3️⃣How to design a support centre
👋 Introduction
Support experiences should be designed to help users find their solution as quickly as possible. Finding the most relevant content should be straightforward and intuitive.
This article is about different ways to help users discover solutions swiftly.
1️⃣ Search
A good Search allows users to narrow down to their issue quickly. This is important because users that end up raising tickets have specific queries in mind. Tickets are high-touch so you should deflect them as much as possible.
Use a placeholder to demonstrate breadth
Mention topics that the users can search across.
Highlight keyword matches in the results
Display the context in which the keyword is matched. This will help users can decide if a result is relevant to them.
✨ Try a semantic search
Most Support searches use a keyword search. Semantic search is a better way to match by looking at “meanings” within the context in which the keywords are used. This improves search result relevance and ranking.
About semantic search and how it works
✨ Generate LLM summaries
It’s possible that the user’s query can be answered by 3 lines in a ~600 word article.| A good LLM summary helps them get to their solution as soon as they hit enter—without sifting through article titles to find the right one, and then scanning it to find the solution.
2️⃣ Recent actions
Certain actions are more likely to require Support. These could be:
Time-sensitive actions (Eg: UPI payment)
Actions that trigger background operations (Eg: food delivery)
There will also be a Support entry point in the feature from where the actions are taken (refer here). Use the same flow for both entry points.
3️⃣ Categories
Support is for specific questions, and Search, while straightforward, has higher interaction cost. Users need to formulate their queries, type them out, scan the results, and hope they find something relevant.
Conversely, grouping articles and FAQs into categories and sub-categories can help users drill down to the solution quickly.
Use terms that users are familiar with
Listen in to customer support calls to learn what words users use. You can also test with users.
Articles can repeat across topics
Prioritise ensuring articles are easy to find.
☝ Guiding principle: Redundancy is fine as long as it improves discovery of the content, which brings faster resolution to the user.
Nesting is fine as long as it is intuitive
The interaction cost will be low if the categories are intuitive. That means that the user doesn’t have to go back and forth through multiple categories, or scan through a long list of articles in a single category. Again, prioritise making articles easy to find.
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