Unlike other businesses where a customer pays for an item once, and it does not change, SaaS companies face a challenge because the customer pays for the product on a subscription basis and uses it every day. Also, the product is always growing and changing; hence, customers come across new things, and they reach out for assistance on how to do them. Therefore, SaaS companies should always have an active customer support team on standby to respond to their customers’ questions to retain them. Customer support is basically offering the right assistance at the right time to your customers when they face any challenge with your product. Therefore, the customer support team should consist of people who know the product very well.

First Responders

In the support team, there should be the level one support who should be the first responders. This is the team responsible for responding to simple queries from customers which make up the largest chunk of the total queries. The questions may revolve around billing and general features of the product. Some of them are as a result of confusion on the customer side and do not need a highly technical person to solve them. For issues which first responders cannot solve, they can pass them to the technical team.

Technical Team

These are highly specialised people who can solve complex customer problems which first responders cannot handle. They investigate the problem to determine the root cause and fix it or pass it to the product development team to assist. They may also discuss the issue in detail with the customer to get as much technical information as possible.

Sales Team

Sales agents are also part of the customer support team since they interact with the clients daily. They have a good knowledge of the product, and they also understand some of the technical aspects of it. If customers face problems, they can set up calls or visit them in their premises to help them fix the problem or respond to any questions which they might have, as they explain to them other features that might be useful. They work hand in hand with the first responders and the technical team to make sure customers get the right assistance at the right time. Through this, customers are helped in achieving their business goals, while being shown the extra value they can get from the product.

This structure of first responders, a technical team including the product development staff, and having the sales team involved as well to help customers, works best if there is proper coordination among them. It makes use of the different expertise within the customer support team to provide the right solutions at the right time. This leads to customer retention since the buyers are happy about the product and customer service.