Customer Support

Contact centers dedicated for handling customer queries and complaints are called as customer support centers. These are also termed as Helpdesk centers.

There are 3 different levels of Customer support centers namely Level 0, Level 1, Level 2.

Level 0 are basic customer support centers wherein the queries of the customers are handled and forwarded to the relevant people who inturn will solve the customer queries. This is an information gathering and forwarding activity and doesn’t require technical knowledge of the product or service. The customer support executives are required to have a basic knowledge of the products & Services. Most of this basic information is automated using Interactive voice response system (IVRS) which catches the queries of the customers, retrieves information from the database based on the inputs provided by the customer and answers it to the customer. In many cases the data is collected from the customer by the customer support executive. The customer support executive then gets information based on the data using information retrieval software and communicates the same to the calling customer.

Example.

• Telecom industry - Handling customer billing calls & Providing information on the billing, services, subscription to the customers.
• Automobile Industry -- gathering customer complaints and forwarding the same to the concerned company executives based on the type of customer complaint.
• IT industry - handling customer support calls and forwarding the same to the concerned company executives based on the type of customer complaint

In Level 1 Customer support centers, the customer calls are handled and addresses as well to a certain extent. This requires the customer support executives to be expert in the products or services under concern. The customer support executives can taken decisions on the call as per her expertise.

Example.

• Telecom industry - Handling customer billing issues & resolving them based on the billing software, processing payments on the call, changing plan types on the call, activating/Deactivating certain features on call.
• Automobile Industry -- gathering customer complaints and providing information on warranty & Spare parts related queries, providing information to the customers on the status of the spare parts using the supply chain management system, updating customer if they are eligible for warranty or not based on the information of products provided by the customer.
• IT industry - handling customer support calls and troubleshoot them on call either by taking online control of the customers system or guiding him on call.

In case of high technical queries or complicated scenarios the calls are escalated to level 2 wherein the highest level of support expert executives handle the calls. These are called as the Level 2 customer support call centers.