Whether you are preparing to launch your first subscription product or just gearing up for a big sale, it’s always a good time to make sure your Customer Support team is confident in navigating Recharge.

In this quick guide, learn about identifying opportunities where your customer support agents can improve on answering subscribers’ common questions, tips for updating customer subscriptions, reducing support ticket volume, and using customer support integrations.

Before you start

Check out a video on how to manage customer support for subscribers as a Recharge merchant

Create answers to common subscriber questions

The first goal for training your customer support team is knowing how to answer common questions from subscribers. Your team’s exact list of frequently asked questions will vary depending on the subscription model in-use and how much information about your program you post online.

Here are a few example questions and solutions to start out with:

Updating customer subscriptions

Self-service tools can be enabled for most subscription management tasks, but on some occasions it is more convenient instead for your team to update on behalf of the customer.

Here are a few items to include on your training checklist for customer support agents navigating the merchant portal:

Updating a customer’s billing or shipping information.

Edit the product price or shipping frequency on a subscription.

Bulk update charge dates, delivery frequencies, and more for customers with multiple subscriptions.

Issue a full or partial refund.

Cancel a subscription.

Note: You can also delete a subscription. When you delete a subscription, the customer cannot reactivate it later. There is generally no reason to delete a subscription unless you need to make their data completely inaccessible, such as compliance reasons for example. Encouraging customers to cancel their own subscription when possible is highly recommended, since this helps capture more accurate cancellation reasons and allows for automated retention strategies to activate.

Ways to reduce support ticket volume

The best way to create an excellent customer support experience is to never require a ticket at all! To improve the customer experience and keep customers coming back for more, here are some simple strategies you can apply today to reduce the time and money your company spends on customer support.

1. Ensure answers are easy to find

   Not only will publishing FAQs reduce your support ticket volume, they also help relieve the anxiety a customer has before they hit subscribe. Include common questions and answers on a subscription landing page or the product detail page.

2. Enable self-serve subscription management where possible

   You choose which subscription actions are available for customers to complete independently. Giving subscribers the flexibility to update their subscriptions from their customer portal, including skipping or cancelling when they need to, gives subscribers the independence and trust they need to make updates on their own.

3. Make sure self-serve subscription management is accessible

   Maximize the value of self-serve tools by keeping them easy to use:

• Enable passwordless login to the customer portal so that the process of updating subscriptions is frictionless.
• Launch RechargeSMS to give customers the convenience of updating subscriptions over text.
• Integrate Recharge Quick Actions with Klaviyo to incorporate subscription management links in your marketing emails.

Customer support cost reductions

Check out this video on cutting customer support costs

Use customer support integrations

Recharge integrates with a number of customer support solutions for a variety of benefits. For example, with the Gorgias integration you can bring common subscription management tasks directly into your ticket management dashboard.