Customer loyalty, business growth, and outreach are all dependent on Customer Service. Many startup businesses readily focus on providing customer success-related services at no cost to drive these results, especially at the initial stage when every customer matters. Most businesses, however, find that providing free services to every customer becomes unprofitable as their clientele grows.
Many corporate leaders will tell you that their customer support is a massive expense that has no impact on the overall profitability of the company. As a result, they don’t prioritize technology upgrades or process efficiency for their in-house customer support teams, and they opt for the cheapest outsourcing options when they decide to outsource. Too often, several small business owners are closing down their customer support services entirely, believing that they are no longer necessary in this age of internet and YouTube tutorials.
But what if you could turn your customer support center into a revenue generator? What if it turned out to be one of your company’s biggest sources of revenue?
If you currently provide free support, it may be time to consider how you can create a premium tier that charges a fee. When something goes wrong, customers are extremely impatient and expect immediate help and assistance. They are also willing to pay a premium fee for personalized service and fast turnaround time. Providing paid customer support in addition to the free online information will always appeal to some customers.
Or perhaps you’re considering how to start a new business by offering tech support services for a fee?
Do you have years of work experience or technical skill in a particular field or technology platform, for example? Could your expertise assist in the resolution of other people’s issues? If this is the case, you may be sitting on a highly lucrative undiscovered source of revenue. Establishing a system that gathers, organizes, and helps streamline the workflow of tracking user queries will make unlocking that revenue stream a lot easier
A good help desk system should be able to handle a large number of customer inquiries and provide appropriate responses to each one. Managing a customer helpdesk is a time-consuming job. There are plenty of plugins available that can help you manage your helpdesk tickets with ease. You can also easily charge for your knowledge and expertise with the help of a WooCommerce pay-for-support plugin. Consider how much easier it would be to track it all under one roof while also increasing profits by charging for your support if you had both a customer helpdesk and a charge for support system right in your WooCommerce dashboard.
To facilitate this process, we present the ELEX WSDesk WordPress HelpDesk plugin and its add-on Pay for Support. The WSDesk WordPress Support Ticket System Pay For Support Add-On aids in the establishment of your support service setup process while keeping track of each customer’s credit score in detail. It also keeps tabs on the products and services that are being offered. This add-on is ideal if you provide any type of service, such as consultation, online subscription, or other consultancy services.
Key features of the Pay For Support Add-On for WSDesk
- Accept Support Payments Easily and Convert to Credits – This add-on assists you in automatically crediting the customer’s credit balance with a specified amount of credits whenever a customer purchases or renews a product or subscription. Customers can use these credits to pay for the services and support you provide.
- Check the Customer’s Credit Balance – On the WordPress user profile page, site owners can see the credit balance of their customers.
- Keep track of all the credit transactions – Site owners can view the transaction timeline, which shows all of the customer’s transactions, in addition to checking the balance.
- Create as many credit rules as you want – The Credit Rules enable business owners to specify the desired credit amount and associate it with products in their store.
- Create Credit Deduction Triggers – Store owners must link their WSDesk Ticket Status to the credits they want. The credit amount is deducted from the customer’s account whenever the ticket status is changed to any of the configured statuses.
- All Credit Transactions Can Be Easily Tracked – In the History tab, store owners can view all of their customers’ transactions.
- View Credit Information on the WSDesk Ticket Page – You’ll be redirected to the WSDesk ticket page to manage the ticket when you click on the Order/Ticket ID in the History tab.
- Manually add and deduct credits
- Method of Credit Renewal – When it comes to credit renewal, you have two options. When credits are added to your account upon subscription renewal of a product, your customers will be able to keep their previous credit balance if you choose the carry forward option. When credits are added to your account upon subscription renewal of a product, your customers will be able to keep their previous credit balance if you choose the carry forward option.
- Minimum Credit Balance – Per product, a minimum credit balance for credit deduction can be specified.
How to charge for customer support using these plugins and add-ons?
The Pay For Support Add-On enables website owners to be compensated for the premium consulting and help desk services they offer. When a customer buys a product from the seller, a certain amount of credit is added to the customer’s account. The customer can then use these credits to submit tickets through the WordPress Support Ticketing system, which is configured with WSDesk. WSDesk is a WordPress help desk support system that facilitates the customization and synchronization of support services through the use of a ticketing system in a far more efficient manner. Pay for support is an add-on that can be used only with WSDesk.
With the WSDesk Pay For Support Add-On, store owners can accept payments from customers in exchange of credits that let them pay for your customer support. Customer credits will be deducted from their account as the support transaction progresses. From the backend, the store owner can easily manage all credits, subscriptions, and transaction history, as well as manually add and deduct credits from the customer’s account via the add-ons dashboard. The core configuration is determined by the WSDesk settings rather than the add-on settings. As a result, you must first configure WSDesk before configuring Pay For Support. You can go through the product documentation to learn how to set up and configure WSDesk.
Let’s take a look at the backend of the Pay for Support Add-on:
Create Rules
Credit rules for individual or subscription-based products can be created in this section. The credits will be applied to the user’s account when a purchase, subscription, or support transaction occurs, based on the settings you configure here. You can set Credit Rule Names, Product Identifications, Set the Prices, Set Credits, and Set the Credit Limit from this page.
Manage Rules
In this tab, you can manage all of the rules you’ve created. Credit Rule Name, Product ID, Price, Credit, Credit Limit, as well as edit and delete options, are all laid out in a table.
Triggers
Triggers allow you to add and deduct credits from a user’s account automatically. Credits will be added and deducted automatically based on the WSDesk Ticket Status, according to the rules set. The credit will be deducted from the customer’s account when the conversation in the WSDesk tickets dashboard moves to any of its ticket statuses and is assigned a credit. You must select the desired WSDesk ticket status and assign a credit value to be deducted when creating a new trigger.
History
You can track all credit transactions made by users in the History tab. The Date of transaction, user email address, Order/Ticket ID, Product Information, Agent, transaction status, credits deducted, credit balance, and time are all listed in the table.
My Account
Under this tab, you can set the credit renewal method and the minimum credit balance.
Creating Support Products
Using the various triggers and rules that you specify while customizing the plugin, you can easily create support products on your WooCommerce store and connect them to the Pay for Support plugin. Customers who purchase these support products will be charged as their support ticket progresses, allowing them to receive premium support.
You can also refer to this video for a detailed step by step guide on setting up pay for support and creating support products for the same.
Wrapping up
Businesses may discover that implementing a paid support method is much easier than it sounds, especially when you already provide free customer support services. There are now plugins that can help you make more money from your expertise or turn an existing cost-based support service into a new revenue stream. Now you know how the Pay for Support add-on makes the process of charging for premium support so much easier. If you have any questions regarding the WSDesk plugin or the Pay for Support add-on, please let us know in the comments section below.
