to convey, leaving them confused and wondering, "What are you talking about?"

For example, if you notice what appears to be a problem on a service page, , "Thank you for your hard work. The buttons aren't responding anymore, so could you please fix them?" will cause the engineer a lot of stress.

This is probably what was going through the mind of the engineer at that time

"(Huh? Which button on which page? Also, what device, OS, browser did you open it on, and what operation did you perform to cause this? There's not much information.)"

*This is merely an engineer's imagination based on my own knowledge

In order to solve problems quickly and respond to inquiries promptly, it is necessary to share information as clearly as possible with team members, including engineers

Learn appropriate information sharing methods from your seniors

When I shared information that was incomplete, my seniors pointed out the gaps , and I gradually learned the appropriate format for sharing information. For example, a 500 (Internal Server Error) status code was displayed on a certain page during operation testing, I thought that I should just tell the engineer in charge that "500 was displayed on page XX."

"That can't be true!" from the engineers out there , but when you make a mistake like this, a senior, veteran engineer will kindly and carefully advise you.
Below is some actual advice I received via chat from Sato

500 is an Internal Server Error, and is the most difficult error to identify the cause of. For example, it can occur due to a specific character in the information entered by the customer. If certain conditions are not met, the phenomenon cannot be reproduced and the cause cannot be determined, so it is best to ask the customer to be more specific so that you can reproduce the exact operations they performed (it will be difficult). At the very least, it would be good to have the following information: - URL of the page where the error occurred - Reproducibility of the error - Occurs every time - Occurs once every few times - Whether there is a pattern (time of day, environment [from home, mobile, PC, smartphone, etc.]) - What was entered when the error occurred *Please hide confidential information such as passwords - Date and time the error most recently occurred

As someone with little experience, this was an eye-opener for me

I'm grateful for the work environment where I get proper follow-up

I have been working in customer support for about a year and three months, but I'm sure there are still areas where I need improvement, so I'll continue to work hard

You must hone your sense for understanding the customer's requests and intentions

It is not easy to accurately understand the requests received from customers and respond appropriately

A particularly difficult case is when we receive an inquiry that cannot be realized with the services we offer if used as is

requests that "this probably isn't possible" "our service can't do that ," but that won't get many people to adopt your service.

a request that at first glance seems impossible to achieve customer support staff must understand as much as possible the essence of what the customer who has made the inquiry is trying to achieve, organize the specifications of the service being offered and the customer's request in their heads, and then be able to make a suggestion such as, "This method could be virtually realized, so please consider it. "

Difficulty in understanding customer needs

Many customers who contact us are not familiar with the service they are considering introducing, so rather than asking questions in the format of "Can XX be achieved?", we sometimes as "I'm currently having trouble with XX and ■■, and I'm wondering if the system can solve this problem." This makes it difficult for support staff to understand their request and make suggestions.

During the first month or two I started working in support, I often found myself at a loss as to how to respond to these kinds of inquiries

In order to be able to quickly and accurately understand customer requests, it is important to gain a deeper understanding of the system specifications and experience a variety of inquiry patterns

Support alone is not enough to complete a day's work

Again, this will depend on the scale and nature of the services being handled, but in the web services team I am in charge of, support staff do not spend the whole day solely on support; they also need to carry out web marketing tasks such as updating website content, SEO strategies, and web advertising management.

On average, we handle 5 to 8 inquiries per day, but sometimes we get more than 10. Also, depending on the content of the inquiry, we may need to thoroughly verify the operation of the system before replying, so it may take longer than expected

Therefore, I believe this is a skill that is necessary no matter what job you do, but customer support staff are no exception and are required to be able to adjust their time so that they can carry out other tasks at the same time, even if they receive more than 10 inquiries a day.

Does it directly lead to sales? The rewards of customer support work

we will introduce the rewarding aspects of working in customer support

Your response may help the customer decide to adopt the product

The thing that makes me happiest when a customer I've been working with decides to adopt our service after I've spoken to them .

The purpose of providing customer support is to encourage as many customers as possible to adopt the service and continue to use it for a long time

We believe that not only will the decision on whether to implement the service be decided, but also the response of the customer support staff will often determine whether or not customers will continue to use the service in the future, so we will continue to strive to provide high-quality support

We often receive words of gratitude from our customers

When a system malfunction occurs, the customer support representative apologizes to the customer on behalf of the team. Naturally, we often receive criticism, but if we are able to respond quickly, we may receive , "Your response was quick and courteous, which was very helpful. I will continue to use your service in the future." We cannot rely on such words of gratitude, but still a happy moment to receive such words of gratitude .

[Summary] What is the mission of a customer support representative for web services?

Customer support is a behind-the-scenes job, and it's difficult to gain recognition within a company if you simply respond to customers. For this reason, even the person in charge can easily feel like they're being forced to do the work, but as mentioned above, customer support does have a creative aspect, and your response can have a major impact on sales of the service

Finally, what is the mission

My interpretation is the role of a customer support representative is to act as a bridge between the customer and the team .

For example, it looks like this:

• Listen to customer requests daily and share them with the team in meetings as updated issues
• Communicate the features implemented by developers to customers in an easy-to-understand and attractive way

We will continue to work hard to provide services that will earn us many words of gratitude both inside and outside the company

I've openly talked about both the challenges and the rewards of the job, and I hope that this article will inspire more people to become interested in customer support for web services

Thank you for watching until the end.