Enabling best-in-class customer support for cloud and communications services

Best-in-class customer support is a cornerstone of cloud and communications subscription services from Internet access to cloud applications.

Elevated user experience when interacting with customer support:

• Improves customer satisfaction,
• Reduces churn,
• Increases customer lifetime value (LTV),
• Drives gross & net revenue retention.

Support capabilities are also important during the sales process, especially for services that are difficult to differentiate otherwise such as Internet access.

Below are the key staples of what is considered “best-in-class” customer support for cloud and communications services as of 2023.

Omni-channel support

Customers need to be able to submit tickets and receive notifications via web portal, mobile app, email, and phone. All channels should share a single underlying database (“single source of truth”) and be interchangeable, e.g.:

• Customer can create a ticket via email
• Continue adding information as notes and attachments in the portal
• Occasionally reach out to call center via phone
• Receive notifications on a mobile app

Some businesses choose to enable only select support channels. For example, large communications providers’ Network Operations Centers (NOCs) typically do not support email for outage reporting.

Many customers appreciate human interaction and omni-channel digital support experience should include and enable it, rather than replace it.

Proactive incident management

Providers need not only be reactive but also proactively act and communicate with customers in regard to:

• Current outages and service performance
• Maintenance windows
• Potential future problems (e.g., disk space almost used up)

The latter can be combined with upselling and/or other account management activities.

ITSM Integration

Enterprise customers with large public and private infrastructure will typically require integration with their ITSM (IT Service Management) systems such as ServiceCloud, JIRA or Service Now.

Open API

API access typically goes beyond just support, but also can include items like service inventory, order status, etc. enabling customers to:

• Automatically submit support cases
• Order products-on line
• Develop custom integrations
• Generate own reports

Vendor Ticket eBonding

This involves bonding with underlying vendors rather than end-customers. For instance, a SQL database service may be hosted in AWS, rely on power from a power company and require a stable Internet connection.

If any of the underlying vendors is reporting an issue, a mirror internal (or customer) ticket should be automatically opened and associated with the original vendor ticket. Conversely, if a vendor outage is detected, a ticket should be opened with the vendor. This process is called ticket eBonding.

Consistent customer support process

Tools are only worth as much as the process and people who are executing it.

Key features of a good customer support process include:

• Real-time SLA (Service Level Agreement) tracking, reporting and business intelligence
• Automated case assignments (by product, person, round-robin, etc.) and handoffs
• Last touch, customer communications and escalation tracking
• Governance and continuous improvement with transactional and non-transactional CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) and NPS (net promoter) scores as well as KPI (Key Performance Indicators) and OKRs (Objectives & Key Results) driving proper behavior

Conclusions

Nextian is a vendor of Quote-to-Cash (QTC) software for cloud and communications helping providers accelerate growth and increase customer lifetime value.

Our Service Management, Support & Monitoring runs on top of Salesforce CRM and seamlessly integrates with Nextian Customer Portal to enable best-in-class customer support. We also provide integrations with leading customer support systems like JIRA, ServiceNow, OTRS, Salesforce Service Cloud and others.

Contact us today to find out how we can enable best-in-class customer support for you to help your business grow!