Companies worldwide face increasing pressure to grow revenue and profits. Forward-thinking executives have realised that customer support, traditionally viewed as a cost centre, can become a powerful revenue generation engine.
Each support interaction represents an opportunity to deepen relationships, expand value, and ultimately drive growth. In particular, five strategic approaches can transform the support function into a revenue-generating powerhouse.
Identify and leverage upselling opportunities
The most successful SaaS companies recognize that support interactions provide valuable intelligence about customer needs and pain points. By analysing these touchpoints, support teams can uncover opportunities to enhance customer value through additional offerings. These include, training support agents to identify and flag service-qualified leads (SQLs) during interactions, creating a seamless handoff to sales teams. Also, they can develop programs that empower support staff to recognise situations where feature upgrades or plan expansions would solve customer challenges and create modular, Ã la carte service offerings that address specific customer needs identified during support conversations
Of course, when companies introduce significant change such as a cost structure, they must first prepare their employees and customers or risk increasing churn. Agents must be prepared to explain the cost structure to customers. Similarly, marketing communications, education initiatives, and onboarding processes will likely be required to ease customer transitions.
Focus on retention and churn prevention
In the subscription economy, customer retention is the lifeblood of sustainable growth. Every prevented cancellation translates directly to protected revenue. Firms can implement rapid response protocols for at-risk customers, prioritising issue resolution to prevent cancellations. They can develop proactive support strategies that identify and address potential problems before they impact the customer experience, and leverage customer data analytics and AI to predict churn indicators and trigger intervention pathways
Research shows that reducing churn by just 5% can increase profitability by 25%-95% (Bain & Company). With the cost of acquiring new customers typically 5-7 times higher than retaining existing ones, your support team’s contribution to retention directly impacts company valuation.
Create monetised support tiers
Modern customers understand that premium service comes at a premium price. By stratifying your support offerings, you can create direct revenue streams while delivering enhanced value. Achieve this by developing multi-tiered support structures with free basic options and value-added premium services. Offer specialised services, such as customised onboarding, advanced training, and value realisation consulting and invest in package performance optimisation, proactive monitoring, and process consulting as high-value premium offerings. Finally, consider creating a high-touch operations manager position, which provides customers direct access to the same experienced agent(s) for a premium.
This approach allows customers to self-select the level of support that meets their needs while creating predictable revenue streams for your organisation. The tactic is particularly valuable given that studies show that existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more than new customers.
Build customer lifetime value
Support teams play a crucial role in nurturing relationships that maximise customer lifetime value by establishing support touchpoints that build trust and demonstrate ongoing commitment to customer success. Use support interactions to drive deeper product adoption and feature utilization and implement referral programs that transform satisfied customers into advocates who bring in new business.
Leverage technology for efficiency and personalisation. In today’s digital-first environment, technology serves as both an efficiency driver and a personalisation enabler.
Deploy AI-powered tools and self-service portals to handle routine inquiries, freeing human agents for complex, high-value interactions and use Gen AI with human oversight to troubleshoot service requests, create root cause analysis, and automate case resolution summaries, improving agent productivity and shortening response times. Also, extend the reach of agents to cover customers speaking different languages by implementing real-time translation technology. At Cisco, integrating these technologies reduced support times by up to 85%, while decreasing costs.
The path forward
The message is clear: customer support isn’t just about fixing problems – it’s about creating opportunities that benefit both customers and the business. Successful organisations will be those that recognise support’s role in revenue generation.
Transforming support from a cost centre to a revenue engine requires a shift in mindset, processes, and technology. This evolution doesn’t happen overnight, but each step forward brings both improved customer experiences and enhanced business outcomes.