Managing Your Online Course

Customer Support for Online Courses Management - Do You Really Need it? Full Overview

Table of Contents

Publishing your online course is a huge milestone in your online course creation journey and the next step is to maintain and grow your audience.

There are many ways to do this but one essential component that you definitely need to look at is customer support.

In this post, we’ll go over:

  • What customer support is.
  • How it can help you grow your online course business.
  • How you can implement it effectively.
  • What are some tools that can help you with it.

Let’s get into it.

What is Customer Support?

Customer support is a service that you provide to your audience with the goal of providing solutions to any issues they might be having.

Having effective customer support can have tons of benefits for your online course business that may not be very apparent. It can even help you sell more courses.

For example, if a student of your online course has some confusion or question, they may send you a message or an email.

If you’re quick to respond to their query with easy-to-follow instructions, your customer will be satisfied and will be more likely to buy online courses from you in the future.

On the other hand, if you don’t respond to their query or respond very late, they may be put off by this and as a result, you’ll most likely fail to retain them as a customer.

Not only will good customer support help you retain customers, it will also help you grow your online course business.

This is because satisfied customers will be much more likely to recommend your online course to their friends, colleagues and peers.

 Streamlining the customer experience is something that should be at the forefront of your priorities when it comes to any business.

It’s definitely true that in order to grow any business or product, you need happy customers and good customer support is definitely a way to do that.

Here are some things that good customer support will bring you:

  • Happy customers that will stick around and buy more online courses from you in the future.
  • Happy customers that may recommend your online course to their colleagues.
  • Customers that may provide valuable feedback which could help you improve your online course.

Implementing Customer Support Effectively

Here are some easy steps you can follow in order to make customer support for your online course business the best it can be:

Adopt a Personal, Informal Tone When Talking to Customers

In today’s age of digital communication, many interactions online between any business and their customers have become quite impersonal.

Thus, if you’re going to make an impact on your customers and make them feel valued, it’s essential that you make them feel like a person.

You can do this in many ways such as:

  • Addressing them by their name
  • Avoiding generic, technical language and automated replies
  • Thanking them for their feedback
  • Providing personalized instructions to their problem(s)

Be Available to Answer Customer Queries on Multiple Channels

People consume content on many different devices and platforms and thus, they may want to get in touch with you on a certain platform.

So, it’s in your best interests to be available to any potential customer with a query through as many channels as possible.

One easy way to do this is to employ the use of a customer support tool. Many of them provide multi-channel support and group all queries into an organized, easy-to-understand view.

This will obviously help you provide solutions to queries related to your online courses in an efficient way.

Some channels that you could choose to be available on as an online course creator include:

  • Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc.)
  • Phone (SMS or Call)
  • Email
  • Live chat (through your online course’s website)


The more channels you make yourself available on, the easier it will be for any given customer to reach out to you with any queries about your online courses.

Be Proactive About Seeking Feedback

You should not be waiting for any customer to run into a problem or issue. Instead, you should be proactive about it and ask them for feedback from time to time.

One very simple way to do this is to have a feedback form for your customer once they finish your online course.

You could also choose to have individual feedback forms for every module of your online course.

These feedback forms could just be ratings but we feel it’s much better if you have a field where the customer can write how your online course could be improved.

Remember that your customers might be able to identify a flaw in your online course that you may never have been able to. This can allow you to make improvements in your online course which would add a lot of value to it.

For more tips on how to perform effective customer support, you can check out our post for the 9 best ideas for customer support for online courses.

Great Customer Support Tools To Consider

As mentioned earlier, customer support tools are something that you’ll have to dabble in if you’re going to effectively perform customer support.

Many of these tools make customer support a lot easier and while many of them are quite pricey, there are some you can find with free plans too. Here are some examples:

Zendesk

Zendesk is an easy-to-use customer support tool that is used by both corporations and solo businesspeople alike.

It has many benefits that make customer support quite easy and flexible such as query categorization, customer history logging, etc.

To determine whether Zendesk is the right customer support tool for you, you can check out our Zendesk review.

HelpCrunch

HelpCrunch is a great customer support tool if you’re a beginner when it comes to working with a customer support tool.

It’s very easy to use and get the hang of and has many features that make customer support hassle-free.

It even comes with a free 14-day trial.

Some of these features are automatic alerts for queries that have not been replied to yet, customer call logging, customer history, customer query categorization, etc.

Drift

Drift is quite a sophisticated customer support solution that you may be interested in if you want some automation.

It features an AI-powered chatbot that is able to attend to any customer queries that may come your way while you’re not available.

Furthermore, despite its sophisticated functionality, Drift is still very easy to use as a customer support tool.

For a more extensive list of customer support tools, you can check out our post for the best customer support tools for online courses in the market.

Conclusion

Customer support is one of the most important yet highly ignored aspects of maintaining and growing any business.

Your customers are the core of your business and if they’re not happy, your business is never going to flourish.

Make sure to spend as much time strategizing how you’re going to provide customer support as you do working on your online courses.

Aiming to provide streamlined customer solutions is an objective that will help you sell more courses, increase your reach and achieve happy customers in the process.