How Support Contributes to Business Growth

Thinking of customer support as a cost centre is outdated. But very few merchants realize this. The best e-Commerce merchants I talk to are actually using customer support as a way to drive sales. They call it Support Driven Revenue it can drive up to 10% of their orders. So the question is, what are they doing to achieve this? ___ The first and most important thing they do is create the right incentives. As Charlie Munger says "show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome." Very few e-Commerce businesses incentivize their CS team to sell. But why not? CS agents impact sales whether or not you want them to. So you might as well measure them on it and reward them accordingly. To do this, you just need to put in place systems that can attribute sales to CS agents and then, make sure you actually reward them with commission or bonuses at the end of each month. Running competitions within the team is also a great way to incentivize selling. Once you’ve created the right incentives, and made Support Driven Revenue a priority for the team, they will naturally start to find new ways to drive sales. Some brands are even getting their support teams to report in to their revenue organisation, making sure that incentives are aligned all the way up the org chart. ___ After that, it’s all about enablement. The businesses who drive substantial revenue from Customer Support provide the tools and guidance to help their CS team actually make sales. The most important thing here is to have a tech stack that minimises the amount of time CS agents have to spend on manual tasks. They should be spending as much time as possible working on tasks that will have the biggest impact on your revenue, not wasting time on tasks that can be automated. You should also give the team guidance on how to find the biggest opportunities. Your CS team can drive cross selling and upselling, but you can help by identifying the most important parts of the journey and the right customers for them to focus on. ___ There's lots of other things you can do to start turning your Customer Support into a profit center, but getting these two things right will get you 90% of the way there. #CustomerSupport #SupportDrivenRevenue #eCommerce

Support tickets are becoming growth engines. It's a fascinating trend. Smart companies are leveraging their support logs in innovative ways. They're not just resolving issues. They're creating content. Here's how it works: They feed support tickets to AI tools like Claude daily. The AI transforms these tickets into various content types, how-to guides, etc. It's a shift in mindset. Support teams aren't just scheduling tickets anymore. They're scheduling content. This approach turns a cost center into a revenue driver. It maximizes the value of every customer interaction. And it's a smart way to repurpose existing resources. The beauty lies in its efficiency – it's pure leverage from existing support data. And the results are impressive. The digital experience improves, conversion increases, and SEO gets a boost. Support isn't just about problem-solving. It's about growth. It's about turning every customer touchpoint into an opportunity. This strategy aligns support with product, marketing, and sales. It creates a unified approach to the customer journey. But most of all – it's a great reminder that improvements to digital experiences often come from unexpected places.

"Build something people want". That’s the famous YC slogan. But anyone who’s actually tried building a product people want knows this: it’s not just about coding or launching. It’s about getting out of the building, talking to your customers, and understanding their needs. In the early days, the founders take on this responsibility. But as the company grows, customer support ends up carrying the torch. Most people think of customer support as dealing with mundane, repetitive problems. And while that's true, there’s a bigger, more powerful role CS plays: it's the nerve system of the company. If you want to keep building something people want, you need to stay close to your customers, whether you have two or two thousand. The problem has always been that customer support teams often struggle to relay real-time customer feedback and influence decisions. With AI, that’s changing. CS teams can now capture insights, streamline feedback, and share what they’re learning with every department, from product to marketing to leadership. Because when customer support is connected to the heart of your business, it’s no longer just about answering tickets. It’s about shaping the future of your product.

Why am I so passionate that Support and Success teams roll up to the Revenue org? Customer Support is not a call center. It’s a value driver. And Customer Success is the lifeblood of driving higher LTV. It’s one thing to get new customers and a whole other ball game to keep them. Imagine a bucket, and it’s leaking. You can keep filling it up over and over but given time, all the water will drain out. And while duct tape has a lot of utility, it’s probably not going to solve your problem in the long run. That image is your organization without structured Support and Success motions. When you keep your customers healthy, happy, and engaged the outcome is always growth. Not only in account expansion but in the way that those customers then become champions, advocates, and referral partners. We need to flip the script on the way we view our Support and Success teams. They both deserve a seat at the table. They deserve praise when we expand, renew, and refer. Customer Support and Success are the lifeblood of an organization, especially in this market. How are you ensuring your Support and Success teams: 1. Get recognition for being the value drivers they are? 2. Have a seat at the revenue table? 3. Are mapping their efforts back to overall company growth metrics and KPIs? #revenue #customersuccess