Congratulations, your mobile app is growing! Now what?
When an app grows from 50 to 50,000 people in a week, companies struggle to serve their customers in a way that prevents churn. Gartner has found that “it is the overall impression generated by quality customer service that differentiates one enterprise from another.”
Customer service is your competitive advantage. Yet most mobile apps simply don’t practice the type of care that bolsters engagement.
When it’s time to keep users interested, turning customer support into a retention center (rather than a cost center) is the top priority for business growth. In this article, I’ll share some of the best methods to succeed with a large user base. Have you used any of these effective strategies?
Create a Self-Service Funnel
You can’t afford to simply throw in enough full-time support agents until tickets go away. That’s why giving users the tools to solve their own issues is a cornerstone of growing your mobile app. Self-service provides what the industry calls “ticket deflection”–less people contact you when they can help themselves, and that saves your team a lot of time at scale.
Your funnel can be a tutorial, an FAQ, a thriving online community, or all of the above for maximum effect. Large gaming companies like TinyCo value their FAQ so much that they consider it a full-time team member. People prefer to help themselves rather than contact you.
Another benefit is the questions that do come in will be relevant and informed rather than an issue you’ve solved for the 100th time. Show those questions to the developer! Now your customer support has the strength to catch important bugs and determine product fixes.
Stop Using Email as a Support Center
App developers are all realizing that email support simply does not scale for mobile apps. Even with 3rd party email helpdesks, forcing customers to exit the app or give an email address just to contact you will result in churn. It’s a user experience problem that only a mobile-first solution can conquer.
Hothead games–creator of Kill Shot–found that they were wasting valuable time when bringing players back to their game in an email. They switched from an email solution to Helpshift and have seen a 104% increase in response times. Moving to in-app support is the proven way to delight customers more effectively.
Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. When is the last time you emailed a company’s support from your phone? You’ve spent thousands to create the next big mobile app. Try a support method that people today actually use. Don’t let your valuable customers wait during their point of need.
Analyze Your Reviews
Although you should avoid bad reviews by letting customers vent in-app, sometimes an upset user will leave a bad review before you can help. That affects your visibility in the app store, the way people perceive your app, and ultimately the market-fit of your product. Who tries a product with 2 star ratings?
Gathering all the data you can about what people say in the app store is a top priority to improve business. The best way to tackle app store reviews is through an analytics platform that gives actionable product insights for powerful business decisions. Connect directly with customers’ sentiments through key phrases. Quickly know when your latest build solves a problem or causes a new one. There are tons of possibilities when data is involved.
Learn more
I hope that you just learned how to:
- Use self-service as a valuable tool to manage rapid growth.
- Look for a mobile CRM to make customer service a retention tool
- Get actionable data from your app store ratings & reviews
Discover more about increasing retention, ditching email for efficiency, and getting product insights with Helpshift’s Roadshow to GDC. Anyone can gain detailed mobile app development knowledge from industry veterans. Know what everyone from CEOs to indie devs are talking about by following the hashtag #GDC15 and reaching out to us.
The biggest names in mobile are joining the conversation. We hope to see you too!