Can you truly tell how a customer feels about your business? There are many different tactics that attempt to acquire this information, such as customer reviews and NPS (net promoter score), which may or may not provide an accurate assessment of overall satisfaction. Did you catch them on a bad day when they left an NPS rating? Did they write an odd review as someone was looking over their shoulder?

For support agents, ending the conversation with a customer can be a mixed bag. With some customers, the conversation just flows naturally, and a clear end happens organically. Other times, acquiring and sharing information can be a painful process. You’re never quite sure if the customer is ready to end the conversation and you’re saying too much, or if you haven’t said enough and the customer will be unhappy.

There’s no way around it – in the modern business world, companies need data from all areas of their business to keep up. One industry that hasn’t typically been at the forefront of the data revolution is customer support. However, with many businesses now realizing that support isn’t always a cost center (and can sometimes even pay for itself) the demand for actionable data has been on the rise.

Seeing a business grow in front of your eyes is exciting. You’ve got a product or service people love, and you’re getting new customers all the time. However, with this excitement often comes growing pains. Five customer support agents may no longer be enough, and it’s time to expand the team to double digits to meet the demand of tickets and phone calls.

B2B (business-to-business) customers are becoming more demanding. After experiencing some of the more modern support methods in their everyday B2C (business-to-consumer) lives, they are increasingly expecting B2B companies to keep up. However, there is no one right answer for which channels a B2B company should offer for customer support. Below are the core customer support channels for the B2B industry, alongside specific reasons why companies offer them and why they choose not to.

Please hold. There are 12 callers ahead of you. Your business is important to us. This scenario is still far too common in customer support, even in the B2B (business-to-business) industry where the average customer value is higher and business relationships matter more. Sometimes waiting on hold for a half hour may be because of understaffing. But, other times it’s simply due to an inefficient customer service team.

Many businesses are looking for new ways to improve and strengthen their own customer relationships. They’ve hired a great team of account managers, have incredibly knowledgeable support agents, and have provided them with the technology needed to succeed. However, even with a group full of all-stars, getting new employees up to that same level quickly can be a challenge as a company grows.

In the business world, knowledge is power. A team of bad ass, knowledgeable employees will impress even the most difficult customers. However, finding the right people to build a team like this isn’t easy and can take a lot of time. In many companies, knowledge is acquired through direct experience. A senior employee that has been working on a product for a long time will know it inside and out. But, as a result of everything they know, they can often feel overburdened or overworked.

Landing new customers is a hell of a lot of work for B2B (business-to-business) software companies. Even the easy deals require extensive brand awareness efforts, targeted marketing, testimonials, sales conversations, proposals, and so much more. If there’s so much effort put in to acquiring a customer, then why do so many businesses stop caring once the deal is signed?

Creating a solid business case for customer service initiatives has been difficult in the past. There’s still a mindset in the workplace that customer service is a “necessary cost” and that’s it. You need customers to have a business, and they require customer service to stick around. That’s the way the relationship has been viewed for decades. But, over the last ten years, the dynamic has changed. Why?