6 Best Practices in Remote Tech Support

Remote tech support is increasingly integral to business success. Here are six best practices that define excellence in remote support.

As more and more companies outsource their IT departments, excellent remote tech support has become integral to ensuring consistent business operations. By turning over support issues to dedicated professionals, companies are often able to save time and money, boost productivity, and improve customer satisfaction.

Here are six things that the best remote tech support providers have in common:

1. Multi-channel, Around-the-clock Support

In our increasingly digital age, communication is more frequent, instantaneous, and varied than ever before, and 24/7/365 coverage ensures that clients feel cared for and valued. Customers and clients are looking for support when they need it, through their preferred channels, so tech support providers need to make their services available through a variety of means. These include standards like email and phone communication, as well as social media and even messaging platforms like WhatsApp.

Video communication can likewise play an important role. The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this holds true for tech support. Trying to explain issues and solutions via phone or email can be difficult, inefficient, and frustrating — especially for technophobic customers — and can be easily avoided through the use of video chat and screen-sharing technologies that allow tech support representatives to see what the issue is in real time.

2. Quality in Hiring and Training

Because tech support representatives interface directly with clients, the people who fill this role must be top-quality candidates. Hiring experienced people, training them well, and appropriately rewarding their good service is a recipe for reducing employee turnover while ensuring that customer satisfaction remains high.

Similarly, bringing on multilingual employees can elevate your business. If a customer is struggling to communicate in one language, being able to connect them with an employee who speaks a language they’re more comfortable using goes a long way toward demonstrating the level of attention and care that the best providers offer.

Dedicating time and resources to training is also key. Although managers can feel pressure to onboard new hires as quickly as possible, making sure each new tech support representative has sufficient knowledge and support ensures that they’re prepared to handle customer issues. Providing new hires with sample problems and tasks gives them practical examples to draw on and helps to keep the quality of service high.

3. Transparency

Part of quality training involves emphasizing the need for clear communication with customers about the actions being taken — or the actions that will be taken — to address service issues. This provides visibility into the tech support process, helping customers better understand what’s involved and building trust in your brand.

Transparent communication is especially important when using remote desktop software. Remote access can be unsettling for many customers, but by specifying a plan of action, the reasoning behind it, and what the customer will experience on their end, your representatives  can keep clients calm and protect themselves from defensive responses.

4. Standardization and Streamlining

Having standardized processes helps to ensure that, regardless of when a service request comes in or which representative is assigned to the call, the company’s support is consistent in terms of quality and actions taken. An organized system of record-keeping for all incoming calls will help you monitor representatives’ efficiency, evaluate the quality of service, and optimize processes.

Meanwhile, streamlining processes can reduce operational costs. That said, you’ll have to streamline according to the specific standards and expectations of each client, which means you’ll need to emphasize getting to know your clients better.

5. Internal Trust in Representatives

It’s important for employers to trust their employees. In the realm of tech support, this means giving frontline representatives the power to make decisions on the customer’s behalf in real time. While there needs to be standardized procedures for common issues, requiring representatives to run decisions up the chain of command for approval impedes the process of swiftly resolving customer issues.

By contrast, trusting employees to make executive decisions helps to resolve support calls faster and with higher rates of satisfaction for all involved. It also enables your representatives to customize their responses to the specific needs of each client and helps your company build a reputation for tailored service.

6. Establish Self-service Options

Finally, service providers can boost efficiency by creating an accessible and informative knowledge base that gives customers the tools to be self sufficient. This cuts down on both call volume and call resolution time, and empowers clients to help themselves according to their preferred channel.

A Proven Remote Tech Support Partner

At Epiphany Management Group, we take pride in providing all of the above for our clients. Contact us today to see how our comprehensive list of services can help transform your software and device roll-outs from idea to reality.