Customer Support is an array of customer related services to help customers in creating correct and cost effective use of a given product. It entails help in planning, deployment, training, troubleshoot, upgrading, maintenance, and disposal of an item. The need for Customer Support is felt when there is a problem in the process of using an item, a defect in the item, or usage of an item in an unsafe manner. These Customer Support services also involve providing advice and suggestions to customers who have a problem in relation to their purchase. This will be done when there is a mistake in information provided by the customer, or there is some misunderstanding of the terms and conditions of the service provider.
Customer Support Services are provided by companies like Microsoft, Cisco, Nortel, Alcatel, and many more. To provide quality Customer Support Services it is important for these companies to have a well developed Knowledge Base ( KB). This knowledge base contains all the technical and Customer Support Knowledge Base articles, which would be useful to the customer support professionals. The content on the knowledge base should be regularly updated to keep pace with the new technical developments. The professionals will be able to understand the need of the situation better when they read the articles related to the specific field.
Knowledge Base helps the companies to plan their future needs. With this knowledge base, the organizations can make quick decisions as to what to do about a particular situation, rather than taking a long time to try and sort out things, which might turn out to be impossible. For example, if there is a problem in relation to a software product that is used for network installation and maintenance, the first response that the company would like to get from the customers is to send them to their technical department. However, this might turn out to be an expensive exercise for the organization, as there might not be any customer care experts available in the immediate vicinity to solve the problem.
So, the first priority must be to send the customers to a place where they can get proper customer support. This is where the Customer Support Knowledge Base (CSB) comes into play. The CSB contains FAQs and articles, which would be very helpful to the customers who are looking for answers to their problems. If a person searches for “Customer Support” on the internet, he/she might come across many Customer Support sites, where he/she can find basic information such as when a customer support ticket is opened, who might be answering the phone, the number of queries being raised and so on. However, if he/she really wants to know more, then he/she should browse through the CSB pages of those sites which mention the details of the various companies which provide customer support.
Usually, there are general questions on the CSB page which can be answered by most customer support agents. However, if the agent cannot answer a particular question, he/she should ask for further clarification. If the customer is still not satisfied with the answers, then he/she should move on to other agents who would be able to help him understand the matter better. This is why, it is very important to choose an agent carefully, who is an expert at handling technical customer questions and explaining them in a way that the non-technical users could understand.
These days, customer support teams use chat forums and emails to communicate with their customers. Customers find it easier to communicate through these modes, since both the sides can interact with each other without being interrupted. If you need to know more about how to handle technical customer inquiries, then you should try talking to some of your colleagues, who are responsible for handling customer inquiries in your company. These people would be able to give you sound advice on how to approach such situations and would also be able to give you valuable tips on how to improve your Customer Support Knowledge Base.