5 Reasons Why Small Customers Are Using More Than Their Share of Support Resources

Continuing our 5 Reasons series, this month we talk about small customers. They don’t contribute much to the bottom line, and yet they are often blamed for consuming lots of resources, in part because they may not be able to fund technically-knowledgeable staff on their end, so they will need more handholding.

Don’t judge overconsumption by simply looking at case volume. Smaller customers tend to log cases that are much less complex than the ones logged by strategic customers, who often push the product to its limits and whose highly-skilled team members will only raise the thorniest issues. But even adjusting for case complexity, small customers tend to over-consume.

Let’s take a look at 5 reasons for the over-consumption and what you can do for each of them.

1. They are not trained properly

As noted above, smaller customers tend to have fewer highly-skilled staff members, and they are also more price-sensitive, so expensive training may be out of reach for them–and they may not be able to afford any significant time off for the staff they do have.

At the same time, smaller customers are scrappy: they understand they may need to work a little harder to get the training they need, and accept training that’s not perfect. From your perspective, you may find that smaller customers simply don’t need training on the more complex aspects of your products if they typically won’t use them.

Work hard to package free or inexpensive training in the form of guided checklists or recorded sessions. (You can charge for live questions that include Q&A and make the recordings available for free.) Use the training for all onboarding and make sure the support engineers point customers to the resources instead of hand-holding individual customers.

Lesson: Offer free or low-cost training options

2. There are no viable self-service options

Smaller customers tend to ask lots of how-to questions and their troubleshooting issues tend to be predictable and repetitive. Target these low-hanging fruits with a solid knowledge base and a chatbot. It will be useful for all customers, but especially for the smaller ones with the simpler issues.

Lesson: Invest in self-service support for less-complex issues

3. There are no forums or other 1:n support channels

Everyone loves self-service but forums can be so much more user-friendly, especially for beginners. Consider staffing a forum for smaller customers instead of or in addition to standard 1:1 support cases. Because their issues tend to be quite repetitive, smaller customers benefit most from forums. And you can always escalate complex issues to a standard support case, so there’s no downside.

Lesson: Staff a forum instead of a standard support team

4. They are using expensive resources when others may do

Do all your cases go to the same team of support engineers? If so, you may be over-serving your smaller customers (and boring your expert support engineers by having them handle routine technical issues). If the volume coming from smaller customers is large enough, it may make sense to create a special team of more junior support engineers to serve them. This is also an opportunity to use cheaper offshore resources, or outsourcing.

By sorting customers into separate organizations it becomes easier to deliver a different (lower) level of service. For instance, you can adopt lower target response and update times, or use lower-cost communication channels.

Note that you have complete flexibility in segmenting your customers. Many of my clients take into account the potential revenue their customers could generate (rather than their current contribution) when assigning them to various offerings.

Lesson: Consider creating a separate support structure for smaller customers

5. Product fit is not ideal for them

Now for the thorniest point: your products may target and expect a customer with a certain level of technical knowledge (which smaller customers are unlikely to possess), or infrastructure, or volume. In other words, the product may not fit smaller customers’ needs and capabilities.

This is not an issue that can be resolved within the support organization, but it’s up to you to raise it. I’ve had clients successfully inspire the product team to significantly streamline the product so smaller customers can onboard easily and use basic functionality without having to hire specialty staff. And I’ve seen other clients successfully lobby their sales teams to stop targeting customers that were just too small to benefit from certain products. You too can bring about the change you and your customers need if you can make a convincing argument backed by quantitative proof.

Lesson: Lobby to make the product easier to use for smaller customers–or sold only to good targets

How are you set up to handle smaller customers? Please share what’s working, or not.