There’s an app that I use which says that they do not provide premium support for free users. I don’t really know what they mean by “premium support” but if I had to guess, it’d probably be about being prioritized or not.
I get that.
You need to prioritize paid users because well, they’ve invested money on you. Receiving the “premium support” as well could be one of your ways to push people from being a free user to a paid user.
A good tactic? Maybe.
Premium support could be about getting a short wait time for responses or whatever extra thing you can provide.
But what does “normal support” look like?
Is it waiting for 24-48 hours for a response? That’s all right, I guess.
The problem starts when you totally give your free users a hard time when they need to reach you.
Take this example, this app takes over 4 days to respond and you need to publicly call them out via social media to get anything. It’s been more than a month and no solution has been given.
You message them. Follow-up. Follow-up some more. Call them out on social media and then they respond with something generic.
What most do not realize is your customer support is the most important marketing tool you have.
And yet most businesses fail to even see the connection between the two.
No matter how many ads you put out,
how much money you spend on your marketing,
if your customer support is dismal, you can kiss your marketing spend goodbye.
Your marketing can bring people to your door but merely bringing people to your door will not make you any money. Your customer support greets them, makes them feel welcome and gives them the best experience that they’ll remember.
People then leave and talk about you.
What do people talk about?
Not how wonderful your ad is but how wonderful they felt and these will bring more people to your door more than any ad can.
Why?
Because word-of-mouth will bring you seriously interested customers, not just merely curious ones.
Marketing brings people to you. Customer Support converts them.
Now imagine, what if your Customer Support sucks?
You get people to your door, they leave and they talk about - again, not your ads but how disappointing their experience was. Soon, you’ll scratch your head because you’ll spend more money on your marketing but nothing happens.
Look at your business now, can your Customer Support back-up your Marketing or have you been neglecting them?
