I’ve had a lot of different roles here at Desk.com and it all started with support. Back story: I was working at a startup that uses Desk.com when I got a great opportunity to join the Wow team as a Support Engineer. I learned a lot in that position and thought I would share some of the tips and tricks that could potentially help you too.

1. Take time to investigate customer issues

Your job as a support agent is to find solutions to customer issues. These solutions can range from educating the customer on how to use your product all the way to coming up with workarounds and escalating bugs/features to other teams. To be good at this you have to understand your product from top to bottom and really understand what goals your customers are trying to accomplish with your product. The best way to get this experience is to dig deep and investigate customer issues. Ask questions but be sure to investigate what’s going on by yourself too. Once you are able to see a solution work, you’re prepared for the next time this specific question is asked and you can also take parts of that solution to answer other questions. Knowing how the whole product works together and knowing the goals of the customer means you can find a solution for them.

2. Ask the question behind the question

Many times your customers will ask you how to do something, but that’s not really what they want. Being a support agent means that you find solutions to customer issues not just answer their questions. Skimming past cases or sometimes just asking “can you please provide a little bit more detail on the issue you are trying to resolve” is a great way to get to the bottom of the problem. Once you understand the use case, you can provide the best solution to fit their needs. Without knowing the entire issue, you could be leading the customer down the wrong path, creating more frustration for the customer and more work for yourself.

3. I just answered this question!

It’s important to keep in mind that the answer you provided one customer does not mean that the next customer has seen it.  It took me a little bit before this lesson finally sunk in. When I was on the support team, I would respond to a customer’s inquiry and then a couple of minutes later I would get the same question. It was frustrating at first because I had the feeling that I just told them, but this is a new customer and it is important to realize that. You have to start from the beginning to describe each feature and function that the customer will use so that they will fully understand and implement the fix you provide. This helps reduce the number of interactions back and forth, which ultimately reduces your workload.

4. Compartmentalize

As much as you can try to avoid it, you are going to have a negative experience with a customer since you’re the first person they contact. It is important to keep calm, help the customer, and most importantly do not take that negative energy to the next case.  The next customer is not necessarily frustrated and is more open to help. You have to go into that conversation with a clear head otherwise you might be make the conversation more negative than it needs to be.  It gets back to point three, each case and each customer is their own entity and you have to treat them separately in order to provide a helpful response. This is why case history is so important to check before responding.

5. Get involved

As a support agent you have insight that every team in the company can benefit from. Every day you talk to customers, you gain insight into what goals they are trying to accomplish with your product and how successful they are. You’re truly the only ones going through the growing pains with the customer day in and day out. This knowledge can help teams like marketing who want to get a better understanding of what the market looks like and your product team wants to know what problems they need to solve for. Understanding your customers is very valuable for the entire company and will take you a long way.

This post was originally published on the award-winning Desk.com blog.

To learn more about ways to make service easier for today's customers, visit salesforce.com, or download the free e-book.