By Neal Taparia - 01/27/2022
We have a passion for jigsaw puzzles and games and figured why not share that passion with others?
So we ended up launching I'm A Puzzle. When we started generating traffic though, we knew we had to provide good customer support. If our users could successfully use our site, it will encourage them to come back and tell others to solve our puzzles. Therefore, it was important that we had good customer service in place.
Initially, we put up a customer help center, as we thought a self-service model would not only be good for us, but our users. This certainly worked. Our users seemed happy with this level of support.
Once when I had an issue with my food delivery service provider, naturally, I went to their help center, but had zero luck finding my answer.
I had a hard time navigating around. It wasn't as intuitive as I would have liked it to be. I went through the help page, FAQ, and various other pages with no success. Moreover, it was difficult finding a contact page to get in touch with a real person!
I realized at that moment that support lines are the most important aspect of any business. To have a good experience using our puzzle platform, I realized we needed to offer a way for our users to have direct communication with us.
I decided that it was time to get rid of our help center.
When we looked at where our users went most often in the help center, we found that a few specific topics were very popular:
Our users wanted to know how to cancel their subscriptions (we have a subscription service where you can remove ads). This wasn't particularly surprising for us since we had experience running subscription businesses in the past.
Users often come across fringe bugs, especially with our various puzzle modes. They wanted to report these bugs.
There were always requests for new puzzles
In the beginning, we spent a few minutes a day responding to customer questions. We tried our best to respond within two business days. As a result, we found that our customer satisfaction score (CSAT) increased from 61% to 68%.
When we narrowed down the response time to one day, we witnessed the number increase from 68% to 73%.
When we realized that response time is a major factor in customer loyalty, we started responding within two business hours. Knowing what were the regular issues, we created templates and processes to immediately address them. Within minutes, our users would have a satisfied response. Our CSAT score improved to 81%!
I'd say this was worth it.
Our help center was only giving players instructions on how to cancel service. It didn't give us an opportunity to understand why they were canceling. However, once we started interacting with our customers, we developed insights to better serve them and started to improve our retention rate.
In the first month, this increased our subscription revenue by 11%!
Many consumers today prefer to talk to a live person and want a response immediately, as our experience shows. However, some people are totally fine skipping human interaction with companies and want a more automated experience. An ideal situation is to provide both options.
Omnichannel support: Consumers use multiple channels and devices, such as mobile phones and Instagram, to shop around. Your support strategy needs to cover all of those channels and devices. For example, email support, phone support, live chat support, and social media support, etc.
Non-generic auto replies: Auto-replies are a good way to confirm that customers have received your message. However, instead of a generic thank you, try to find ways to personalize your messages.
Self-help options: Some people still prefer to help themselves than talk to customer support. Provide them access to your Knowledge Base or create an FAQ section.
If you do all the above, you’ll provide support options for all your customers' needs. If they don’t want to get in touch with you, they can always find the answer themselves. Ultimately, as we found with im-a-puzzle, the more options the better. Today we have a FAQ section along with direct support. What matters most is providing the fastest experience possible to help answer your users’ questions.
Consumers are fed up with being ignored, mistreated, and exploited. But if you're looking to stand out from the crowd, you need to rethink how you treat your customers.
But how do you do that? It's simple. Provide excellent customer service by showing that you are available when they need you.