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For many early stage startups, the easiest way to manage customer support requests is via email. Usually, they set up a “support@” address that gets routed to a shared Gmail inbox, where a handful of employees monitor and respond to requests that come through the inbox.
This is common as many of these companies don’t have dedicated IT resources and funding for customer support solutions. In fact, the results from our first Desk.com Customer Survey found that an overwhelming amount of customers indicated they moved from Email or nothing at all (63% total) as their previous method of managing support requests. But as these companies continue to rapidly grow their business and customer base, they also quickly outgrow shared inboxes as an efficient way to manage customer support.
So when exactly is the right time to make the switch from email to a dedicated support solution? Here are five tell-tale signs that it’s time to retire that shared inbox for your company’s fast-growing customer service needs:
1. Too Many Cooks in The Kitchen
With no way to assign emails to different agents, many times they will unknowingly work on or respond to the same customer email, often with different responses. We call this “Agent Collision” and it gives customers the impression that your support team is unorganized and there is a lack of communication between agents.
2. Limited Functionality for Email Folders
While email folders can help with categorizing customer requests, they still lack the functionality that is needed – such as assigning emails to agents or automatically assigning priority level to certain customers – to effectively automate the workflow of responding to a customer support request.
3. Customers Notice Slow Response Times
When your support agents are delayed in their customer response times, it doesn’t go unnoticed. In today’s world of social and mobile connectedness, customers expect an instant response to their requests, and they are not afraid to be vocal about bad service experiences on those same channels.
4. Customers Moving Away From Email
While email is still an important communication channel for customers, more and more, they are flocking to social media when they don’t get an email response fast enough. So if email requests start declining, it might be time to look at a comprehensive support solution that monitors all your customer service channels – not just email.
5. Lost Emails With No Way to Find Them
Limitations on setting up a shared inbox can lead to significant problems for your support team. Emails get lost, buried, accidentally deleted – the list goes on, and no one is accountable. As companies grow their support teams, these situations will only increase and creating workflows to automate these processes is critical.
Ready to make the switch from email? Read the full eBook and learn how you can scale your customer service with Desk.com today.
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