7 Tips on How to Structure a SaaS Support Team

Any SaaS company needs a customer support team. Having one can increase your customers’ satisfaction for your SaaS company and garner loyalty among them while reducing customer churn. 

According to a Salesforce study, about 9 in 10 customers are more likely to purchase again following a positive experience with a certain brand. To make sure your customers get the best experience possible, here are 7 tips for structuring your SaaS support team:

1. Establish a customer success team

A customer-success department is a good idea if you can afford it. The role of this team should be to ensure that your customers are getting the most out of their subscriptions. Whether it’s training them on how to use your SaaS or helping them when they’re stuck at some point while using your software. A customer success team can help keep your users happy and engaged with your SaaS product.

Here are some important pointers when planning a team:

The first step in creating a customer success team is getting a team manager. The CSM (customer success manager) serves as an advocate for your customers who are using your SaaS product. In effect, the CSM functions as the voice of the customer within the organization.

Second, set metrics that will measure each team member’s performance (we’ll talk about KPIs later). 

Third, have at least one MNO (member of no one) on board. This is a person who doesn’t report directly into the marketing or sales department but has access to both support teams’ data so they can give feedback about what kinds of features make sense given their experiences working together over time.

The MNO should be able to help you understand why customers are using your SaaS, what’s holding them back from getting more features, and why they might leave (and what they would need in order to stay). They will also be able to give you feedback on how these issues can be addressed if your SaaS changes. The MNO should also have access to product metrics such as NPS, conversion rates, customer satisfaction scores, etc.

Fourth, to have a CSM or an MNO, you may hire a full-time employee or work with an agency with experience in this area. The key is to find someone who has good listening skills and can build relationships with customers by helping them solve their problems.

Fifth, if you don’t have the budget for this position, you may instead hire someone who wants to learn and grow, then pay them as they get better at their job over time.

Sixth, if you’re strapped for resources like time, consider outsourcing this role to a consultant or an agency. They will have experience helping companies build customer success teams and can help you find the right people for your SaaS business.

2. Be clear about who’s a VIP customer and how you’ll handle them

A VIP customer is a customer that you want to prioritize. They could be an individual or a group who uses your SaaS product regularly, or they could be someone important to you such as enterprise companies.

There’s no right way to define VIP customers, but here are some ideas:

• Are certain users using the most features of your product? Those might be good candidates for VIP status. (Users who have paid to access all the features of your SaaS)
• Users or companies who have subscribed to a custom or enterprise plan
• Users who have a large following (such as influencers)
• Users who have helped during the development of your SaaS product
• Users who regularly leave constructive feedback and criticism about your SaaS product.

The key here is to not treat all users the same. Some people are going to be more valuable than others, and it’s up to you (and your team) to figure out how best to serve them.

 3. Hire people who are warm and friendly, not just technically skilled

It’s essential to have technical skills on your team, but it’s also important to hire people who can communicate with users and solve their problems. For example, if you’re hiring someone for a SaaS customer support role, they should be able to have productive conversations with customers in order to understand the root cause of any issue and come up with a solution that works for everyone involved.

To get started on building your customer success team:

• Figure out what your customer success team will do. What are the key responsibilities?
• Write job descriptions for each role, including what technical skills and non-technical skills they’ll need to have.
• Find people who are a good fit for your team and have the skills you need. Look at their LinkedIn profiles, ask for references, and do an interview if needed. – Train new hires on what they’ll be doing in their jobs, so they can hit the ground running when they start working with customers.
• Have your team write customer success stories. These are short descriptions of how customers were helped, what they needed help with, and how their issues were resolved. You can use customer success stories to learn from past experiences, improve the way your team works together, and share best practices with other teams in your SaaS company.
• Set clear expectations for your customer success team. What will they be working on? How often will they check in with customers? Who else is involved in helping customers?
• Use customer success stories and data from your customer database to set goals for each role. 
• Keep track of how many customers are using your product and which ones need more support. Use this knowledge base when planning what work needs to be done next.

Make sure that your customer success team has clear goals and responsibilities. You need to know what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and why they’re doing it. If you don’t have concrete answers for these questions, there’s no way for you or anyone else in your SaaS business to measure whether the work being done by your team is effective.

3. Be crystal clear about your communication channels and the expected level of responsiveness

This is a critical step. If you are not crystal clear about your communication channels and the expected level of responsiveness, then you will inevitably have some issues. This is a good time to review your support channels and make sure they are up-to-date. In addition, be careful about how you communicate this information to customers.

For example, if someone writes an email asking for help with a particular problem but gets no response, they may interpret that lack of response as meaning “you shouldn’t expect much from us!” To avoid making this mistake yourself, be sure to explain clearly what is available (email or chat) and what timeframe customers can expect within which they should receive an answer from someone on your team (within 48 hours).

4. Make sure the quality of the answers – not just the promptness – is high

We’re not talking about the quality of the answers here, but rather their promptness. If a support agent takes too long to respond or simply doesn’t get back to you in time, your customers will lose faith in your company. According to Hubspot Research, about 9 in 10 customers rate “immediate” as a criticial aspect of customer service. By “immediate,” 6 out of 10 say 10 minutes or less response time. That’s why it’s important to make sure that you’re hiring people who are good at solving problems-and if they aren’t already, then it’s even more critical for them to be trained up!

One way to test for this ability is by asking candidates questions about specific issues and seeing how they respond. For example: “What would you do if a client asked you how much data storage space they should purchase?” Or maybe “Can you think of an example where someone had trouble understanding product X?”

You can also test for this by asking candidates to solve a problem that you provide them with. This will give you a better idea of how quickly they can come up with an answer, as well as what their answers look like. If someone comes up with the wrong answer, then it’s probably not worth hiring them-but if they start explaining their reasoning instead of just giving you a solution right away, then that shows that they’re able to think critically about problems and come up with creative solutions!

5. Have all your documentation in one place

If you’re looking to launch a SaaS support team, your documentation needs to be accessible from one place. That way, everyone in your company can easily find what they need and understand it.

Plus, it’s important that the documentation is written in plain language-a special type of language that is easy for anyone to understand, even if they aren’t familiar with the topic at hand.

Finally, make sure you update this information regularly as it becomes outdated or new features are added to your product. This way, your customers can get the most out of your product and have a more positive experience with it.

6. Create rules and stick to them so all users receive the same level of service

When it comes to customer service, consistency is key. You want your support team to be able to follow the same set of rules and guidelines each time they help someone out. This will ensure that all users receive the same level of service and attention, no matter their issue or how many times they contact you. If one user is getting a faster response than another, he or she might get frustrated with your company’s lack of attention-and this can have an impact on loyalty and repeat customers down the line!

Consistency is also important because it allows you to scale your customer support team. If everyone follows the same guidelines and rules, then you can easily train new hires on how best to handle user requests. This will help you grow in a steady way that doesn’t create any stress or confusion for your existing staff members.

7. Keep all communications with each user in one thread

When you receive a new support ticket, create a new thread in your support forum. Keep all communications with each user in one thread so that if someone needs to look back on the history of an issue, they can do so easily.

Use a ticketing system such as Zendesk or Freshdesk for this purpose and avoid email for support requests-it’s too easy for these messages to get lost or buried among other emails cluttering your inbox and it’s much harder to keep track of all the conversations happening at once.

In addition to providing customers with a way to communicate with you about their problems, it’s also important that you provide them with an opportunity to give feedback on the product or service. You can do this by setting up a survey form in your support forum so that users can respond to questions such as “How likely are you to recommend our service?” after they’ve had an issue resolved.

Don’t Skimp on Support for Your SaaS Platform

It’s essential to keep customers happy and coming back.

SaaS support is a critical part of the customer experience. The more efficiently you can respond to customers, the better your chances of building loyalty and encouraging them to purchase additional products. It’s also important because it’s an opportunity to act as a marketing and sales tool.

Support is much more than just a technical issue; it can be used as part of a larger strategy that includes sending out promotional emails, blog posts, social media updates, in-app messages or other communication channels.

 We hope this post has been helpful to you, and that it helps you improve your SaaS customer-support program. We believe that the best way to provide great SaaS customer service is by treating customers as human beings. The key is not just to be friendly and helpful, but also consistent in how each user receives service-and this means having a clear support policy and sticking to it.

There’s no substitute for experience when it comes to building a customer service team; if you’re new at this, don’t be scared off by how much work it might be! Just remember that every customer interaction represents an opportunity for growth as well as an opportunity to improve your company’s reputation among future users who might come across reviews of past experiences with your product or service online somewhere later down the road someday soon…or maybe even right now!

If you need more tips on growing your SaaS, check out our blog.