SalesTechStar Interview with Declan Ivory, Vice President of Customer Support at Intercom

Declan Ivory, Vice President of Customer Support at Intercom chats about a few ways through which brands can build more engaging online experiences across the buying-selling journey:

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Welcome to this SalesTechStar chat Declan….Tell us about yourself. What inspires you about being in this B2B industry?

Thank you, I’m really delighted to be a part of this series. I have been involved in the technology industry for over 35 years, and what really motivates me is delivering exceptional customer experiences. From very early on in my career, I realized that this is the key to success for any business, technology industry or not. It sounds very logical, but it’s astonishing the number of businesses who don’t appreciate or act on this.

I’m also inspired by solving problems and delivering long-term, sustained value for customers. This is especially critical as a customer support leader, and I’m excited by how technology is advancing and evolving to transform how businesses support their customers. I believe we are only at the start of what is a quite unique digital transformation opportunity. I joined Intercom earlier this year as VP of Customer Support, and we truly are at the forefront of enabling this transformation within the customer support industry.

The customer support game has been changing over the years, with a need for B2B customer teams to follow specific processes and patterns to meet changing expectations: we’d love to hear about your observations on current trends that rule the market and what you feel customer support teams need to do more of:

Customer support expectations are evolving quickly, and many companies have struggled to keep pace. There is a real sense of urgency around transforming how customer support is delivered, especially in today’s economic climate where retaining and growing your customer base is critical.

Here are some of the key trends that I see in the market: 

• Moving from reactive to proactive support: “Tell me you’ve resolved the problem before I am even aware of it” may seem simple, but it is probably one of the most difficult things to deliver today and requires innovative and groundbreaking applications of data analytics, machine learning, and AI.
• Robust self-service options: Consumers want to be able to sort out their problem without necessarily having to talk to support. This places a real emphasis on providing real-time support and knowledge to customers within your product, website, or mobile app—they should have access to comprehensive knowledge articles and product information. Finally, you should operate a very strong community environment for customers so they can share knowledge and experiences.
• Contextual human support: Customers want support from an expert. When human support is required, there is a growing expectation that whoever is supporting the customer has all of the contextual information about them, including who they are and how they use your product or service. You must deliver a very personalized and comprehensive support experience, which means having access to a customer’s previous engagements with your company, understanding their particular use case, and having all of the skills and capabilities to resolve their issue. To do this effectively requires a lot of innovation and application of technology, but it’s an exciting area.

First, the same contextual information that you want available to support agents and engineers should be available via automation/bots—the experience should be personalized and contextual. There are no technology barriers to enabling this, but it does require very thoughtful design and implementation of any automation and bots strategy.

Second, the tone of the bot experience must match the culture and style that you deliver through a human support engagement. A transition between a bot and human support should feel seamless. The customer should not feel like they are dealing with two different worlds. Again, thoughtful design and implementation of automation and bots can address this.

With all of the power and applications of bots, we do not see them as a replacement for human support. They’re complementary. There will always be that need for empathy and human connection in customer support that a bot can’t provide. Businesses need to understand what types of queries and environments bots are best suited for, and where a human support agent is the better option.