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Article 1 min read

What is tier 0 customer support?

By Dave Dyson, Sr. customer service evangelist, @dave_dyson

Last updated September 21, 2021

Reflecting the importance of providing excellent self-service to manage rapid growth and satisfy customers, you might want to launch tier 0 customer support. What is tier 0? It’s the self-service tier; the support available to customers that does not require directly interacting with a customer advocate. This includes the knowledge base available in an online help center, the product training that is available to customers, as well as assistance that is available in the product’s user interface.
 
Tier 0 customer support isn’t a staffed team, it’s an initiative to better contribute to and manage self-service as a support channel; to better handle a tier 0, making the most of self-service ever-increasing amount of incoming support requests that can be easily answered with these self-help resources.

Tier 0 goals

There are two goals for tier 0:

  • Provide support that makes use of employee knowledge, which means that reps are both generating and sharing knowledge-base content (internally and with customers).

     

  • Devise ways to help customers discover and use that self-help content. An example of this is to use proactive support to spot an issue that a customer is having or is about to have, then proactively create a ticket that contains a link to the knowledge-base article that will help them resolve it themselves.

Getting started with self-service

Fully embracing self-service might seem intimidating, but as we’ve shown in our white paper: you’re probably already doing it. Simple changes to activities your team already engages in, such as writing responses to support requests and tracking one-touch tickets, can lead to an effective tier 0.

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