20 Effective Customer Support Tactics for Business Growth

Over the last 6 years, one of the things we’ve found incredibly important is ensuring we always provide a high level of customer service for anyone that uses Gleam. Looking at our data, users are 50% more likely to upgrade to one of our paid plans if they have interacted with us across one of our customer service channels.

I’m not a huge fan of the word customer service. It makes us sound reactive to the customer, only providing them service when they need it. We shouldn’t be just servicing our customers — we should strive to empower them to help themselves.

I much prefer to think of it as doing everything we possibly can to provide a great customer experience. That extends far beyond what you might consider in the typical customer service workflow.

In this post, I’m going to break down 19 proven techniques that help us deliver great customer support and grow our business at the same time.

Whether it’s a sales-related email or a support question, nobody likes waiting days for a response. With Gleam, the maximum delay is about 7–8 hours (if you email us at 11pm Australia time). But most of the time, we reply in minutes — sometimes even seconds.

Fast response times show your users that you care. I often hear from customers who waited seven days for a reply from a competitor — and chose Gleam because of our fast, helpful support.

If you can’t reply right away, always keep your inbox on your phone. I use a mobile signature that lets users know I’m on the move, which adds a human touch and sets expectations clearly.

For larger teams, a shared inbox or clear handover process helps ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

Not every support ticket can be solved solo — especially if you're not technical.

If a customer raises a technical issue and our co-founder John isn’t available, I simply tag him in HipChat:

@john Hey, this customer is having a few issues with the widget embed. Care to take a look?

That message instantly triggers an SMS alert so John can jump in when needed. This lightweight workflow ensures our entire team stays aligned and can collaborate fast when it matters.

Encouraging fast, cross-functional support creates a better customer experience and prevents small issues from escalating. Don’t leave your team guessing — give them tools and protocols that keep communication friction-free.

As an Australian-based business serving a global audience, we face time zone challenges every day — especially with customers in the US and UK.

We solve this by clearly setting expectations on our support form. Once someone submits a ticket, they see a message explaining when they can expect a response.

Every support ticket that arrives overnight is reviewed first thing the next morning. We split the workload evenly — if I’m up first, I’ll clear the queue before John logs on. If it’s a technical issue, he’ll handle those first and leave the rest to me.

To stay ahead of potential issues, we’ve also built a custom monitoring system that pairs with HipChat to send SMS alerts if anything goes wrong.

It’s not fun getting those texts at 3am — but they ensure we maintain uptime, solve issues fast, and keep our customer journey running smoothly.

As your business scales, one of the biggest customer experience challenges is keeping your support team just as informed as your founders.

In the early days, we — the founders — knew every feature, edge case, and limitation. But as new team members join, you need a repeatable process to ensure everyone supports customers like they built the product themselves.

We solve this in two ways:

• We create internal documentation and cheat sheets for common support scenarios.
• If a task can be automated or simplified, we build tools that allow non-developers to handle it confidently.

This builds trust with customers, reduces delays, and helps maintain a consistent support experience — even as the team grows.

One of our most impactful decisions was setting up a public support chatroom using HipChat.

This room is always open for customers to drop in and ask anything — from product setup issues to marketing campaign advice.

To date, we’ve logged over 20,000 messages in this space.

To avoid missing real-time questions, we’ve also set up alerts that ping us via SMS if someone enters the room while we’re marked away. We then reply using the HipChat mobile app.

This direct channel makes customer communication feel human and fast — a key factor in delivering a great customer experience.

If your business serves customers in multiple countries, make it easy for them to reach you — especially for meetings or support.

We use Skype to purchase local phone numbers in the USA and UK (approx. $180/year). These numbers forward to our devices, so clients and partners can connect with us seamlessly without international calling friction.

This creates a more localised customer experience and increases trust with your global audience.

Whenever a customer opens a support request, you should try to capture contextual data in the background. This includes:

• Browser type and version
• Operating system
• Account plan
• Referral or session details

At Gleam, we send all this information to HipChat the moment a user enters the chat. This helps us identify who they are, what plan they’re on, and which environment they’re using — without needing to ask.

This tactic has saved us countless hours and helps our team deliver faster, more accurate support — especially for browser-specific bugs or configuration errors.

Customers appreciate human connection — especially from software companies.

That’s why I personally email every new Gleam user 24 hours after they sign up. The message is simple, direct, and welcoming. I invite them to ask questions, share feedback, or request features.

This isn’t just about customer satisfaction — it’s about building loyalty, encouraging early conversations, and reinforcing the long-term customer journey from day one.

Too many services make it difficult to cancel or adjust a subscription — creating frustration and damaging customer relationships.

At Gleam, we believe great customer experience starts with flexibility. That’s why we let users:

• Upgrade or downgrade anytime
• Use the platform seasonally without penalty
• Cancel their plan directly — no support ticket needed

“Can we use your service as we need it rather than having to subscribe long term?”

Yes — and we encourage it.

By offering transparent, commitment-free pricing, you reduce friction, meet customer expectations, and build long-term loyalty.

No matter how reliable your product or service is, issues will happen. What matters is how you respond.

When Gleam faced intermittent outages caused by Facebook API timeouts, we didn’t stay silent. Our team worked overnight to resolve the issue — and more importantly, we communicated proactively with users.

We kept users updated on Twitter and replied to every email personally, assuring customers we were on it.

Transparency builds trust — and trust fuels retention. Consider using StatusPage or similar tools to keep your customer base informed during downtime. It’s a simple tactic that prevents confusion and cuts down on support tickets.

Sometimes, customers get billed and realise they no longer need your product or service. Whether they didn’t get around to using it or got charged unintentionally, a rigid no-refund policy can harm your brand reputation and overall customer experience.

At Gleam, our refund policy strikes a balance:

• If a campaign is active, we don’t refund.
• But if a campaign has ended or was never used, we’re happy to help.

This leaves users with a positive impression — even if they don’t stay. It’s part of delivering a customer journey that values fairness, not just transactions.

Referral marketing is one of the most effective tactics for turning your happiest users into brand advocates.

At Gleam, we built a referral program directly into our free plan. Here's how it works:

• A referral link is added to our widget’s footer
• When someone clicks, signs up, and runs a campaign, the original user earns $5 credit
• Credits stack over time and apply automatically at upgrade

We’ve had customers pay their entire Pro subscription just from referrals — and they love it.

This creates:

• A positive experience for loyal users
• An easy way to introduce Gleam to new potential customers
• A low-cost, high-ROI customer acquisition channel

Referral programs like this don’t just grow your user base — they build trust and turn social sharing into a business growth engine.

Strong documentation empowers your users, reduces your support volume, and boosts customer satisfaction — especially for product-driven teams.

Our best practices:

• Turn frequently asked questions into reusable docs
• Link support replies directly to existing guides
• Make it easy for your team to create and update docs

At Gleam, our documentation lives in GitHub and is pulled into our docs area dynamically. This makes it easy to maintain — and more importantly, keeps our customer journey self-service where possible.

Tracking how documentation impacts conversions can be tricky, but it’s worth measuring visits to your help docs as part of your attribution path.

Your users have different comfort levels. Some are confident and quick to onboard, while others need more support.

That's where educational content comes in — it helps users discover the full value of your product or service and improves long-term retention.

Education can take many forms:

• Onboarding email sequences
• Case studies and use cases
• Visual templates
• Step-by-step how-to articles

It’s content marketing that serves your existing customer base while also attracting new potential customers via SEO.

For example, our sweepstakes setup guide educates users while ranking well for high-intent keywords. It converts readers, builds trust, and supports both acquisition and retention.

Product changes are great — unless your users don’t know about them.

We push several changes a day to Gleam, and we noticed customers weren’t discovering them on their own. That’s why we created a public product updates page to keep users informed and engaged.

You can go further by:

• Letting users subscribe to updates via email
• Integrating with Twitter to auto-share announcements
• Including changelog snippets in your dashboard or blog

This boosts transparency, improves retention, and supports the overall customer experience strategy.

One of the most common requests we get is, “Do you integrate with X?”

While not every integration makes sense, when you receive repeated customer feedback about a tool, it's worth exploring. Integrations help with:

• Retention: they make your product stickier
• Marketing: they expose you to new audiences
• Positioning: they give you an edge over competitors

We’re proud to be the only platform that integrates with Twitch, and it’s helped us win over streamers by solving a very specific need.

Let me know when you're ready to complete tactic #18 and #19 (AI assistant), and I’ll deliver them in the same format.

One way to turn customer issues into a win-win is to reward bug reports with account credit.

At Gleam, we offer $20 credit to users who report a valid bug. It’s a small gesture — but it makes customers feel valued and keeps our product sharp.

We even encourage users to report bugs during giveaways or testing. You could launch a dedicated bug bounty campaign using Gleam Competitions — it's a fun way to engage your power users and improve quality at the same time.

As you grow, your customer base becomes your best source of product insight.

We actively collect feedback, and when ideas align with our long-term vision, we prioritise them. Whether it’s a feature suggestion, a UI tweak, or a usability improvement — your users will tell you what matters most.

For example, we recently added a live character count for Tweet actions. It was a small update, but it directly addressed a user frustration and made the customer journey smoother.

This kind of micro-optimisation is what turns a good customer experience into a great one — and supports sustainable business growth.

As you grow, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by repetitive support tickets or FAQs. We’ve started experimenting with AI to help users get quick answers — especially during off hours.

Whether you embed a chatbot trained on your documentation or use AI to draft support replies, there are lots of ways to scale your support without sacrificing quality.

Just make sure your AI assistant doesn’t replace human contact — it should enhance it. Customers should always be able to reach a real person when needed.

One of the most underused tools for customer experience is your FAQ system. At Gleam, we invest heavily in FAQ pages that:

• Help users solve problems instantly
• Support long-tail SEO keywords
• Reduce repeat tickets and increase time-on-site

We organise FAQs by category, optimise them for featured snippets, and use them to surface valuable use cases across the funnel.

A well-structured FAQ not only improves your user experience, it also strengthens your search engine visibility by answering intent-driven questions.

To ensure your customer experience strategy delivers lasting results, you need to track key metrics consistently. Tools like your Customer Relationship Management CRM and analytics dashboards allow you to monitor customer satisfaction, onboarding performance, customer retention and lifetime value. Your Net Promoter Score (NPS) is especially powerful — it shows how many customers are likely to recommend your brand and helps gauge overall satisfaction. These insights reveal how well your business model is working and which areas need improvement. By measuring positive customer experiences and aligning them with your product or service goals, you’ll uncover opportunities to refine your customer journey, improve conversion rates, foster your customer loyalty and build long-term business growth. Finally, spread the word about your customers feedback over your social media channels to build your brand awareness and reputation!