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

Hello.

This is Goto, who is trying out
latte art for 100 days on Twitter *Belongs to Web Service Division

The difficulty level and drinking too much milk are putting a strain on

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

Now, on to the main topic.

you have of the job "customer support"

In this article, I will provide a comprehensive overview of the job content of web service customer support, as well as the difficult and rewarding parts, based on my experiences as a current employee.

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

Many people may have the impression that customer support a job that anyone can do, following a template

Actually, I thought that way before I started this job, but to be honest, I had a hard time after joining the company

If you are considering a job in the IT industry or are interested in customer support work, please use this content as a reference.

Customer support job description in SaaS

 

Did you feel comforted by the images of women who provide customer support? I was healed.

Let's continue talking.

First of all, I will describe the job content

Customer support is the job of accepting questions about service implementation, questions after installation, and bug reports by phone, chat, email, etc., and assisting users in resolving their problems by providing suggestions on how to use the service and explaining unclear points. .

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

The means of communication with customers is often determined by the scale and nature of the service.

I mainly provide customer support via email

Difficulty of customer support job

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

However, I believe that it is a job that anyone can probably handle if they work hard at it

I've been wondering how to compare the difficulty of customer support work, but I think it's probably on the same level of difficulty as being a rebel

Well, I've never had a successful comeback in my life.

In other words, the image is ` `It's not something you can do right away, but with proper practice, most people can do it.''

By the way, "ability to provide customer support" is defined here as "being able to respond to all inquiries on your own."

I've never been able to do a Gyakugai before, so I can hear that my persuasiveness is decreasing, but let me continue the story for just a little while longer.

 

Now, how difficult is the job of customer support? I will tell you about it from my experience.

There are very few inquiries that can be answered using templates.

Do you respond to inquiries? Isn't it okay if you just reply with a template? There was a time when I thought that too.

We had templates in place before I joined the company, such as ``If I receive this content, I will respond with this.'' I also create templates from time to time so that I can immediately respond to frequently asked questions. Even so , I feel that only one out of every four or five responses can be answered using a template

Especially if you are dealing with a system that is highly versatile and has complex settings, such as a business system, many different from customers in various industries , so no matter how many templates you prepare, it will not be possible to It will probably continue to be very difficult to respond using templates alone.

However, the more experience you gain, the more your own template procedures will become established, so your response speed will gradually improve.

(And I even start to slack off on creating templates. That's no good.)

Difficult to remember tool specifications

I think the first thing that most people who are working on web services for the first time are confused is the process of memorizing the service specifications.

What does it mean to memorize specifications

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

So, what if you were to master all the ways to use spreadsheet software and be able to quickly answer questions about any of its functions

This is not an easy task.

The specifications of many tools may not be as complex as spreadsheet software, but at least when providing customer support for web services in a professional capacity, it is important to keep in mind the specifications of the tools you are dealing with accurately and comprehensively. There is.

Immediately after joining the company, I learned how to operate the services by comprehensively using the services that my seniors recommended to me, and at the same time, I gradually gained experience by trying out simple inquiries. did.

Please note that the specifications will change with feature updates, so once you have learned them, it is not the end. For this reason, we still do not fully understand all specifications, so we verify operation as necessary before responding to customer inquiries.

Communication is difficult when sharing information with engineers

Whether or not customer support personnel will respond to such matters may vary depending on the environment, but if there is an unknown point that cannot be understood without checking with an engineer, or if an investigation is required within the system, A support person makes a request to an engineer.

This isn't limited to engineers, but when sharing information about a system with team members, there are cases where new support staff don't have enough information to convey and end up wondering, "Huh, what are you talking about?" There are a lot of them.

For example, if a phenomenon that seems to be a problem is confirmed on the service page, the engineer will be very stressed if they make a request like ``Thank you for your hard work . Somehow the buttons are not responding. Could you please fix it?'' will accumulate.

This is probably what the engineer's mind must be feeling at this time.

"(Eh...? Which button on which page? Also, which device/OS/browser did you open it on, and what operations did you perform? There's not much information.)"

*This is just my imagination as an engineer based on my knowledge.

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

Learn appropriate information sharing methods from seniors

When I shared information that was lacking in content, I had my senior colleagues point out the missing parts , and gradually I was able to understand the appropriate format for sharing information. 500 (Internal Server Error) is displayed on a certain page during operation verification That's what I was thinking.

of engineers , ``That can't be true,'' but when I make a mistake like this, a senior engineer who is a veteran engineer kindly and politely advises me.
is actual advice that we received via chat from our infrastructure engineer, Sato

500 is called Internal Server Error, and it is the most difficult error to identify the cause.For example, if the condition is not met, such as when the error occurs due to a specific character in the information entered by the customer, it may not be possible to reproduce the phenomenon and the cause may not be known. Since there are a lot of cases, let's ask the customer to be a little more specific so that we can reproduce the operation they performed exactly (it's hard, but).I think it's a good idea to have at least the following information: ・URL of the page where the error occurs ・Name of the error page Reproducibility Occurs every time Occurs once every few times Is there a regularity (time of day, environment [from home, from mobile, PC, smartphone, etc.]) - Contents entered when an error occurs * Confidentiality of passwords, etc. Please hide the information ・Date and time when the most recent error occurred

As an inexperienced person like me, this is an eye-opening experience.

I'm grateful for the work environment where I can receive proper follow-up.

I've only been providing customer support for about 1 year and 3 months, but I'm sure there are still areas where there are still gaps, so I'll continue to do my best.

Must develop a sense of understanding customer requests and intentions

It is not easy to accurately understand customer requests and provide appropriate responses.

A particularly difficult case is when we receive an inquiry that cannot be fulfilled by the services we handle if used as is.

"This service can't do it," in response to "I don't think it can be done," but that would make it difficult to introduce the service to many people. You won't be able to receive it.

For this reason, customer support staff will try to understand as much as possible the essence of what the inquiring customer wants to achieve, even if the request seems unrealizable After sorting things out, you need to be able to make a proposal such as, ``Please consider this method, as it is virtually possible to achieve it.''

Difficulty understanding customer requests

Many of the customers who make inquiries are not familiar with the services they are considering implementing, so they do not ask questions in the form of "Can you achieve ___?" but rather, "I am having trouble with the current situation of ____ or ■■." We sometimes receive inquiries in situations where it is difficult for our support staff to understand the request and make a proposal .

When I first started working as a support worker for the first month or two, I often found myself at a loss because I didn't know how to make suggestions to such inquiries.

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

You can't finish the day's work just by providing support.

I think this also depends on the scale and nature of the services handled, but in the web services team I am in charge of, the support personnel do not spend their days solely focused on support, and they do not Web marketing operations such as updates, SEO measures, and Web advertising management must be carried out in parallel.

On average, we handle 5 to 8 inquiries per day, and sometimes more than 10. Also, depending on the content of your inquiry, you may need to carefully verify the system's operation before replying, so it may take longer than you expect.

Therefore, I think this is a necessary skill no matter what kind of job you do, but without exception, customer support staff always have other duties, even if they receive more than 10 inquiries a day. Skills are required to adjust time allocation so that tasks can be done in parallel.

Is it directly related to sales? The satisfaction of customer support work

So far, I have introduced the difficult aspects of customer support work, but from now on, I will introduce the points that make working in customer support rewarding

Customers may decide to install the product based on your response.

What makes me happiest when a customer I'm working with decides to implement the system after I've helped them .

The purpose of customer support is to have as many customers as possible adopt our services and continue using our services for a long time.

I believe that whether or not you will continue to use the service in the future is often determined not only by the customer support staff's response, but also by the customer support staff's response, so we will continue to aim for high-quality service in the future. Masu.

We often receive words of gratitude from our customers.

When a system malfunction occurs, a customer support representative apologizes to the customer on behalf of the team. Naturally, I often get scolded, but when I am able to respond quickly, I express my gratitude by saying, "Thank you for your prompt and courteous response. I will continue to use your service in the future." Sometimes you can. Although we cannot afford to be spoiled by such words, always happy when we receive words of gratitude .

[Summary] What is the mission of customer support staff in web services?

Customer support is difficult to gain recognition within the company just by responding, so it is a job that is very much like a black sheep. As a result, even from the perspective of the person in charge, it can be easy to feel like it's just a job, but as mentioned above, customer support is a creative aspect where the sales of the service can fluctuate just by your response. There is.

Finally, what is the mission

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

For example, it looks like the following.

• Listen to customer requests on a daily basis and share them with the team in meetings as update issues.
• Communicate to customers the functions implemented by the developer in an easy-to-understand and attractive way

We will continue to work hard to receive many words of gratitude from both inside and outside the company.

I have talked openly about both the hardships and the rewards, and I hope that this article will lead to more people becoming interested in customer support for web services.

Thank you for watching until the end.