Customer Support Software Featured Articles

In 2015, the war for market share is most decidedly being won or lost on the customer service front. Increasingly unrivaled innovation is short-lived and branding or price will only carry a business so far. What sets the winners from the losers is customer loyalty, and that in turn means good customer support.

For Restoration Hardware, a chain of upscale home furnishings, hardware and outdoor and garden products, winning this customer loyalty battle means bringing more of the customer experience in-house.

“As we look at it long term, I think our bias is to control more of it than to control less of it,” Restoration Hardware CEO Gary Friedman told investors during a Q&A session as part of its third-quarter financial results call.

“We’ve learned, as we’ve in-sourced our home delivery and we learn to control, to operate those, we see more benefit than less benefit and now probably have a view that we want to control more of it than less of it,” he said.

It may not make sense for Restoration Hardware to take the process completely in-house in every situation, but overall he said it befits a luxury brand to ensure that the customer experience is not destroyed by a neglectful contractor.

“OK, we’re going to be a luxury brand, we’re going to develop, we’re going to deliver really high-end product, but we’re going to hand it off to somebody who might screw up that customer experience?” he asked.

This sort of thinking is not limited to boutique or high-end brands, however, which is why customer service solutions such as TeamSupport are so valuable. Companies from Wal-Mart to Comcast and Nokia (News - Alert) have embraced advanced customer service solutions to keep their finger on the pulse of the customer experience and ensure they deliver on customer needs.

In the case of TeamSupport, this means an internal social network for customer service agents, a complete customer database for continuity of care, screen recordings to show where problems might exist, and automatic rules to route support tickets intelligently and automatically to the right agents.

This is all part of winning the customer loyalty war. And until the next great revolution in business, at least, that’s where market share ultimately is being won or lost.