A current employee explains the job content and rewards of SaaS customer support

Hello

This is Goto, currently taking on the challenge of creating latte art for 100 days on Twitter . *Member of the Web Services Division

The difficulty level and the excessive milk consumption are putting quite a strain on my mind and body, but I will continue to work hard so that I can one day offer delicious lattes to our employees

The ban on in-house side jobs lifted! The story of starting a cafe within the company

Now, to the main topic

What image do you have of the job of "customer support" ?

In this article,I, a current customer support professional, will provide a comprehensive overview of the job responsibilities, challenges, and rewards of working in web service customer support, based on my own experiences.

In conclusion, I feel that customer support for web services is a job that many people initially find very challenging

Many people probably have the impression that customer support is a job anyone can do, simply by following a template

In fact, I thought the same way before I started this job, but to be honest,after joining the companyI learned my lesson the hard way

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 describe the job responsibilities of customer support in web services

Customer supportinvolves receiving inquiries about service implementation, questions after implementation, and bug reports via phone, chat, email, etc., and assisting users in resolving their problems by offering suggestions on how 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 primarilyemail, I will describe the job duties of a customer support professional who primarily communicates via email.

The difficulty of working in customer support

As I mentioned at the beginning, many people probably have the impression that customer support (handling inquiries) is aneasy, but I felt that it is a more difficult job than people imagine.

However, I believe that with enough effort, anyone can probably handle this type of work

I struggled to find a way to describe the difficulty of customer support work, but I think it's probably about as difficult as doing a backflip

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

In other wordsof job that "isn't something you can do right away, but with the right practice, most people can do it.

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

There was a time when I thought that handling customer inquiries was simply a matter of sending template replies, and that would be enough

Templates like "If we receive this kind of message, we'll send this reply" were already in place before I joined the company, and I also create templates myself so I can answer common inquiries immediately. However, even with those templates, I'd say that only about one in four or five inquiries can be answered using a template, based on my own experience

Especially when dealing with highly versatile and complexly configurable systems like business systems, you receive inquiries from customers in various industries , so no matter how many templates you prepare, it will likely remain 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 memorize the 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 the goal was to "master every aspect of using spreadsheet software and be able to answer any question about any of its functions immediately" ?

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

While the specifications of many tools may not be as complex as those of spreadsheet software, at least from a professional standpoint, when providing customer support for web services, itis essential to have a precise and comprehensive understanding of the specifications of the tools being used.

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 it's not a case of "learn it once and you're done." Therefore, even now, I don't have a perfect grasp of all the specifications, and I respond to customer inquiries only after verifying the operation as needed

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 isn't limited to engineers, but when sharing system-related information with team members, new support staff often fail to provide enough information, resulting in the other person thinking, "Huh, what are you talking about?"

For example, if an issue is found on a service page and the request is something like, "Hi, it seems like a button isn't responding, could you please fix it?", it will cause a lot of stress for the engineers

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 lacking in detail,my seniors pointed out the deficiencies, and I gradually learned to understand the appropriate format for sharing information. For example,a 500 (Internal Server Error)status code appeared on a certain page during operational testing, I thought it would be enough to simply tell the engineer in charge the fact that "a 500 was displayed on page XX."

engineers"That's impossible lol,"but when you make a mistake like this, a veteran engineer will kindly and carefully explain it to you.
The following is advice I actuallySato, one.

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

that are likely impossiblewith"We are unable to provide that service," it's not that difficult, but you won't be able to get many people to adopt your service that way.

Therefore, even when faced with a request that seems impossible to fulfill at first glance , customer support staff must understand the essence of what the customer is trying to achieve, organize the specifications of the service they handle and the customer's request in their minds, and then be able to propose something like, "It is possible to achieve this in a simulated way using method XX, so please consider it. "

Difficulty in understanding customer needs

Many customers who contact us are not familiar with the service they are considering implementing, so their questions are not in the format of "Can we achieve XX?", but rather in the format of"We are currently experiencing problems with XX and YY, and we are wondering if a system could solve them."This makes it difficult for our support staff to understand their needs 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

This also depends on the scale and nature of the services being handled, but in the web service team I'm in charge of,support staff don't just focus on support all day; they also need to handle web marketing tasks such as updating website content, SEO measures, and managing web advertising.

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, although this is a necessary skill for any job, customer support staff are no exception.Even if they receive more than 10 inquiries a day, they are required to have the skill to adjust their time so that they can handle other tasks in parallel.

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

Up to this point, I've described the challenging aspects of customer support work, but from here on, I'll introduce the rewarding aspects of working in customer support

Your response may help the customer decide to adopt the product

The most rewarding momentwhen a client I've been assisting decides to implement the product after I've finished assisting 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, our customer support team apologizes to the customer on behalf of the team. While we often receive complaints, if we respond quickly, we sometimes receive, "Thank you for your prompt and courteous response. We will continue to use your services." Wecan't take these words for granted, butalways rewarding to receive such appreciation.

[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, when considering this from a team perspective, what is the mission of a customer support representative in a web service?

In my interpretation,the mission of a customer support representative is.

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