At Influx, we provide support as a service, 24/7, for SAAS, eCommerce, and tech companies. Our model is quite a bit different from traditional third party support companies. With Influx, clients pay per response rather than per person. We take on everything that’s required in guaranteeing a high quality response including all management, training, QA and planning work. This creates an automated support function that moves in tandem with business growth, and its available on demand.
Here are the benefits:
You know that you will ALWAYS have coverage in the future
Support volumes change constantly. Even the most consistent businesses — probably SAAS companies — see noticeable ups and down in product usage. For example, whenever a company launches a new product, app, or design, support volumes naturally go up, then fall back down. Similarly, if something breaks, volumes can go up sharply.
Every company experiences some form of support seasonality.
The biggest mistake most companies make when hiring a third party support provider is only thinking about how to solve today’s problem. Instead, they should be thinking about how to solve their support problem for the next 12 months, and then the next 24 months, and how to do it in the easiest way possible.
You get guaranteed quality
Quality is our number one success metrics. We want to use your exact conversational style and make your customers successful. We built an entire QA tool to track quality across all clients, and started offering it to non-clients too because we found it really interesting to build benchmarks. Now we know exactly what customers expect across different verticals.
When you’re hiring people, you’re not guaranteeing quality. You’re only guaranteeing someone in a seat.
How do you guarantee support quality? By investing in people management, coordination, hiring and training.
You only train once
Training is one of the biggest costs in support teams not related to headcount. When hiring agents directly or when hiring teams of agents, someone has to do that training and it’s not always included in an outsourcing package or easy. Most engaged support managers often run re-training sessions regularly.
With support on demand, you only need to train once per product or feature.
You’re ready for growth, downturns and holidays
If you’re a growing business, you’re volumes are about to go up big time, and as volumes go up 2x, 5x, or 10x, you’ll need to start thinking about support management and training layers. Support as a service includes all management, training and QA.
Similarly, almost every company sees a big spike or downturn in support ticket volumes over the holidays. Our teams are built to move dynamically with your demand.
You can take a vacation
Probably our favorite success metric — Our clients and their internal teams have more flexibility to take time off with us ready to step in and take over portions of volume as needed. With on demand coverage, you can use our teams as you need them. We’re flexible.
Check out this case study where one of our clients shares how since working with us, more of his success managers and agents have been able to take holidays.
You can focus more time on support processes and product improvements
One of the biggest pieces of feedback we get from all clients is that they can focus more time on improving their support processes and product after partnering with us. We’re super proud of this!
This also highlights an overall hidden benefit in the support as a service model. By knowing that you have your support work covered, you can focus more time on strategic decisions that will have the biggest impact on your business, either specifically related to your support operation, or your entire growth strategy.
One of our clients even referred to this as applying the 80/20 rule to support. I thought that was pretty smart.
Sound interesting? Learn more about support as a service here.
Check out our support blog with plenty more articles about things like how trials work and hiring support agents.
