Types of Online Customer Support

With the advancement of technology methods to provide online support have also increased and evolved. Most common methods of providing online support are:

Emails: This is one of the most widely used modes of providing online support. In this the product company provides its consumers with their official mail id .Consumers can send their queries at the id. But it is seen that answer provided is not helpful enough or it takes more than expected time to reply to the query, which leads to unhappy consumers.

Instant Messaging: With instant messaging problem associated with emails can be solved .These allow the user to interact with the support executive in real-time though text messaging .Most of the instant messaging software are available free of cost and using them you can interact with the support executive with the contact id provided by the customer support.

Live chats: Live chats are same as Instant Messaging only they are more secure and offer additional facilities. Most of the live chat software provides feedback facility so that the service and the representative get immediate response to the service offered. They also provide means to analyse the site traffic, maintain the history of the customer, helps managers by allowing them to log remotely to operators’ computer.

Internet Telephony: This service allows customer to make telephone calls over the Internet.So the customer can interact with the support person like a normal telephone. Most of these software are free and can be easily downloaded from the net .After customer creates an account with the telephony service he/she can call the support executive regarding their queries.

Online Forums and Communities: Online forums and communities have been great resource of online help for many years. In these forums and communities where users interact with each other and solve problems with personal experience and knowledge .There are many companies which have their own official forum where apart from customers , experts also provide solution to some known general problems or give reply to more specific queries of the customers.

Online self help: Many companies have a separate support section in their sites with information, FAQ’s, manual, documents etc with search facility where customer can search and find the answer to their queries.

Remote login: Remote login is the facility where the support personal can log into your computer to diagnose and troubleshoot the problem remotely.