When it comes to your app quality and uptime, your users need to count on you more than anything. If you’re like the majority of the population, you’ve experienced some bad apps in your lifetime. Most likely you downloaded them once only to never open them again, or maybe you left negative feedback only for your complaints to go unanswered.
The fact of the matter is great customer support goes a long way to improving your app uptime and quality. And these things matter a whole lot. In this competitive marketplace where thousands of apps are released every day, users simply don’t have patience for apps that don’t function properly or quickly. Uptime is generally based on the “nines,” and the goal is to have at least 3 nines for your uptime. AKA a 99.9% perfect uptime is something to be proud of.
But before you run to your IT department, take a second to recognize the role customer support plays in uptime and quality. When things go wrong, the user doesn’t immediately email the IT supervisor to have a chat about the importance of debugging. No, they’re more likely to contact customer support to ask about their problem. This puts customer support in a unique position of power to make a difference.
1. Discover the Problem
Because users often experience problems first, they’re your first line of defense for creating a stronger app. If they don’t have an outlet to discuss the problem, they’ll likely leave your app for good and head to the competition.
Your customer support professionals are in a position to discover this problem. When a user contacts them via live chat, phone, social media, or even just a negative review, the agent can then take this a step further to uncover the foundation of the problem. If it’s a tech problem, the customer service provider can gather as much information as possible to pass along the the IT department.
2. Deliver Timely Updates
If something does go wrong with the app and customers are unhappy, it’s usually up to customer service to deliver these messages. While using a tool like AppOptics to monitor your app is a good way to avoid problems, things will still happen sometimes.
Equipping customer support with information about problems while they’re occuring can help them better address the needs of current users. By providing timely updates, answering questions, and assisting with basic tech problems, they’re able to mediate the problem before it gets worse.
3. Recommend Positive Changes
Finally, the most important way customer support plays a role in the app quality and uptime is through their observations. Because they’re building these direct relationships with customers and users themselves, they know their pain points. They know the most common questions, complaints, and problems. They might even have ideas for ways to improve based on all of these things.
Allowing these customer support professionals to voice these observations in a constructive way will do wonders for the app as a whole. Developers, while often great resources, are very disconnected from direct users. It’s customer support who has an open line of communication with these individuals, and that means they often know what they want on a more honest level.
Utilize Your Customer Support
Your customer service quality matters almost as much as your uptime and user experience. In a world where people are interacting more with machines than humans, when a user has a positive experience with a customer support provider, it’s something remarkable. Over $1.6 trillion is lost by companies in the United States every year due to customers switching because of poor customer service.
If you value your customers, you want to keep them coming back again and again. You do this through positive, empowered customer service providers who know how to observe and correct key problems in uptime and quality.
