TMCnews Featured Article

As one year winds down and the challenges of another lie ahead, it’s a good time to reflect on the obstacles we’ve overcome during the past 12 months, examine how we’ve made an impact and identify the trends that will drive business activities in the coming year. My company, TeamSupport, a fast-growing service desk solution that focuses on the B2B segment, had a breakthrough year in 2014, overcoming a number of obstacles and positioning ourselves for rapid growth in 2015. In the process, we’ve not only transformed customer support operations for our client companies – we’ve changed the conversation across the industry.

Our focus on serving businesses is one of our chief differentiators. Most service desk solutions are built around the concept of quickly resolving tickets to keep individual customers satisfied. And while that is indisputably an important part of the process, as veterans of the software industry, we realized that companies that serve other businesses have another, equally important priority: managing relationships with the businesses they serve. This was the idea behind TeamSupport – to build a service desk solution that helps companies manage the entire B2B relationship, not just individual tickets.

One of our biggest successes in 2014 was expanding the conversation around the differences in customer support delivery in a B2B vs B2C sector and educating potential customers about how a customer service solution built around B2B needs can help make them more successful. Our impressive growth in 2014 and outstanding customer retention rate are testaments to the success of a business model that provides our clients with the big-picture solution they need to successfully manage their customer relationships.

Over the past 12 months, we’ve added agents to improve customer support, expanded our software quality assurance activities, created a new customer success team to ensure smooth transitions as more customers come on board, and developed an expanded training lineup to meet customer demand. We also closed a highly successful round of venture funding, securing $1.25 million to scale up our operation to meet growing demand. This was the first time the company had accepted outside capital after bootstrapping our startup and growing organically.

But our most important accomplishment in the past year was advancing the industry conversation. After building and successfully delivering a fully hosted, cloud-based service desk solution that addresses the concerns of B2B companies with a unique customer database, we were able to take on an industry thought leadership role. We contribute articles and help advance the discussion within the industry on the unique role of customer support in the B2B community. And what we’ve emphasized is that it takes an entire team working together – sales, customer support, product development, management, etc. – to manage those relationships.

Looking ahead to 2015, we predict the trends that have already changed the industry so profoundly will accelerate. The world is more interconnected than ever, with people sharing their personal and commercial experiences in real-time with friends and colleagues. Professional communities are more tightly woven and are increasingly adopting social media platforms to build relationships and solve problems. We believe these trends will continue and strengthen.

Increasing levels of communication pose an incredible opportunity for the companies that serve these industries – the chance to deliver the type of customer experience that transforms customers into advocates. On the flipside, it presents a risk when companies fail to optimize the customer experience, since less than stellar results will be more widely shared, potentially damaging a company’s reputation. That’s why it’s crucial for CEOs to give their employees the tools they need to deliver an exceptional customer experience – every time.

At TeamSupport, we believe in the power of collaboration and communication. We believe in providing our clients with a platform they can use to not only quickly and efficiently resolve ticket issues but to get a look at the big picture, enabling everyone who interacts with a customer to contribute to managing the overall business relationship. As we wrap up 2014 and prepare for the challenges of 2015, TeamSupport stands ready to help our customers set themselves apart through customer service excellence and succeed in the coming year and beyond.