When you work in SaaS support, you’re likely handling dozens of requests from different customers every week. Some of these might take just a few minutes to resolve, others might remain active for months as a cross-functional solution is implemented. Some might take the form of detailed, well organized support tickets, and others might come to your attention via a frantic phone call.

As your tenure with any company continues, you’ll soon find that despite the variety of questions, problems and projects you encounter in these requests, the customers who initiate them generally fall into one of four categories. These categories are based on the grid above – which (informally) measures any given customer’s friendliness and technical skill – and if you’ve worked on a support team for any extended amount of time, you can probably fit each of your customers neatly into one of these classifications.

This article will explain the characteristics found among the four customer categories, provide guidance for how to manage your relationships with each of them and highlight some valuable lessons these customers can teach you along the way.

The Partner (More friendly; More skilled)

Partners are the sorts of customers that make you love your job. They’re the ones that approach their relationship with your support team with patience and enthusiasm, and they rarely give you any grief. They have the ideal mix of friendliness and technical skill, and you always enjoy hearing from them, even if they’re reaching out to report a problem.

Partner customers only need to be trained on your company’s products once, and they will seek out answers to questions themselves before contacting your team. If they do need to reach out, it’s almost always with a detailed ticket and the acknowledgement that they’re not your only customer, so your team won’t need to worry about much unpleasantness from them. These customers will often use your company’s products as much or even more than you do, and enjoy learning about new features as they’re introduced.

For all of these reasons, your team should do their very best to maintain the mutually beneficial relationship they enjoy with these valuable customers. Whenever possible, and acknowledging many businesses’ tiered support structure based on individual customer investment, Partner customers’ requests should be treated with a slightly higher priority, and your feedback to these customers should match the friendly, knowledgeable tone of their tickets, emails or phone calls. Placing Partner customers’ requests higher on your team’s priority list and the prompt, helpful communication that will result shows these customers that your company treasures their business and is committed to building a constructive, mutually beneficial relationship.

Beyond ensuring extra-attentive support, though, your team should also include Partner customers whenever your company is seeking specific feedback about ways its products could be further enhanced to meet customers’ business needs. Because Partner customers are also frequently your product’s more experienced users, their suggestions are will be rooted in plenty of evidence and a desire to eliminate any significant pain points. Perhaps more importantly, though, including these customers in discussions about longer-term planning will enhance the value of your products by demonstrating a commitment to shape development decisions based on guidance from Partners.

To put it simply, Partner customers are terrific to work with, and your team should do everything they can to keep things that way. Ideally, your team will also learn the value of providing prompt, helpful support out of a desire to build on their existing relationships with Partner customers, rather than out of fear of being on the receiving end of a customer’s angry monologue. The longer you work in support, the more you’ll realize how rare and precious Partner customers are, and why it’s so important to keep them extra happy.

The Learner (More friendly; Less skilled)

Demographically, I’m an Elder Millennial, which means that digital technology has been in the mix for the majority of my life. On the other hand, my parents – both over age 75 – mostly stopped caring how to use any new technology around the time I was born. Starting when they bought a state-of-the-art Apple IIGS computer when I was in elementary school, therefore, I’ve been my family’s de facto IT expert even after I left for college and even still after I moved across the country. Each visit home will invariably include an hour or so setting up a streaming service on each of their TVs before patiently trying to explain to my dad why he can’t just grab a video from YouTube and put it on a VHS tape.

But I digress.

Working with Learner customers is a lot like troubleshooting technology for your parents. They’re great people, and you enjoy working with them, but you also wish they could remember what you told them the last time you answered this same question or that they might take even 30 seconds to try to find an answer themselves, given the vast repository of information theoretically available at their fingertips. Fortunately, Learner customers are also resolute in their desire to improve their skills using your company’s products – hence the name – even if that requires quite a bit of hand-holding along the way.

Learner customers will probably have a lot of questions for your team. Some of these questions will be the same ones they’ve already asked in previous tickets, and for that reason the information Learner customers seek is often already located in the available knowledge documentation. This is just one reason having a robust knowledge base is so important – if your customers’ most frequently asked questions and challenges are already addressed in easy-to-find articles, your teams can simply guide your customers to that content, rather than having to repeat the same instructions or troubleshooting suggestions time and again. Learner customers will help your team identify any gaps in your existing documentation through their repeated requests, which will further enhance your company’s knowledge base.

Learner customers might also have little or no experience working with products like yours when they are tasked by their own companies to learn how to use them. For customers like this, a scripted, hour-long training session will probably not be enough, and it’s up to your team to provide as much ongoing support as customers need until they’re more comfortable in your products.

First, break down your usual training material into short, simple articles or videos, and include them in your knowledge base. Doing so will enable less confident customers to quickly refresh their memories on how to perform your products’ basic functions, and, as mentioned above, reduce the need for your support team to repeat the same instructions for the same customers.

Second, encourage your team to be extra clear and detailed in their explanations to Learner customers. Where Partner customers and Expert customers (explained in the next section) probably have a certain amount of technical acumen and are familiar with the usual jargon thrown around in SaaS, Learner customers might need things explained in plainer language. Again, it’s not that these customers lack intelligence, but that their experience working with products like yours could use some bolstering. By taking the time to break down what might seem like basic concepts to your own team, you will be saving yourself time in the future by speaking the Learner customers’ language now.

Finally, your team should not only be flexible in the terminology they use when explaining something to Learner customers, they should also share these explanations using the customers’ preferred method. If a Learner customer would rather interact in your team’s ticketing system, that’s great! If, however, you find that your team and your Learner customers are going back-and-forth in ticket comments without much progress, your team should instead consider arranging phone calls or screen-sharing sessions in order to expedite a solution. Sometimes, Learner customers just need things explained to them live by a person they trust – its even better if they can actually see what they need to do by watching your team demonstrate – and your team can become well versed in customer communication, whatever form it takes.

Learner customers can sometimes cause mild frustration for your teams, mainly due to their comparative lack of technical skill, but this frustration can be harnessed to improve the ways your team supports them. Through the implementation of a knowledge base explaining your products’ basic workflows and a willingness to adapt to the ways different users figure things out, your team should be more than prepared to address just about anything Learner customers bring to your desk.

The Expert (Less friendly, More skilled)

Just because someone knows how to use your company’s products doesn’t mean they’re fun to work with.

Expert customers almost always have an extensive technical background, so the usual questions and challenges will not typically apply here. In most cases, these customers will digest your products’ training material and then quietly go about their days. Your team might not even hear from a specific Expert customer for long stretches of time, but when they do, they need to be ready.

Of the four customer types detailed here, Expert customers probably have the thinnest patience when they encounter problems within your products. What makes these situations extra tense is when the Expert customers know exactly what’s wrong and how to fix it, but they do not have the access to your products’ configurations to be able to make the changes themselves, so they have to rely on your team to implement the resolution.

To mitigate this, your team should make note of issues these Expert customers encounter most, and work with your company’s other teams to develop fixes or at least reduce the recurrence of the same problems. While many companies’ support teams are not technically responsible for collecting this sort of long-term feedback (account/customer success managers) or putting together the solution itself (developers/programmers/engineers), taking the time to learn about Expert customers’ biggest pain points and putting forth a documented effort to alleviate them will go a long way to build trust, and will thus improve your working relationship, perhaps even bringing your Experts a bit closer to being Partners.

Still, significant problems with your company’s products are inevitable, which is why support teams exist to begin with. When these things do happen, provide Expert customers with extra-detailed information that explains the work being done on your company’s side. For customers that have less skill with your products, it is usually best to edit any notes that come from your more technical co-workers so as not to confuse or overwhelm them. This is not a concern with Expert customers, however, and you should feel free to share any and all feedback that provides them more information about a particular request. And when all else fails, you can always try putting together the occasional phone call or screen-sharing session between Expert customers and your company’s other technical teams, since these customers and those teams can have similar skillsets. Putting Expert customers in direct contact with the people who are actually making the fixes (when the situation warrants) will further demonstrate your team’s commitment to excellent customer service, building even more goodwill with your customers.

Last but certainly not least, it’s important to remember that while Expert customers can sometimes be a little prickly, they still have valuable opinions they can offer in the interest of improving their experience with your company’s products. Just like you do with Partner customers, include Experts in conversations about new features they’d like to see or other changes to the product. Seeking out this sort of feedback from your Expert customers will show them that your team recognizes they know what they’re talking about, which will – you guessed it – only make your interactions with them more meaningful.

Expert customers just want to do their jobs, and when they run into (perceived or actual) problems or design flaws within your company’s products, you can probably imagine their displeasure with not being able to just fix or change them without your team’s help. The best way your team can help is to make sure customers are getting all of the available information are when a problem occurs, and that your company appropriately prioritizes a resolution. You can’t necessarily change someone’s personality, but you can influence your relationship by how you communicate. This is especially important to remember when talking about the fourth group of customers on this list.

The Challenge (Less friendly; Less skilled)

Close your eyes and imagine your team’s least favorite customers. I bet it didn’t take you very long.

When these customers’ names appear in your ticket queue, email inbox or on your caller ID, you probably sigh a little before learning about their latest requests. Challenge customers often don’t know how to perform even the most basic functions in your company’s products, and in your all-too-frequent interactions, they express in words or in tone that they’re not really interested in learning. It would be easy to write Challenge customers off as dumb jerks who seem to enjoy making your day just a little worse, but let me share a quick story that makes me a little more understanding of their less convivial personalities.

In one of my previous support roles, my team worked primarily with local news stations on their websites. In a lot of cases, I found that many of the stations’ “digital staff” were more or less thrust into those roles in addition to their existing responsibilities as the Promotions Director or Nighttime Weatherperson. As a result, their work took on a whole new level of pressure, especially when there were any problems with the stations’ websites, and in many cases that pressure was created by of a set of recently acquired job duties they did not want being suddenly placed into their laps.

In this situation, it’s easy to see why you might be the last person a Challenge customer wants to speak with, because it means that something critical to their work has gone wrong, and they need it to be resolved yesterday. Your team’s job, then, is to not only solve Challenge customers’ ongoing problems – all of which seem to be urgent in priority – but also to try to whittle away at their crummy attitudes by demonstrating your team’s comparative competence and politeness. In this way the “Challenge” part of Challenge customer takes on two meanings: These customers are difficult to work with day-to-day, but should also present your team with an opportunity to improve upon their relationships with these customers through a relentless display of professionalism.

The key to dealing with Challenge customers is simple: Just do the things they’re asking for. In my experience, a lot of requests from Challenge customers involve working through tasks they absolutely have the access to complete themselves, but they don’t remember how and don’t want to learn again. While it can be annoying to receive these sorts of simple requests from Challenge customers over and over again, I always used to remind my teams that they were being paid the same amount no matter how complex the work they were being asked to do. If it’s a simple change, get it done and move on. If it’ll take a lot of time but not a lot of brainpower, find a podcast or an audiobook and plug away at the project with your headphones in. At the end of the day, all you really want is to get your Challenge customers off your back, and the quickest way is to just do what they want.

While Learner customers are eager to improve their skills within your company’s products, Challenge customers don’t have the time or inclination. Still, this should not prevent you from sharing training documentation with them and offering to conduct refreshers on product functionality, if only to cover your own backside. Unfortunately, Challenge customers don’t isolate their behaviors to just your team, and the last thing you want is for a disgruntled customer to complain elsewhere in your company that you haven’t shown them how to do something important. Better to provide the available information and have it go unused than to be accused later of being derelict in your own responsibilities. Who knows – maybe one day your Challenge customers will actually take the time to figure this stuff out.

Until they do, these Challenge customers are going to rely heavily on your team for assistance, and as much as you don’t want to, it’s almost always best to arrange calls or screen-sharing sessions with these customers whenever a request extends beyond a small number of emails or ticket comments. As with Learner customers, Challenge customers sometimes absorb information more effectively when there’s a helpful person walking them through it, rather than solely via a written knowledge document. The ability to ask questions in real-time, as well as to have a visual component in the form of a screen-share to illustrate the information, will help increase their product comprehension and will hopefully reduce the number of requests from Challenge customers that they can actually resolve themselves.

If nothing else, the effort you demonstrate here will show Challenge customers that you are an unflappable professional, even in the face of whatever nonsense they might bring, and you might even be able to nudge them closer to being Learners. Either way, adding that extra personal touch will humanize you to your Challenge customers, and vice versa, which almost always leads to more productive working relationships than those conducted primarily in writing.

One other thing to remember with Challenge customers: Don’t take it personally. In my own work with Challenge customers, I found that their negativity was caused by the stress of having to use a product they never really wanted to learn in the first place. All they really want is to do their job, and if you help them achieve that goal with an extra helping hand when they ask, they can’t say you haven’t been trying. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.

BUT WAIT: People Can Change

A customer’s place in the Partner/Learner/Expert/Challenge grid is not set in stone, and one of your larger goals in support should be to continually drive all of your customers toward that More Friendly/More Skilled quadrant. Learners can become Partners through the effective use of training material and targeted efforts to help them work more effectively in your company’s products. Experts can also become Partners as you learn more about the ins-and-outs of their personalities and build trust through a dedication to rapid issue-resolution. Challenges can become – well, they can become Learners and maybe Experts. Let’s put it this way: If you can turn a Challenge into a Partner, you’re probably excellent at your job.

Of course, the last thing you want is for Partners, Learners or Experts to become Challenges, because that almost always means you and your team have failed. If you follow my guidance for each of the four types if customers, though, you won’t need to worry about that.

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