How To Set Up 24/7 Customer Support & Best Practices for Success

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Imagine this: You're a customer service agent. It's late on a Saturday night, and you just received a help desk ticket. Someone has a problem with their purchase, and it can't wait until Monday. What would you do? If you're like most people, you dread working on the weekend to help a customer. You'd much rather get back to your Netflix binge and leave the ticket for someone else to handle on Monday. But what if that customer wasn't just some random person? What if it was your boss? 24/7 customer support can be a real lifesaver for businesses and their customers. Instead of leaving customers to fend for themselves until business hours resume, you can use help desk software to resolve their issues and answer their questions instantly and automatically. This blog will discuss implementing 24/7 customer support that enhances customer satisfaction, improves service efficiency, and boosts overall business success.

One way to seamlessly implement 24/7 customer support is using AI customer support tools like ChatBees. These tools can help you achieve your goals by taking on the bulk of your repetitive customer inquiries, so you won't have to bother your team with the less exciting questions when they could focus on resolving more complex issues instead.

What Is 24/7 Customer Support?

24/7 customer support means customers can find answers to questions and get assistance as soon as needed, no matter the time of day. This means that you must always have some customer support reps on hand to help customers with any issue with your product no matter when a support request comes in.

If you're wondering whether this is necessary, remember that good customer support is critical, especially in SaaS. If most customers have come to expect 24/7 support, you will need to provide it. 24/7 customer support is especially vital for businesses that operate internationally because their 9-5 will differ from other parts of the world.

The Core Aspects of 24/7 Customer Support

24/7 customer support is typically offered through multichannel support, a crucial component. Here are some core aspects of 24/7 customer support:

Always-on Availability

The hallmark of 24/7 support is its constant accessibility. Customers can reach out for assistance at any time of the day or night through various channels:

Phone

Live chat

Social media

Omnichannel Approach

24/7 support leverages various communication channels to cater to diverse customer preferences. Some may prefer the personalized touch of a phone call, while others might find the convenience of live chat or self-service options more appealing.

Prioritized Issue Resolution

Timely resolution is paramount in 24/7 support. By offering around-the-clock assistance, you minimize the disruption caused by customer issues and expedite the resolution process.

Emphasis on Proactive Support

24/7 customer support is more than just reactive. A well-designed strategy also incorporates proactive measures like anticipating customer needs and providing them with relevant resources or FAQs.

Types of 24/7 Support

Delivering exceptional 24/7 customer support requires a strategic channel mix catering to diverse customer preferences and issue complexity. Here's a breakdown of the most common types of 24/7 support channels, along with their strengths and considerations:

Phone Support

Phone support offers direct communication with a live customer service representative. Customers can verbally:

Explain their issues

Receive real-time guidance

Benefit from the personalized touch of human interaction

Strengths:

Ideal for complex issues requiring detailed explanation or troubleshooting.

It allows for building rapport and establishing a sense of trust with customers.

Well-suited for customers who prefer a more personal approach to problem-solving.

Considerations:

Staffing a 24/7 phone support team can be costly, especially for global businesses.

Wait times might be experienced during peak hours.

It may not be the most convenient option for customers who prefer asynchronous communication.

Live Chat and Chatbots

Live chat and chatbots provide real-time online support through a chat window embedded in your website or app. Live chat connects customers with human agents, while chatbots utilize AI-powered responses to address basic inquiries or direct customers to relevant resources.

Strengths:

Offers a convenient and fast way for customers to get answers or initiate support requests.

Live chat allows real-time interaction with human agents for more complex issues.

Chatbots can provide 24/7 availability for basic inquiries and troubleshooting steps.

Considerations:

Live chat effectiveness depends on agent availability during off-peak hours.

Complex issues require escalation to phone support for further assistance.

Chatbot effectiveness hinges on proper training and integration with your knowledge base.

Self-Service

Self-service delegates customers to find solutions independently through:

A comprehensive knowledge base

FAQs

Tutorials

Video guides

Your website or app should have readily available resources that allow customers to access information and resolve issues at their own pace.

Strengths:

A cost-effective way to address frequently asked questions and provide readily accessible solutions.

Empowers customers and fosters a sense of self-sufficiency.

Offers 24/7 availability of informational resources for customer reference.

Considerations:

Content in the knowledge base and FAQs needs to be well-organized, up-to-date, and easy to navigate.

Complex issues might need more than self-service resources to be effectively addressed.

It requires an investment to create and maintain high-quality content.

Automated Options

Automated support utilizes technology to streamline specific tasks or provide immediate solutions without human intervention. This can include automated password resets, account verification processes, or essential troubleshooting guides triggered by customer actions.

Strengths

Cost-effective handling repetitive tasks and offering immediate solutions for common issues.

Improves efficiency and reduces wait times for customers.

Can be available 24/7 to address basic inquiries and provide initial support.

Considerations

Limited to handling pre-programmed tasks may not be suitable for complex customer issues.

Can feel impersonal to customers who prefer human interaction for problem resolution.

Requires careful design and integration to ensure a smooth customer experience.

AI Customer Experience

Omni Channel Customer Support

Help Desk Ticket Workflow

How to Scale Customer Support

What is a Support Ticket

What is a Help Desk

Help Desk Software Requirements

Helpdesk Best Practices

How To Provide 24/7 Support in 6 Easy Steps

1. Optimize Self-Service for Smoother 24/7 Support

Self-service reduces the workload on your existing team, so your resources can go further. A problem that no longer needs support is a problem solved — for you and your customer. As Fast Company says, “Self-service has the biggest impact when based on a win-win philosophy.

The primary goal should always be an improved customer relationship. The advantages for the organization are efficiency and higher profits. Aim to make popular solutions to customer challenges more visible, available, and functional:

Are you highlighting regular queries and their solutions in customer forums?

Are you changing flows through your processes (online or offline) to reduce complexity and confusion?

Are you using video, screenshots, or, in B2B contexts, training and webinars to educate your users?

Are you eliminating “micro-processes” completely? Nobody should raise a support ticket for a password reset or add a new account.

2. Think Global From the Outset to Prepare for 24/7 Support

Every difference in process between departments, offices, and countries represents complexity. It’s one of the reasons why big businesses become lumbering and lose their agility. SaaS services, in particular, create incredible scale by operating consistently from Denver to Denmark. Scaling up will become much easier if you can map out customer processes confidently in advance.

3. Master the Art of Playbooks for Better 24/7 Support

Playbooks give your team processes to follow without sacrificing flexibility. Of course, having read the last section, you’ll wisely point out that countries differ dramatically; we’re not all the same. And that’s not only about linguistic and cultural differences. Take for example, the penetration of different technologies.

Fixed internet in Korea, for example, runs at a hot 132MB. In Italy, just 32MB (and neither are particularly outliers), so citizens will use the technologies at their disposal differently. For an optimized support function, you want a globalized set of processes balanced with some flexibility for local circumstances.

Structured Approach to Team Management

The answer is playbooks. Matthew Bruun, Chief Revenue Officer at Brightpearl says, “At Brightpearl, we live by playbooks: documented processes as to how we go to market for any particular role. Whether it’s support, customer success, or product management, a playbook defines their approach. These give structures and guardrails within which anyone in any role knows they can achieve the outcome we need, but with the flexibility to make course corrections for cultural differences.” With playbooks, not only can you deal with international customers, you will be better prepared to roll out new shift patterns, including agents who are new to the business and might not regularly cross shifts over with your more experienced employees.

4. Deploy Technology Everywhere for 24/7 Support

In 2011, Gartner predicted that, by 2020, customers would manage 85% of their experiences with a company without human interaction, which was before rudimentary AI-like bots had been conceived.

From Cost-Cutting to Customer Centricity

In the 1990s, companies wanted to deploy technology to cut costs, whether their customers wanted to use it or not. Today, a positive customer experience depends on it. Chatbots, for example, can be a great way to provide 24/7 support while taking some of the pressure off agents.

The ultimate guide to customer service chatbots: The stack should include tech to create great customer experiences and connect those experiences across channels and contexts.

5. Match Queries and Channels to Appropriate Response Times for Better 24/7 Support

Understand what needs to happen now and what can wait till the morning… Customer satisfaction is a function of customer expectation — and that’s something we have more control over than you might think.

Leveraging Automation to Improve Response Times

For example, if your team is stretched and you will take time to answer emails, at least reply automatically with an acknowledgment of receipt and, ideally, an expected response time. This will buy you goodwill and improve customer experience. But a more strategic approach is to deploy your resources appropriately for the queries you’re receiving and the response times people expect, not least because performance is generally terrible.

Shep Hyken’s Insights on 2015 Response Times

The legendary service guru Shep Hyken said of 2015’s stats: “I knew it was bad, but didn’t know how bad. For email, the average response time was 7 hours and 51 minutes! The average response time for Facebook was one day, 3 hours, and 7 minutes!” That’s a low bar for intelligent companies to exceed.

The Benefits of Asynchronous Channels

Live chat support (like a phone) is synchronous – a conversation in real-time. But, social media and email channels are asynchronous. You have time to triage the issue, manage resources, and communicate expectations effectively. If it takes some time out or extra resources to regain control over your inflow, that time’s worth spending.

6. Use Everyone on Your Team to Improve 24/7 Support

Puts service at the heart of your organization. Fundamentally, the 24/7 support challenge is one of resource. It costs money to deploy support agents. Unless those agents are already in your organization, remember when there were just three people, and everyone answered the phone? The growth phase of a business is the same, and whilst it’s not workable forever, everyone must step up to the plate, especially during the holiday rush.

The Evolving Role of Customer Support in Today's Business Landscape

It’s not just a desperate solution; there are huge advantages. Companies' characters change when they grow (especially past the 25 and 150-employee marks). People become compartmentalized and focus only on their disciplines. But in today’s world, where the customer is king and where the subscription services of the SaaS economy mean that customers can switch off their business with a click, exceeding expectations is everyone’s job.

The Benefits of an All-Hands Support Approach

Chris Savage, CEO of business video platform Wistia, says: “We call it All Hands Support. It means that everyone in the company takes shifts on managing the chat widget, answering the phone, and calling to check in on customers. The benefits of a shared support system are enormous. Not only can you more easily automate technical issues, but you also end up improving your company’s messaging, reducing confusion around features, modifying pricing elements that don’t jive properly, and cleaning out issues from every other customer-facing element of business.”

The Value of Shared Customer Support Experiences

Just as your support team should deeply understand every aspect of the product, it doesn’t hurt for everyone in your organization to understand the support experience. If your CEO, sales team, or product and engineering specialists take a few hours to work a service shift, the benefits of their renewed understanding of customer needs will far outweigh the cost of taking them off the day job.

Optimizing RAG for Internal Operations

ChatBees optimizes RAG with our AI customer support software for internal operations like customer support, employee support, etc.. It provides the most accurate response and easily integrates into workflows in a low-code, no-code manner.

ChatBees' agentic framework automatically chooses the best strategy to improve the quality of responses for these use cases. This improves predictability/accuracy, enabling these operations teams to handle more queries. No DevOps is required to deploy and maintain the service.

Try our AI customer support software to 10x your customer support operations today. Get started for free, with no credit card required. Sign in with Google and start your journey with us today!

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Customer Experience Automation

SaaS Help Desk

Ticket Escalation

Self Service Customer Support

Service Desk Automation Ideas

Help Desk Benefits

Common Help Desk Problems and Solutions

Best Help Desk Software for Small Business

Generative Ai for Customer Support

Best Incident Management Software

Best Open Source Ticketing System

6 Key Benefits of 24/7 Customer Support

1. Customer Satisfaction: The Key to Happy Customers

Customers expect immediate responses when they have questions about products or services. 90% of customers rate an immediate response as essential. Not surprisingly, most customers want to get this response within minutes. So, when they reach out to your business, they don’t want to hear from a bot or read a bunch of FAQs. They want to talk to a real human. And the longer they wait, the more frustrated they become, even if you resolve their issue.

Addressing Customer Distress and Urgency

This is why 24/7 customer support is so important. If customers are reaching out to your business at odd hours, they’re likely experiencing some distress. You can soothe their nerves by immediately responding, even if it’s just acknowledging their inquiry and letting them know someone will be with them shortly. The quicker you can resolve their issue, the better.

2. Customer Loyalty: Satisfied Customers Come Back for More

A happy customer is much more likely to become a repeat customer than someone who has had a bad experience. By providing customers with 24/7 support, you’ll help ensure they don’t have to suffer for long when something goes wrong with your product or service. When they do reach out to your business, you can resolve their issues quickly and to their satisfaction. Not only will this increase the odds of them returning to your business, but it will also help improve the overall reputation of your organization.

3. Increasing Sales: Support Can Help Boost Revenue

By developing a 24/7 customer service channel, you’re also opening up another channel for sales. Every time a customer contacts you, that’s an opportunity to make a sale. Of course, the customer's primary concern is to have their immediate problem or question handled efficiently. But what do you do after this?

You can attempt to make some sales. With highly trained professionals, it’s possible to turn the conversation from the customer’s problem to how other products or services could meet the customer's needs or even fix the initial problem they were finding. By being reachable at any hour, you unlock all that hidden time when the customer's attention is already with you. This means opportunities for both constructive feedback and sales. The trick is understanding that customer service is another way to increase sales.

4. Company Reputation: Build Your Brand with Stellar Customer Service

As Forbes Magazine wrote, “a company is only as good as its customers perceive it to be.” This is the truth of marketing, which is why 24/7 customer service is essential to developing your company's reputation.

The Impact of Customer Recommendations

Customers who have experienced and been impressed by your impeccable customer service will likely recommend you to others. Your customers are no longer happy just to read your FAQs and hope they find a solution to their problem. Most of the time, they don’t want to wait for an email response. Instead, they want to speak to a real human being who can deal with their problem there and then.

By showing you can meet this expectation, you will be rewarded with a reputation for taking your customers’ concerns seriously and the benefits that come with it.

5. Stand Out From the Crowd: Differentiate Your Business

Despite the demand for customer service beyond regular hours, many companies still need to catch on to the future of customer service. Customers are much wiser. They notice when they are getting a service that stands out from the crowd. That’s why providing customers with 24/7 service is an excellent way to distinguish yourself from your competitors. Why would they buy from a business in your sector or industry that doesn’t provide 24/7 customer service when they can purchase from you who can?

With all-hours customer service, you show you’re ahead of the curve. In the days when people regularly use instant messaging services, such as WhatsApp and Snapchat, we are increasingly conditioned to expect responses at all times of the day when we need it most.

6. Increased productivity: The Benefits of Having a Team Available 24/7

Having a team available around the clock means that problems get solved faster, which leads to increased productivity for the business overall. An efficient system for responding quickly to inquiries helps save time and resources in the long run and improves the customer experience overall.

How Do You Know If Your Business Needs To Provide 24/7 Support?

You can’t improve your customer support operation without analyzing your customer base and unique needs. Start by identifying whether your customers are seeking help outside business hours. For instance, do you have a global customer base across different time zones? If so, 24/7 support becomes essential to ensure prompt assistance regardless of location.

Take a look at your customer behavior. Do they frequently encounter issues outside of business hours? Analyzing customer support inquiries can reveal peak hours and identify if there’s a need for extended support coverage. Consider your customers’ preferences. How do your customers prefer to receive support? Are they comfortable with self-service options, or do they require the personalized touch of phone support? Understanding these preferences will help determine the most effective channels for your 24/7 strategy.

Evaluating Your Business Model: Do You Need 24/7 Support?

Only some businesses need 24/7 support. The need for round-the-clock assistance largely depends on your business model and industry standards. For instance, specific industries, like e-commerce or technology, have a higher expectation of 24/7 support. Consider industry benchmarks and customer expectations within your particular sector.

The Business Impact of Downtime

Evaluate the business impact of downtime. For businesses where downtime translates to lost revenue (e.g., online sales platforms), 24/7 support is critical to ensure uninterrupted service and customer satisfaction.

Assess your resource availability. Implementing 24/7 support requires additional resources, including staffing or investment in technology like chatbots. Carefully evaluate your budget and resource constraints before making a decision.

Weighing the Costs and Benefits: What Are the Real Numbers Behind 24/7 Support?

Implementing a 24/7 support strategy comes with costs, so weighing the potential benefits against the financial impact is critical. Start by calculating the following:

Cost of staffing a round-the-clock team

Potential technology investments

Training requirements

Compare these costs against the possible benefits like:

Increased customer satisfaction

Reduced churn

Improved brand reputation

Next, consider starting small and scaling up. You don’t have to implement a full-fledged 24/7 operation from the start. Instead, consider piloting extended support hours or offering live chat during peak times to assess the impact. You can then scale up based on customer demand and business needs.

8 Best Practices for Providing 24/7 Customer Service

1. Unlocking Knowledge: Use an Internal Knowledge Base to Improve Support

An internal knowledge base can improve the efficiency of your 24/7 customer support. This self-help resource houses valuable information about your products and services that will help your support team address customer concerns confidently. It may include predefined responses to frequently asked questions or recommended risk management solutions. In short, the more your agents can lean on a knowledge base to resolve issues, the quicker your customers will get the help they need.

2. Get Smart About Your Support Channels

When implementing 24/7 customer support, businesses must choose the appropriate channel based on their inquiries. For instance, phone support is ideal for complex issues that require talking to a customer in real-time. Emails are best suited for inquiries requiring step-by-step explanations or written documentation. This way, you can ensure your customers can reach you quickly and efficiently in each case.

3. Prioritize Strong Self-Service Options

Customers should be able to find solutions independently by investing in a comprehensive knowledge base, FAQs, tutorials, or video guides. Ensure your resources are:

Well-organized

Up-to-date

Easily searchable

4. Provide Proper Training and Resources

Provide your service team members thorough training on your products, services, and troubleshooting procedures. Equip your team with the necessary resources to resolve customer issues efficiently, including:

Knowledge base access

Customer data

Communication tools

5. Leverage AI

Explore the potential of AI-powered chatbots to streamline your 24/7 support. Chatbots can:

Answer frequently asked questions

Provide basic troubleshooting steps

Direct customers to relevant resources

6. Use the Right Tools for Your Team

Invest in the right technology to support your 24/7 operation, such as ticketing systems to manage and track customer inquiries, knowledge base software for self-service content creation, and collaboration tools to facilitate internal communication.

7. Create and Use Strategy Playbooks

Develop standardized procedures and troubleshooting guides (playbooks) for common customer issues. These playbooks equip your support team with consistent approaches and best practices, ensuring efficient and accurate issue resolution regardless of whether the service agent is assisting the customer.

8. Continually Measure and Adapt to Metrics

Track key metrics such as customer satisfaction scores, resolution times, and average wait times. Analyze this data to identify areas for improvement and adapt your strategy accordingly. Monitor customer feedback to understand their needs and ensure your 24/7 support offering remains relevant and practical.

Use ChatBees’ AI Customer Support Software to 10x Customer Support Operations

ChatBees optimizes RAG with our AI customer support software for internal operations like customer support, employee support, etc.. This software provides the most accurate response and is easily integrated into workflows in a low-code, no-code manner.

ChatBees' agentic framework automatically chooses the best strategy to improve the quality of responses for these use cases. This improves predictability and accuracy, enabling these operations teams to handle more queries. No DevOps is required to deploy and maintain the service.

Try our AI customer support software today to 10x your customer support operations. Get started for free, with no credit card required. Sign in with Google and start your journey with us today!