Omni Core · Customer Support · Module
Getting help
How customers reach support, how easily, and whether the route matches the urgency of what they need.
The idea
How it works
Customer-effort research finds that how hard it is to get help predicts loyalty better than how satisfied people are with the answer. Difficulty of access is therefore a retention issue rather than a cost issue.
The customers who cannot easily reach support do not all persist. Some leave without contacting anyone, which appears in the data as churn with no cause.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Count the steps to reach a person
From noticing a problem to speaking to someone who can help. Three is reasonable; seven is a design that discourages contact.
- 02
Match the route to the urgency
Something broken now and a general question need different routes, and offering only one fails both.
- 03
Publish the response expectation
A stated wait is tolerated; an unknown one is not, and the unknown one generates chasing contacts.
- 04
Find the people who gave up
Abandoned contact attempts and unanswered questions. They are invisible unless deliberately looked for.
One level in
The components of getting help
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Some customers who cannot easily reach support leave instead. That appears in the data as churn with no cause.
The other modules in customer support
Resolution
Whether the problem actually went away — measured properly, rather than through closure rates that can be met without solving anything.
LearnSelf-service and knowledge
What customers can resolve without contact, and whether the material is good enough that they would choose to.
LearnEscalation
What happens when the first line cannot resolve it — where most of the memorable failures occur, because the customer repeats themselves and waits.
Learn