Which Chat Support Model is Best for Your Company?

As a B2B organization, it’s important you offer your clients multiple channels for finding solutions to their product issues. If you don’t, you risk a decrease in client retention. However, the support channels you offer must align with your in-house capabilities. This ensures your reps have the means to assist clients to the best of their abilities. It also prevents your team from becoming overwhelmed with support requests. This is why many companies have started implementing additional channels such as a knowledge base and chat functionality. While content in a self-service portal takes all responsibility off your reps, the chat model you use needs to align with your operation.

There are two primary methods for assigning support reps to different channels. These consist of a dedicated and shared model. When considering your chat support, one model will be much more successful than the other. You’ll need to evaluate your support infrastructure to decide which model is right for you. To help you out, let’s break down the details of each method.

The Shared Model

For small teams, the shared model is more effective. In some cases, it’s necessary. Using this model means your reps move between channels depending on the workload. Your customizable customer support software may allow you to employ a number of imperative assets such as chat functionality and a help desk, but if you don’t have adequate staff, you can’t assign dedicated teams to each one.

You may have reps that usually start their day handling chat interactions. However, if the workload becomes too high, reps handling other channels will need to switch over to chat. The benefit is that all your reps will be familiar with each support channel. The shared model requires you to provide extensive training to new employees.

The Dedicated Model

The size of your support team is crucial when deciding on a support model to follow. If you have a larger team (more than 10 reps), the dedicated model will be more effective. When using this model, each rep targets only one support channel. They stick to providing service through this channel and this channel only for the duration of their shift.

If you provide chat support service, you’ll have a team of reps who only handle these interactions. They wouldn’t move between other channels as needed. A huge benefit of the dedicated model is your reps can become extremely knowledgeable in one channel instead of hopping around. This helps boost the level of service you provide. The disadvantage of the dedicated model is that if an issue is escalated away from them, they don’t see how it ultimately gets resolved. This means they won’t fully understand the extent of some customers’ issues and their overall support skill level never grows.

Optimize Your Support Experience

Regardless of the support model you use, your team needs the right tools to provide the highest quality support possible. Make sure you have customizable customer support software in place to help make this happen.

PhaseWare can help you implement imperative assets into your customer service infrastructure and take your client experience to the next level. Contact us today to learn more.

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