1. Set your goals before you plan
Setting up a Help Center is more than just publishing a website. If you are planning to set up a Help Center or trying to improve services you already have, you first need to determine what you expect to accomplish. Are you looking to streamline processes to reduce the number of support tickets submitted to your staff? Or are you looking to create better relationships and engagements between your employees and customers? Setting the right goals for your business is an extremely important item that needs to be considered and something to build a consensus with within your team.
2. Always seek improvement
In order to start and maintain a successful business, it is necessary to track your Help Center’s performance from the very start. Resting on your laurels is a good way to fall behind very quickly. It helps to track the following items:
- Community analytics statistics
- Resolution times
- What percentage of issues were solved by your staff vs those solved using the Help Center?
3. Mobile is not just an “option”
More and more people are using devices that allows them not to be tied down to a desk. The days of providing a service with a single point of entry are over. It’s your duty to provide a seamless experience for your customers, regardless of the type of device they use or visit your help center.
4. Moderation and participation of employees
When you make your customers feel that you listen to them and care about them, they become more interactive with your services. While your site can contain a self-service page, your employees still need to be active in communicating and responding to customers’ needs.
This doesn’t mean that only the support team is involved. Everyone should be actively engaged in interacting with customers:
- Marketing: it is the strategy to encourage customer interactions and relationships. The Help Center is a great way to connect with your customer evangelists.
- Product and Support: they can help to answer questions and even provide responses to customer inquiries as quickly as possible. The insights and information they can learn from this process can help to speed up the feedback cycle, and help to implement new ideas.
- Sales: Being active in your own help center shows you how your customers and sales are connected. Being an active participant in your Help Center can also provide you with unique insight into trends/habits to help foster an ongoing sales cycle.
5. Enhance the user experience
User experience is of great significance for any business. It’s not important how many visitors you get, rather it’s the experience they have once they are there that matters. Your site should be easy to navigate, highlighting items that your customers will be looking for. One feature, for example, is a search feature. Make sure that no matter what you customer is doing on your site, making the search function visible and accessible is important. When thinking about these items, think to yourself: Am I able to implement everything that my customers want? Am I able to present it in a way that makes sense?
Visual importance is equally important – make sure you provide a frustration-free place that makes your visitors feel like you care and understand their issues. Many people today usually expect to see different items like videos, images, and blog posts. Consider looking amongst your team for someone experienced in web design or hire someone with experience who can help with best practices. And remember, continually test your site to see what works and what doesn’t and make adjustments as needed.
And lastly, think about extending your support hours or offering 24/7 support. Today’s customers are very demanding and want support provided on their terms ie> how and when it is convenient for them. Having a quality after hours function, provides necessary customer facing benefits as well as benefits for you company. The least of which is helping a customer when they are frustrated after hours. What a great opportunity to make or break that relationship. Wouldn’t you agree?