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In the dynamic world of business, companies often face unexpected challenges that require adaptive strategies. One such situation arises when considering outsourcing customer support to a country like Ukraine, which is currently experiencing a complex geopolitical situation. Despite the ongoing challenges, there are important considerations and potential benefits that come with outsourcing customer support to Ukraine during times of conflict. So ultimately should you take the risk and outsource to Ukraine or look for other options. Let’s dive into the subject.

1. Ukrainian Talent

Amidst uncertain times, outsourcing customer support to Ukraine allows companies to tap into its vast talent pool, benefiting from the country’s strong educational foundation and skilled workforce.

2. Empathy and Understanding

Outsourcing customer support to Ukraine during times of conflict can foster a unique sense of empathy and understanding among customer support representatives. Many Ukrainians have personal experiences with adversity, making them adept at providing compassionate and patient assistance to customers facing challenges of their own. This shared empathy can lead to more meaningful and supportive interactions between support teams and customers.

3. Cost-Effective Solution

While geopolitical challenges may lead to concerns about stability, it’s important to note that Ukraine remains a cost-effective outsourcing destination. The cost differentials can enable businesses to maintain or improve their customer support operations while managing financial constraints that may arise due to the ongoing situation.

4. Time Zone Advantage

Ukraine’s advantageous time zone, which spans across Europe and beyond, allows businesses to provide extended customer support hours. Outsourcing to Ukraine can provide a 24/7 support model, ensuring that customer queries are addressed promptly and effectively, even during off-hours in other parts of the world.

5. Utilizing Technology for Communication

In the digital age, advanced communication technologies enable seamless interactions regardless of geographical barriers. Outsourcing customer support to Ukraine leverages these technologies, ensuring that support teams can efficiently collaborate with customers and internal teams, regardless of the ongoing conflict situation.

6. Supporting Local Economies

Outsourcing customer support to Ukraine during times of conflict can contribute to local economies by providing job opportunities and financial stability to professionals in the region. This support can have a positive ripple effect on communities, promoting resilience and fostering a sense of unity.

7. Business Continuity and resilience

LimTC as a company, and Ukraine as a whole has learned and is prepared to provide business continuity regardless of the situation. With power outages being prominent in the winter of 2023, Ukraine has adapted to continue to provide service. On company level, LimTC has installed in its office uninterrupted power supply batteries, generator and Ecoflow batteries. Several landline internet connections and satellite internet connection via Starlink. At country level, internet service provides have installed generators for reserve power supply to provide for landline internet during interruptions of power. There have been many cafe’s and points with power availability created and operating to provide locals a place to continue working from.

Outsourcing customer support to Ukraine during times of conflict is a decision that requires careful consideration and planning. While challenges exist, the potential benefits, including a skilled and resilient workforce, empathy-driven interactions, cost-effective solutions, and technological capabilities to provide service even in the toughest of times, can make this option a strategic move for businesses. By partnering with Ukrainian professionals and navigating the situation with sensitivity and awareness, companies can uphold their commitment to customer satisfaction while contributing to the growth and stability of an important global workforce.

It is up for you to decide however LimTC has proven that Ukraine can and will provide the best service regardless of the circumstances.

We say Yay.

Your product journey is eventually built with customer needs and feedback. Customer support is your secret sauce for your customer journey. Without it, you can’t possibly know what customers want or need from your product. It’s the foundation of a successful product – listening to customers and taking their feedback to heart.

Customer support is essential to understanding how your product is performing. It’s the only way to gain insight into how your customers are experiencing your product and get their feedback on all aspects of your journey: onboarding, feature usage, pricing, and more.

Customer support is also used for other purposes such as gathering market intelligence that can be used for building a strong brand relationship with your customers. This data can be used to improve future product iterations and keep your product roadmap in line with what your customers want.

Customer support should be an ongoing process, not a one-time event. It’s something that should be constantly monitored and improved so you can continue delivering the best possible experience for your customers. By taking customer feedback and supporting your customers, you’re building a better product and a stronger relationship with them.

So how you can improve your customer journey by improving your customer support. Here are a few tips:

– Collect feedback from your support team. They are the frontline of customer interaction and they have a unique perspective on what’s working and what needs improvement.

– Use data to drive your decisions. Analyzing customer support data can help you understand how customers are using your product, what features need more attention, and where you need to improve.

– Prioritize the most common issues. If certain issues are occurring with your product often, then it is likely that you can do more to address this issue in an upcoming release.

– Gather feedback from all support channels (e.g., phone, live chat, e-mail). This will allow you to get a more complete view of how customers are interacting with your product.

– Take action on feedback. Don’t just gather the data and then tuck it away – use it to improve your product and customer experience.

Consideration;

How effective are they at gathering customer feedback and driving product decisions? By taking a closer look at your customer journey and how customer support fits into it, you can make improvements that will benefit both your customers and your business.

Market intelligence and customer support are two halves of the same whole. If you want to build a successful product, then you need to focus on both. The product journey is never complete, it’s just a continuous journey of putting your customer first, and customer support is the secret sauce to make it all happen. Your product roadmap very relies on your customer feedback to continuously improve your product.

The products that win are the ones that listen, learn, and make changes based on customer feedback – not just what you think they need or want.

Looking for a customer support solution that will help you gather feedback and drive product decisions? CONTACT US today to learn more.

We are very proud to announce that we’ve been recently named as one of the leading BPO services companies globally. We are truly excited to share this incredible news with all of you! Our team is very happy because we get to celebrate this incredible milestone with our clients and partners.

Clutch has recently released its 2021 list of top BPO services providers globally and we are very honored to be featured on this prestigious list. Clutch, in case you didn’t know, is an established B2B reviews platform that helps firms across the globe connect with the solution providers that they need in order to improve effectiveness and increase productivity.

To officially receive this award, here is our Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Anna Repekh:

“We’d like to thank our customers for participating in comprehensive interviews to gauge our impact. This award wouldn’t be possible without your help. In reflection of those sentiments, we’ve scored an amazing 4.9 out of 5 stars on our profile and this is another feat that we wanted to celebrate this 2021.”

Lastly, we would like to extend our gratitude to Clutch and their team for making this award happen. It is very much appreciated and we can’t think of a better way to close our year with a very incredible acknowledgment.

Whether you are looking to outsource your sales support, helpdesk and customer support, and back-office administration, the LimTC team is here to help. Make sure to contact our team today and we will be happy to assist you throughout the process.

Customer service is when you assist someone with an issue they are having. Customer support is all of the services that make it easier for customers to do business with your company. Customer service problems are when your customers want something done but can’t or don’t know how to ask for it. There are several customer support problems that can be solved by artificial intelligence and help you to provide outstanding service with reduced cost.

Customer Service Problems Solved By AI Customer service problems include answering questions, resolving complaints, and helping customers feel heard. Customer support problems include return policies, billing issues, shipping information, and logistics troubleshooting/resolution. Below we have listed ways that Artificial Intelligence programs solve these common customer service problems:

Conversational Customer Service by AI Chat Bots;

Customer service agents respond to the same questions over and over again (how do I get started? how do I log in?). Customer service chatbots ease that burden by providing answers to common questions. Your agents are freed up to solve more difficult customer issues knowing that they have assisted the majority of customers.

The most effective customer service programs use natural language input. Customer service chatbots and applications can recognize and understand human speech and convert it into text, perfect for customer support. AI customer service program has the ability to recognize language patterns and trends in what your customers say. Customer service programs constantly learn from past interactions and become better at interpreting ever-changing slang, vernacular, dialects, and phrases. In 2021 customer service chatbots are capable of much more advanced interactions using natural language processing.

Provide In-Context Guidance for Customer support;

There are times when Customer service chatbots can help with customer issues but it’s not the right time to do so. Customer support programs provide in-context guidance instead of forcing customers to leave your website or app, which is easier for the user and your company. Customer support chatbots ask questions that determine what kind of issue the customer has and offer help to get the best customer service possible. Customer support chatbots can answer simple questions, provide relevant FAQs, recommend solutions, and even list alternative search results for what a customer is looking for. Customer support chatbots can also direct customers to other resources like Customer support phone numbers or email addresses if necessary.

Repetitive Task Automation;

Customer service tools are able to perform repetitive tasks that are currently being done by Customer Service agents. You can automate the process of contacting customers who haven’t made a payment in several months, emailing receipts to customers, or processing returns and credits for support agents. These tools can also handle things like updating customer information or sending them loyalty perks. Customer service programs are able to communicate with customers across various customer service mediums like the website, email, phone, or social media. AI software can collect information about how customers interact with your company before sending follow-up emails or other messages to customers who haven’t made a purchase in several months.

Customer service can be an expensive endeavor for a company that does not have the resources, tools, or technologies needed. Customer service requests take your time and effort which you could be spending on more important tasks like running your business. Customer service programs provide in-context guidance instead of forcing customers to leave your website or app, which is easier for the customer and saves you time. Customer service chatbots ask questions that determine what kind of issue the customer has and offer help to get the best customer service possible. Customer Service chatbots can answer simple questions, provide relevant FAQs, recommend solutions, and even list alternative search results for what a customer is looking for. Customer service chatbots can also direct customers to other resources like customer service phone numbers or email addresses if necessary.

This blog is written to help you to build or improve your customer support teams today without investing too much and for more on improving customer experience, check out this blog post. https://limtc.com/2021/09/01/10-customer-service-tips-for-delivering-a-5-star-experience/

As customer service software is combined with customer service solutions, customer experience becomes streamlined.

While customer support is difficult, it’s important to keep in mind that what one customer group wants or needs may be different from what another customer group wants or needs. This means finding ways to deliver customer service can be complicated by the sheer number of tools available for companies to use.

There’s no doubt about it – optimizing your customer support tools is a winning game plan for both your business and your clients! While customer service software can make customer care easier, customer experience will only be improved if the customer support tools are used correctly and timely.

Here at LimTC, we’ve learned through direct hands-on experience exactly what to do to optimize our own customer support tools. We want to share some of our tips so you can learn how to get the best out of yours.

Customer Service Software And Tools

Here at LimTC, we believe in providing tools that fit customer needs to be effective when they are used by customer service teams that have customer data at their fingertips.

For example, customer service chatbots – or customer bots – are great for customer service teams that need to automate common customer queries. We’ve found customer bots to be very effective at simplifying repetitive tasks and reducing average ticket times by up to 50%! But they aren’t the right tools for every team.

What you need will depend on your industry, the size of your customer base, and the type of customer care that best suits you. What works for a B2B business might not work for a retail customer service team and vice versa.

To deliver customer service that truly enhances customer experience, customer support teams must be able to prioritize tasks based on customer needs and preferences. Having a wealth of customer support tools is pointless if customer support staff are unaware of the time or date when a customer requires assistance, or can’t properly interact with customers due to outdated technology.

Customer service software can be a great way to save time and money for your business if it’s used with customer data in mind.

How To Optimize Your Tools

To get the best out of customer support tools, customer data needs to first be collected and analyzed. The right customer support tools will depend on the type of customer support your business provides.

Customer data is invaluable in helping customer service teams prioritize customer requests. If a customer prefers a particular type of communication or requires assistance at a specific time of day, customer support tools should be prioritized accordingly.

Customer data can also help you determine which customer support tools are most effective for your customer support team. A customer service chatbot that’s automated to answer frequently asked questions may not be as successful as one that can review customer complaints and issue refunds. Even an advanced customer chatbot will still require customer service staff with customer data to make sure customer needs are met.

Methods for Optimizing your tools

Customer Data

Customer information must be analyzed and used to determine customer service needs, customer preferences, and customer activities.

Customer Feedback

Customers should be surveyed regularly to ensure customer support tools are meeting customer needs.

Manage Customer Support Tools

Make sure your customer support team has access to the right data at the right time in order to manage customer support tools effectively.

Customer Data

Customer data can be obtained from customer surveys, customer tickets, customer communications, and even customer profile information.

Using customer feedback tools will help you determine which customer support tools are most effective for your customer support team. If a chatbot regularly receives the same customer request that could be completed by a human customer service agent, customer support software should be prioritized accordingly.

Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is a great way for customer support teams to determine customer needs and customer preferences, allowing customer support staff to prioritize customer requests.

Manage Customer Tools

Make sure your customer service team has access to the right data at the right time in order to manage customer support tools effectively.

At LimTC, customer care is at the heart of what we do. We help companies find their customer data and use it to deliver an outstanding customer experience. To learn more about how our customer support teams choose and optimize tools according to every specific business needs to boost customer care, stay tuned get in touch.

Leaders play a critical role in ensuring that their workforce is motivated and engaged. Driving results through your team members will help you accomplish your company objectives and stay ahead of the competition. However, do you know why some of your employees are disengaged or unhappy? It might have to do with how they are managed or because they’re not happy about what’s expected from them at work.

In the previous blog, we touched base on a very underestimated subject as burnout specifically in customer support teams. Companies understand that customer experience is a competitive edge but very often underestimate the power of customer support teams.

In fact, organizations with good customer service enjoy up to 20% higher profits.

Customers who have a bad experience when they contact support are known to reduce their spending by 75%. They also tell around 9 to 15 people about it on social media or other review websites. In addition, 56% of unhappy customers will never buy from you again and 66% will stop repurchasing the same product category.

That’s why we see more and more companies using the right tools, processes, and leadership for providing great support and rapid feedback loops to improve collaboration and alignment between marketing, development, and support. But what if all these efforts aren’t enough? What can leaders do before losing talented people?

In this article, we’ll explore some ways to stop attrition rates among customer support teams by focusing leadership on internal vs external factors which affect job satisfaction for this type of workforce.

We believe the first step might be understanding why customer support teams and specifically yours experiencing high churn rates.

As mentioned previously, customer support is a very demanding job. It requires constant shifts between different types of work (tickets, chat, emails, etc), uncertain compensation (depending on company structure and location), strong emotional involvement (with customers or between team members), lack of transparency into the bigger picture, and little recognition for what’s done well.

While there are many things that could contribute to high attrition rates in this field, we can distinguish two broad categories: the internal factors (behaviors of managers/leaders) and external factors (behaviors of upper management toward employees).

Internal Factors

This includes various issues managers might face when leading customer support teams. Let’s break them down!

Poor work-life balance

Support team members live to serve their users 24/7. While it sounds like a noble goal that should be rewarded rather than criticized, in practice, it’s inefficient for your business.

Frequent shifts make it difficult to build a work-life balance outside of their working hours. People who are used to working long hours might be inclined to stay longer once they’re there. In the end, this has a negative impact on productivity. It also impacts personal life as it triggers feelings of guilt from not being present at home or with friends and family.

In addition, few companies allow remote work or flexible schedules that bring additional challenges for team members trying to find a good balance between their professional and private lives.

For example, some teams don’t have email access after a certain time which makes it hard to communicate last-minute urgent matters or requests from users (especially when an issue is occurring).

Low transparency

This issue comes from a lack of communication and understanding of the bigger picture. For example, support staff doesn’t have access to real-time information such as sales numbers, user growth, product usage metrics, etc. This makes it difficult for them to understand what’s expected of their performance and how they contribute to the organization’s success.

When that happens, team members feel like just another cog in the machine with no direct impact on the company’s overall well-doing. They also start feeling less committed and willing to go the extra mile for your customers because they don’t see its value or purpose.

Poor remuneration policy

Your employees might not be able to afford to live in an expensive city where your company is located. This issue has a direct impact on the happiness, dedication, and retention rates of your team members outside of work.

External Factors

On the other hand, there are factors that leaders don’t have any control over but might still contribute to high attrition rates in customer support teams. These include poor company culture, unfair wage differences between departments/positions, micromanagement practices, lack of career advancement opportunities for technical-oriented employees, etc.

To better understand why your people become unhappy or disengaged at work you need to ask them about their concerns and find out what they expect from their leader or manager during their next performance review. That way you can try to address these issues before it’s too late!

If not, you might face the unpleasant scenario of having to go through a round of layoffs in order to restructure your team.

To prevent high attrition rates in customer support teams start by focusing on the internal factors first. The external ones are much harder for you to have an impact on since they depend largely on company leadership’s vision and practices. For that reason, it’s important how managers communicate with their team members about their performance. They should also work actively to build trust-based relationships among employees so that people feel comfortable voicing concerns without being labeled as “complainers”.

Tips for leaders that are easy to begin with, but will have a huge impact:

Offer more transparency:

Open and frequent communication is key to improvement. Make sure your leaders and managers share crucial information with your customer support team members (sales figures, product usage metrics, etc) so that they can understand how what they do contributes to the company’s overall well-being.

Provide career advancement opportunities: show your support staff other paths within the organization for them to explore instead of putting all their eggs in one basket by staying in a role where they don’t have any room for growth or exploration.

Avoid micromanagement practices:

Trust should be at the core of every team member’s experience while working for you. If there are constant requests coming from the top it makes people like they lack autonomy and control over their tasks. That’s a deal-breaker!

Introduce a fair compensation policy:

What you pay for is what you get. And more often than not, people don’t leave jobs because of the salary, but more because they feel undervalued and think it’s time to move on from their current position to something better suited for them.

Don’t expect them to act like robots:

The customer success team represents your business in front of people who require help, but they’re also people with feelings and emotions. If you keep treating them like numbers because it’s easier that way, then you could face major issues down the road.

Treat your staff as individuals instead of generic resources and you’ll be much more successful at retaining them for longer!

As a leader, it’s critical to be aware of internal and external factors that might affect the retention rate of your customer support team. Once you come up with an action plan that addresses these concerns it will be much easier to focus on what really counts: bringing home more customers!

We all know how important it is for a business to provide great customer service, which can help us maintain healthy relationships with existing customers and attract new ones as well. But take a closer look at any decent-sized organization and you’ll find lots of other people working behind the scenes to keep it going – from salespeople and marketers trying to bring in new leads or close deals, to engineers building products that solve customers’ problems, to customer support staff providing help and assistance. Because they’re less visible to the general public, many of these people aren’t as well-recognized for their contributions or rewarded with corporate kudos, but make no mistake about it: Their efforts are absolutely critical to the success of any company.

In this article, we’ll talk specifically about one group of unsung heroes – customer support teams – who can often find themselves overworked and underappreciated despite the fact that they’re on the front lines every day helping customers solve problems. Hopefully, by reading this you’ll not only discover how to recognize your own best employees before it’s too late but learn how to keep them from burning out and leaving your organization.

To start, let’s take a closer look at the problem with customer support teams specifically. As you know, your front-line team members are most likely to have daily contact with customers – including direct interactions via phone or email as well as indirect interactions through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. They also tend to be closest to the action when it comes to new product development, software updates, and other changes that might impact the quality of their work environment. So they’re arguably more aware than pretty much anyone (except maybe executive leadership) of what’s changing and how those changes might impact them personally down the road. And if you’ve employed less experienced people who don’t yet understand that changes need to be made, they’re also more likely than senior leaders to be the first ones to complain about problems with your products or services.

All of which is why it’s absolutely critical for organizations to make sure their customer support teams are as happy and fulfilled as possible from start to finish. From their hiring process all the way through career advancement opportunities. That’s easier said than done, of course, because many companies don’t invest enough time or money in training their teams properly before sending them out into the field. Then once customers start complaining, those same companies often fail to recognize the importance of listening carefully and acting on that feedback, leading overworked CSRs down a path toward burnout.

How to recognize if there is a burnout problem in your organization

If you’re not sure whether or not there’s a problem, ask yourself these questions:

• Are your customer support teams complaining often about the work they do?
• Do they routinely feel overworked and underappreciated? 
• Are they always the first to complain about a new development or changes at your organization?
• Do you struggle to retain good employees for any length of time, regardless of how much you pay them?

If you answered yes to more than one of these questions, it’s likely that there are some problems with your customer support teams. And if those problems aren’t addressed soon, many of the people on those teams will eventually burn out and leave for other jobs. Let’s now take a look at why that happens so often in today’s businesses …

How to prevent burnout before it starts

The simplest way to avoid this kind of employee burnout is simply by hiring people who love what they do for a living. Of course, that’s easier said than done when you’re looking at resumes from dozens or even hundreds of job candidates with similar skills and experience levels. 

So as a first step, try to narrow the list of candidates down by comparing their qualifications against some of the following points.

First, look for people who have a history of being good listeners. These are the people who ask a lot of questions and pay close attention not just to what you’re saying but also to how you’re saying it. This is important because it demonstrates that they care about more than just getting answers or fixing problems. It is typically an indicator that they also care about keeping customers happy and making sure everyone has fun along the way (at least whenever possible).

The second thing to consider is whether your prospective employees already enjoy talking with other types of customers in different industries. For example, would they be excited if their only choice was selling car parts and talking to car enthusiasts all day long? Or do they prefer complex products that require a lot of explanation and allow them to showcase their problem-solving skills?

If you’re not sure, ask candidates how much they enjoy being pushed in different directions. Someone who’s looking for stability in every job he or she takes is probably going to want something very familiar at your company which could ultimately cause problems down the line when the next big thing rolls around. That person might be less eager to experiment with new software or take on new training classes if they don’t feel comfortable expanding their horizons beyond what’s already familiar.

Let’s now look at two potential solutions for tackling workplace burnout once it starts to become a problem.

The first is to simply invest in better training for your customer support teams. This obviously requires more initial capital upfront but will pay off in the long run by reducing turnover, increasing morale, and improving the overall quality of work. It’s also possible to use some of these newfound efficiencies to reduce the number of hours each person works while still getting all their regular tasks completed on time, if not early.

When you’re figuring out just how much money you’re willing to invest in the people behind your company, consider asking yourself what would happen if one team member walked away tomorrow. Could you replace that employee today without breaking stride? If that answer isn’t yes, then it’s likely time to put aside some extra cash for your training improvements.

The second option for tackling customer support burnout is to simply begin having fun again. Remember that your employees are people too, which means they’re going to get tired of doing the same work day in and day out without any chance for a break or change of scenery. So it’s important to create some kind of reward system for when they do go above and beyond the call of duty, whatever that may be.

Perhaps you already have rewards but haven’t been communicating them effectively because there hasn’t been much reason to celebrate lately. Or maybe you just need to think outside the box more about how to give credit where credit is due so that everyone feels appreciated each time one team member helps another with something technically challenging.

As long as the work is still getting done, then you should always feel free to experiment with different ways of recognizing your people. After all, these are the reasons they signed up for this job in the first place so it’s important not to take them for granted or treat them like robots. You can’t beat problems down into submission; sometimes you need human beings to solve human problems.

So consider making some changes today by investing in your customer support training and rewarding everyone whenever possible, even if those rewards are somewhat small and don’t cost very much at all. The next article in this series will discuss how leaders can combat customer support team churn.

You’ll learn what types of leadership styles work best with different personality types and why hiring for cultural fit can be more important than hiring solely based on technical or relevant skills.

Customer support teams know their product or service in and out because they use it every day to help customers to solve problems. Because they’re in close contact with users, they’re able to gather information about what kinds of issues a user might have with a given solution and how that problem can be resolved. This is a differentiator that can be used in many verticals, but the most successful implementations we’ve seen have been when customer support teams are responsible for gathering this information and creating/delivering the solution by communicating with internal teams.

There are several areas of the business where customer support teams can play a crucial role in boosting demand generation efforts. They have access to valuable information about existing customers that salespeople don’t always see. They’re already on the front lines dealing with customer problems, their perspectives provide an ideal starting point for expanding your reach to new prospects. And third, when you give them the autonomy to work across different departments and get involved in new initiatives, they can go above and beyond simply distributing knowledge to create actual demand.

The power of customer support teams is in their ability to turn their access to customers into something more valuable for the organization. Here are three examples of what our clients have done with customer support teams’ demand generation capabilities:

     Retention campaigns

Customer retention campaigns are usually heavily reliant on data about past behavior, which means they can be difficult to develop and optimize across multiple user segments. Customer support team members know what problems users run into while using your product or service, what types of content might be useful in resolving those issues, how previous ones were resolved (and by whom), and whether there’s a pattern that emerges when you look at all these data points together. This information can give them a leg up on creating high-performance retentions campaigns.

Customer success teams

Customer support teams know your customers and what they need most from you, so they can be an ideal resource for customer success team members who want to better understand their account value and risk level. If a team member has questions about the best way to reach out to a specific user or how data should be segmented, their teammates in customer support can provide that context and help them use the data more effectively.

Internal collaboration

On some occasions, gathering information about existing customers is as simple as having conversations with other people on your team (especially those inside sales reps selling similar solutions). But effective demand generation requires collaboration between multiple teams, from sales and services to management. So it’s important to establish communication channels that can be used to exchange ideas and plan tactics. Customer support teams should serve as a bridge between their organization’s various demand generation efforts, and if they’re encouraged to help create and run campaigns internally (with all the resources needed), they’ll likely become more invested in the company’s growth and success.

     You can’t be everywhere at once

The demand generation process is an ongoing one that requires significant resources to implement properly. Customer support has access to valuable information about current customers, but simply distributing existing knowledge doesn’t create new demand (a strategy only good for maintaining the status quo). To make your demand generation truly successful, you need people who are passionate about growing your customer base and will go the extra mile to help do it.

The customer support team might not have all the tools and the data they need to be successful demand generators. However, once you invest in a process that enables everyone on your team to work collaboratively, cross-functional teams can find creative ways to take advantage of existing assets. When done right, this process will lead to better results for current customers as well as generate new revenue from prospects who may have been overlooked by other demand generation teams.

The question remains: how much effort does it require?

It’s possible to take advantage of existing assets without investing too much time or money into creating new tools or processes. Instead of viewing customer support as a burden, recognize that they’re already helping to educate your customers and resolve their problems. Think of them as an internal consulting team whose knowledge can help your company develop the skills needed for effective demand generation.

How and where to start?

As with any team-based initiative, expect some challenges when you first try to equip everyone with the tools they need to become demand generators. If customer support is doing a good job serving existing customers, their primary focus will be on processes related to managing those accounts—helping you prioritize which tasks should receive more attention than others.

Don’t expect them to know how these activities relate to growing revenue or achieving other goals that might be outside their current responsibilities. It’s important to create healthy dialogue and convey the bigger picture for demand generation so that everyone can understand what you’re trying to accomplish and why it matters.

Reaching out directly to users is usually the most effective way of acquiring new customers, but in some instances, this is not possible or even an option:

• When you need more insight than your existing sources can provide
• When you want to establish a dialogue with your target audience
• When you need information about the people who are most likely to be interested in your products or services

     Because this process will require more collaboration among separate teams, it’s important to establish communication channels that can facilitate collaborative efforts enabling everyone on-board. You can start by asking customer support what types of data they currently have access to, which could help uncover resources previously overlooked. Then ask them how they would use existing assets if demand generation was part of their responsibilities. This should give you an idea about how much time and effort (resources) is required for this change in focus to become successful. Once you’ve figured out where demand generation fits into existing processes, it’s time to build a new one.

The process you implement won’t be the same for every company, but there are some common steps that can help you get started:

    Step 1: Define the goal.

Your first step is to define your end goal for this initiative. What are you trying to accomplish? How will it help customers, your existing customers, or your company as a whole?

For example, let’s say you’re interested in acquiring more leads and getting them qualified earlier in the process so that they can turn into paying customers more quickly. Your goal might be: To increase the number of leads that our sales team qualifies before they even reach out to prospects. This means they’ll spend more time talking with people who are already familiar with our brand and products instead of wasting time on tire-kickers who aren’t likely to pay full price for anything we offer.

Step 2: Identify the current process.

Now that you know what your goal is, it’s time to map out the steps involved in achieving it. Who needs to do what? How often? Why? What happens if there are roadblocks or setbacks along the way? Who owns each step and how could they make it easier (or harder)? Keeping track of different people’s responsibilities helps ensure that everyone knows (and agrees) who has which role and that no one person becomes a bottleneck for progress.

    Step 3: Determine where demand generation fits into this process and why?

Once you’ve mapped out all of your current activities, look for places where demand generation can be inserted without getting in anyone’s way. If you’re not sure, try using a simple process map to visualize how different tasks connect to each other and why they matter.

    Step 4: Change the process.

Now that you have a good idea of where demand generation fits into your current processes and why it’s necessary, it’s time to come up with a new strategy based on what makes sense for your business and customers. For example, maybe now is the right time to start generating more leads from social media or upgrading your blog from a simple web page to a full-fledged content marketing platform. It could also make sense for customer support representatives to offer assistance as part of their service rather than waiting for users to ask directly if they need help with something related to your product.

    Step 5: Measure and communicate results.

As you implement your new process, it’s important to be sure that everyone knows what success looks like and how they can contribute to achieving it. Some of the most common metrics used for measuring demand generation include email click-through rates, lead volume, website traffic, social media engagement numbers, and more. These stats should help everyone feel as if their hard work is paying off. And once you’ve achieved those goals or even before, make sure to update your processes so that the next group of people will have an easier time following in your footsteps.   

    Step 6: Repeat with a new goal.

Once you’ve made your changes and achieved the success you were hoping for, it’s time to plan ahead for the next step in demand generation. What kinds of leads do you want to focus on? Where are they coming from? How will this help everyone in your company achieve their goals?

and more…

Demand generation is a process in which companies use various tactics to generate demand for their products or services by targeting potential customers over time. You can start with your existing customers by customer support teams.

Hope this blog will help you to think out of the box about demand generation and how it can be a core competence for your customer support team.

Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, and Social Media all find themselves within the top ten of buzzwords. It’s hard to go more than a few days without hearing one mentioned in another conversation, or seeing it in headlines on news sites all over the internet. Slowly but surely social media is finding its way into the blockchain world through projects like Nafter, Showtime, SocialNFT.

One of the most important emerging technologies that are bridging social media with Blockchain is NFTs (which stands for Non-Fungible Tokens). While it may not be clear what an NFT is to you right now… they are set to change the way we communicate online.

Nafter is revolutionizing the business model of social media with NAFTER, a decentralized content distribution platform built on blockchain technology.

The 3 key innovations of Nafter take aim at the 3 biggest issues plaguing social media: ownership and profits, fairness and audibility, and quality of content.

Why It Will Impact Social Interactions

Blockchain and NFTs will impact social media by allowing users to profit from their social interactions, make audibility and fairness of content possible, and provide higher quality content.

Ownership and Profits:

One of the most important aspects of blockchain is its ability to give ownership over digital assets.

Currently, companies like Facebook own all information posted on their site for as long as it exists.

This enables them to own people’s posts, data, and use it as they see fit without proper credit or compensation for those involved. On NFT Social Platforms there is no such thing as a post that belongs to a company. Everything belongs to the user who created it making them fully responsible for how they interact with other users on the network.

Audibility and Fairness:

With blockchain, all social interactions have a record of being seen by the public. This will enable NFT platforms to revolutionize how content is managed by allowing user consensus on whether something should exist or not.

Companies like YouTube currently do not share the assets they use to keep content on their site or hold users accountable for it. NFT Social platforms will remove these issues by allowing users to see every post made, ensuring the content of quality is “upvoted”, and removing posts that are deemed inappropriate.

Quality of Content:

Currently, social media giants are responsible for controlling what content is allowed. The issue with this is their desire to make money takes away from the quality of the site. NFT Social Platforms will allow users interested in quality content to “upvote” it while taking down posts that do not fit guidelines.

The Nafter platform has shown commitment to not only the best interests of the users through enabling them to have ownership over their social interactions but also giving them opportunities to profit if they choose! That’s because 5% of all NAFT tokens are being given out via airdrop at https://nfter.io/airdrops for a limited time!

Why does it matter?

Nafter has shown commitment to improving the way we communicate with each other through social media. With the ability to make profits from our interactions, have full ownership of what we post online, and remove content that takes away from the quality of the site… Nafter is set to improve the way we interact on sites as well as reward those users who choose to create high-quality content that benefits all others on their site!

There are 3 distinct areas in which blockchain will impact social media: transactions, governance, and commerce.

Transactions:

Blockchain provides a decentralized, secure, and verifiable transaction history. All transactional records can be monitored in real-time.

Governance:

Blockchain allows for transparency between users creating an environment where everyone has equal access.

Commerce:

The value that blockchain brings to social media is the ability to connect digital assets with real-world assets for further monetization opportunities.

Overall, blockchain technology will completely change how social media operates by taking power away from companies who have abused it in the past and today, allowing everyone to participate fairly without being censored or taken advantage of!

   In the past few years, there has been an explosion of companies looking into their customers’ journeys through digital services or products that they offer. And for good reason – understanding your customers’ journeys allows you to really get a handle on why people come to you, what problems they have that they’re trying to solve, and what keeps them coming back. The more thoroughly you understand these things as marketers and as product designers, the better equipped you become as business professionals with valuable insights into user behavior. If you’ve done any research into customer journey mapping, you might have seen blog posts from companies that provide clear steps to creating an effective customer journey map. While these guides are useful for getting the idea of a customer journey fresh in your mind, they don’t go into enough detail about how you can apply them specifically to your own needs.

There is no “right” way of going through each of these steps – they’re simply tools that help you brainstorm, organize, and discuss the different aspects of your audience’s individual journeys. Rather than assuming that one particular guide or tool is the correct method for everyone, we recommend taking a step back from anyone’s thought-stopping idea surrounding customer journey analysis and looking at it objectively so you can come up with an approach that works best for your own business. What this means is not being afraid to discard ideas if they don’t work well for you.

What is a Customer Journey?

We all know that customers need to be engaged and entertained, but we often forget the importance of engaging and entertaining them throughout their entire journey with us. The entire customer life cycle has the goal of keeping the user coming back to you for more interactions, whether it be to buy something or otherwise.

Customer journeys are maps that plot out your users’ experiences with your business across digital platforms (and sometimes even physical ones like brick-and-mortar stores). While there’s no “right” way of mapping this journey, but there are six steps to go through:

Customer Journey Mapping: How To Do It Right

1- Customer Journey Data Collection

          Whether you’re doing it digitally or in person, the customer journey begins with data collection. This is where you gather information about your users’ habits and answer questions like: Are there any notable patterns in their behavior? What are the most common paths they take through each part of the journey? What are the obstacles that prevent them from progressing?

2- Identifying Problems & Opportunities

             After collecting this data, you’ll need to begin making sense of what it all means by using your findings to identify problems and opportunities. For example, if there’s a specific part in the user journey that shows that people often abandon after “Step 2,” then maybe that’s an opportunity for creating content that educates users better. This stage of the process is perhaps the most crucial since it’s where you begin to learn how your business can actually solve problems for users.

3- Create a New Customer Journey Map

                 With this knowledge in hand, you can create a new customer journey map that organizes and visualizes all of the data collected earlier in preparation for creating content. This part is generally more straightforward since you’ll be drawing out different paths for each step in the journey. For example, one path might feature an “unaware” state while another features an “aware” state.

 4-  Map your customer journey using your data

Once you have your blueprint laid out, then you’re able to move onto creating the actual customer journey map. This is where you begin identifying which actions should be included in each step, but also the content that should go along with them to help users get through their journey successfully.

5- Develop Content based on your data

                  Once you have your customer journey mapped out, then it’s time to start creating content that relates back to what you’ve learned by using it during the process of mapping. You’ll need to figure out how this new content can help users get through specific steps in their journeys without tripping up while they’re at it.

6- Monitor Your Customers’ Journeys

               The final step in this process is to monitor how these changes are affecting your users. You can do this by simply testing the new content, but also analyzing any quantitative data that you’ve collected (or trust!) about your customers. If you’re able to identify or create a pattern here, then you’ll be able to make better strategic decisions regarding future products and iterations of the customer journey map.

By mapping out your customer journey, you can learn more about how to keep users engaged with your product. Studies have shown that most people abandon a website after roughly 6 seconds of being on it, making that initial “engagement” all the more important. By following these six steps, then you’ll be able to identify opportunities for improving this engagement and keeping users coming back for more!

Thank you very much for reading and please share this article with your friends if you find it helpful.