Why Customer Support Should Be A Priority With Fundraising Software

Many online fundraising platforms make showcasing your mission, promoting your efforts, and collecting donations simple and effective.  

But just imagine…

You’re in the middle of creating your biggest fundraising campaign on an incredibly tight deadline. Even though you plan on launching your campaign tomorrow morning, you’re not concerned. Everything is ready to go – an engaging story, interesting photos, and your peer to peer fundraisers are all lined up!  All you’re doing now is putting the finishing touches on your campaign by uploading that last, perfect photo.

Then, something goes horribly wrong…

You just can’t figure out why your photo isn’t fitting within the specified photo sizes.  “No big deal”, you think, “I’ll just write into Customer Support.” And you get this generic autoresponder message back:

“Thanks for your message! Someone from our Customer Support team should respond to your request within 24 to 48 hours. Please review your message below, and provide any additional details you might think are important by responding to this message.  Thanks!” 

Can you really wait 24 to 48 hours? No! You’re working on your campaign now. You shouldn’t have to wait until it’s convenient for Customer Support to answer! Which brings us to our topic:

Why Nonprofits Should Make Great Customer Support a Priority

When choosing a fundraising platform, most people are thinking about the features or functionality – “Can it do this?” or “How fast does this happen?”- but more often than not, they forget about the Who behind the platform.

As you’re making your decision on which platform to choose, consider these three questions about the Customer Support team:

 1. What Is their Support Team Called?

Everyone knows the old adage, “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have” – and this applies to your Customer Support team, too. Don’t settle for a team that’s just there to Support you, choose a team that wants you to reach Success!

A Customer Success team, like what we have at GiveGab, goes beyond just supporting your nonprofit. They are intertwined with your goals and want to see you succeed. They’ll go above and beyond when you have a problem. Instead of forwarding you along to a generic support article, they’ll talk the problem through with you.

When you ask for advice, they give you genuine responses of what they’ve actually experienced in the job, not just some links to resource articles. And, if the Customer Success team can’t figure out your concern on their own, they’ll get other members of the GiveGab team involved to find the best solution for you!

At GiveGab, keep in mind that the idea of “Our Success is Tied to Your Success” permeates throughout our entire team. Even though we have a designated Customer Success team, your concerns and feedback help influence our future decisions collectively. 

 2. How Fast Can They Help?

For most of us, our patience starts to run out after only a couple of minutes of waiting. Think about how long you would wait for a cup of coffee – 5 minutes? Maybe 10 minutes if you really needed it? But past that, you’ll move on to the next thing.

For Customer Support, the average wait for a first response is 23.6 hours. And that’s just the time it took for someone to get back to you – they haven’t even solved your problem yet. Pretty abysmal compared to other methods of communication that permeate our society.

The importance of a fast response lies in our example before – you’re writing in because you need help now. You can’t wait 23.6 hours – the solution, while appreciated, has come too late. You’ve already moved on. GiveGab’s average response time is 10 minutes – a bit longer on the weekends (hey, we’ve got to give back to our communities sometimes, too!).  But, it’s just as long as you would wait for that cup of coffee, right?

 3. How Can I Get In Touch With Them?

Everyone emails. Everyone emails so much that only 25.6% of emails in the nonprofit industry get opened. So what does every Customer Support team have? An email that you can reach out to in case you have a problem.

Of course, every Customer Support team will tell you that they open each and every email you send them – and they probably do. And of course, they are organized, using Customer Support tools and software to cut down response times and keep themselves organized.

But why not choose a platform that goes beyond email? Choose a platform that offers real-time support. As you’re working on your campaign, you may run into an issue, so instead of having to hunt for an email address, open up your email client, type up an email with a detailed description of what’s going on, why not just say, “Hey, I need some help”, into a chat window or what we call our chat

bubble? 

Here’s a preview of the live chat feature used at GiveGab:

You can call me the Real Person Bubble because there’s always a real person on the other side!

Simply click on our chat bubble and you’ll see these smiling faces that you can reach out to directly:

When you write into this live chat feature, the person on the other end (yes, a real person!) will know exactly what page you’re working from and can help you immediately. This is what we do at GiveGab, and one of the many reasons why our customers love us!

As you consider your next fundraising campaign, make your decision on the platform as a whole, not just on the technical aspects, and see how much farther your campaign will go.  Not to mention, how much more fun you’ll have sending messages with emojis!