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Well, hey there folks. Welcome back to today's episode of CX Without the bs. Today we're talking about something that's quietly wrecking your customer's experience, burning through your retention numbers and bleeding revenue out the side door while you sit back thinking everything's fine. Today we're talking about support systems that look okay on the surface.

But are actually failing underneath. Now, here's the kicker. We're not just talking about end users here, the small business owners, the IT directors, the customer support managers. 

I'm also talking directly to you tech advisors, you partners, the folks who sell this stuff and place solutions into your client's environments. Because if you're out there selling phone systems or ucas or CCAS and you don't know what support red flags to watch out for, for your client's business.

You're leaving money on the table and probably losing renewals down the road. So whether you're a technology advisor trying to add stickiness to your base or you're a business owner scratching your head, wondering. [00:01:00] Why customers are ghosting you. Oh, this episode is for you because we're talking through the five most common support breakdowns that lead to churn, burnout, and bad reviews.

And the worst part is most people don't even know it's happening. So let's get into it. 

Here's the first sign. You're losing repeat customers, and your first instinct is to blame external stuff.

Uh, people are broke. Uh, everyone's shopping around the economy is just weird right now. No, let's stop pretending. You're not losing customers because of inflation. You're losing them because the last time they had a problem. They couldn't get help. They called and no one answered, or they left a voicemail that never got returned, or they opened a support ticket and waited three days or worse,\ they got bounced around between people who couldn't actually solve their issue, and so they left quietly.

No angry email, no complaint, just gone. And this is what [00:02:00] happens when your frontline support is disconnected or under-resourced, or just not being monitored properly. Tech advisors, this is gold for you because if you can identify this early, when you're talking to a prospect, you're not just a vendor, you are a damn hero . Ask your customer, Hey, how many calls? Go to voicemail. And if they don't know, that's you're in ask. Do you track hold times? Do, do you have a dashboard that shows abandoned calls? Because most SMBs don't, or if they do, the data isn't getting used, they're flying blind, and that's where you can swoop in with the right solution and stop the bleeding.

Because listen, most customers aren't leaving you because your product is bad. They're leaving because it got too hard to do business with you. And if the path to support is broken, that's the beginning of the end. So what do you do as a business owner? You need to audit the actual customer journey. So call your own support line.

Try chatting in, submit a ticket, [00:03:00] see what the experience feels like as a customer and as a tech advisor. Build this into your discovery. Don't just ask how many seats they need. Ask what happens when a customer has a problem. Who handles it? How long does it take? Is anyone following up? 

If they can't answer that question clearly, that's your opportunity to bring a better system to the table. Repeat business is the easiest money to earn, and it's the fastest to lose. So if you're losing it, time to look inward first. 

Problem number two, you have a customer say it's fine. Then you ask how things are going and they hit you with the flat emotionless.

Yeah, still fine. Nope, that's not a win, and that's definitely not a green light. That is what we call a huge red flag. It's fine. Usually means I'm too tired to complain again, and I've already made up my mind to leave. This happens when support gets difficult or [00:04:00] clunky or repetitive. So much so that customers just give up.

They tried calling. They got passed around. They emailed, they got an auto reply. They chatted, they got disconnected. They had to explain their problem three different times to three different people, and now they're done. They just haven't told you yet.

Tech advisors, this is where you show real value. Ask your prospects how many customers churn without saying a word. Ask, how do you track disengagement before it becomes a cancellation? And again, most of your customers will shrug because they're not watching that they're watching tickets or NPS scores or support SLAs that look fine on paper.

But here's the thing, no support metric tells you what the customer isn't saying. You are not tracking drop offs in survey responses, engagement dips or conversation fall offs. You're [00:05:00] missing the writing on the wall. It's fine. Is a resignation not a compliment? Fixing this doesn't require ai, by the way.

It requires humans paying attention. One touch resolution, real follow up, proactive outreach business owners. If your team isn't proactively calling back folks who bailed on a chat or didn't reply to an email, you're silently losing customers, and that means silently losing revenue.

Tech advisors bring in the systems that don't just close tickets. Bring in systems that actually follow up to keep relationships alive. 

It's fine is the scariest feedback you'll ever get, so treat that like a smoke alarm problem three. Let's talk about your team for a minute. If your support reps seem burnt out, frustrated, disengaged, it's.

Probably not a personality problem. It's probably a systems problem. [00:06:00] See, when I see reps snapping at customers, or they're dragging their feet, or they're venting to coworkers all day long, I can almost guarantee the root cause is upstream. That means they're probably overwhelmed, not because they can't handle volume, but because they don't have the tools to succeed.

They're probably tab hopping, copying and pasting notes, logging in and out of platforms, taking calls on one screen while looking up history on another. And the system isn't helping, it's just slowing them down. So tech advisors, , this is a landmine that customers step on.

When clients say that their reps aren't performing or that morale is low, just ask what their tech stack looks like. If agents are managing support from Outlook or a shared spreadsheet and maybe some sticky notes on their desk, elephant in the room, that's not support, that is what we call survival. A, a good system should make it easier to serve people, not harder.

So let reps see the full [00:07:00] history. Let them respond from one unified screen. Let them focus on solving problems, not trying to remember logins. When you fix the system, morale improves. Productivity goes up, and turnover goes down. Business owners, this isn't just a staffing issue. If you're replacing burnt out reps every six months, you're wasting money, training new hires instead of fixing the root cause.

Tech advisors lead with retention, lead with simplicity, sell outcomes, not features. Because the easiest way to improve customer experience is, I don't know, to start improving your agent Experience magical. I know. Number four, this one is public and painful. Look at your Google reviews and you'll see comments like, love the product, hate the service.

Great company. If you can actually reach someone, still waiting on a callback for support. Ah. That is the worst kind of review because it tells the world we [00:08:00] have something valuable, but it's hard to access, and that's all people will remember. You can have the best product in your space, but if people can't reach you when they need help, they'll take their money and their business elsewhere.

And tech advisors, this is a competitive edge for you because when you're up against big box vendors who force customers into ticketing portals and AI chat bots. You win by offering real support, white glove onboarding real people, clear call paths, no runaround. Ask your prospects. Hey, do people leave reviews about your response time and how hard it is to get ahold of someone? Then show them how to fix it. Simplify, call flows, add callbacks, route based on customer history. Give agents tools to fix stuff and fix stuff fast because customers don't wanna jump through hoops.

They want help fast from someone who actually knows what they're doing. Clean up the support experience and [00:09:00] the reviews that are positive will follow. 

And problem number five, this is the last one. You've got tickets bouncing between reps like it's a game of hot potato. First agents take a call and then it escalates.

Here comes the second agent. They open a new ticket, they re-ask the same questions, and then the third agent, they've been transferred to hands it off to a manager and now it's day three, and the customer's pissed. You're wondering why support takes so long? Well, it's because you've got no visibility.

There's no ownership, there's no context. Half of these issues could have been solved in five minutes. If someone had the full conversation history, the authority to fix a problem, the confidence, they wouldn't get in trouble for trying. How about that? Tech advisors, when you see constant escalations in your customer support flow, don't pitch new tools.

Pitch better results. Say, Hey, let's cut your escalations by 60% in the next 90 days. Talk about an eye-opener and then [00:10:00] bring in a system that gives agents everything they need to solve all the problems on that first contact. And business owners. Your customers don't want to talk to three people just to get one problem resolved.

They wanna talk to one person who gets it and can actually help set your team up to win full visibility. Easy collaboration, clear ownership. Fix this one thing and watch your support backlog shrink and your reviews improve all while your customer trusts rebounds. 

So there you have it, five warning signs, five places where support is breaking down, and five areas where if you're a tech advisor, you can bring massive value to your partners.

So let's recap. Losing repeat business. Don't blame the economy. Blame untracked, support failure. Customers going silent. That's not a win. That is a big red flag relating to churn staff burnout. It's the system, not the people. Bad [00:11:00] reviews about communication that's on your support journey and tickets dragging for days.

That's a first touch failure. To you, tech advisors, if you want stickier accounts, better renewals, and more trust from your clients. Stop just selling features. Start actually solving real pain and business owners. If you are feeling churn, chaos, or burnout in your shop. The problem isn't your product or your service.

It's your support. Fix that, and everything else gets immeasurably easier. All right, folks. That's it for today's episode of CX Without the bs. If you got value from this, do me a favor, share this with a partner, a customer, or anyone else who's tired of broken support. And with that being said, Brian Nichols signing off.

You're on CX without the bs. We'll see you next week.