8 Places to Find Ideas for Great Customer Service Content

Customer service and support are never “done.”

During product and customer lifecycles, you’ll face different situations where you’ll need to expand or optimize your content for customer service.

There will be updates to an existing feature or a new launch. There are industry trends to keep up with, new competitors, and changes in user preferences or habits.

Consistently providing exceptional service and support content sounds like a challenge, but it doecustomer service contentsn’t have to be. If you know where to look, you can find fresh, timely, and relevant ideas for your service and support content, come what may. 

We present you with eight sources of great customer service content ideas that keep on giving. Starting with the most obvious source—your customer-facing teams.

Feedback from Customer Service Representatives

Does your customer service content need a refresh? Then spend some time with your customer-facing teams, i.e., your customer service, support, and sales agents.

They have front-row seats to how customers experience your product (including common struggles, issues, or concerns). 

Service teams can not only provide ideas, but they can do so using the exact wording and terminology the customer uses to describe a problem. 

Heads up: the language matters a lot here.

Speaking your customers’ language instead of bombarding them with jargon builds clarity and trust among users. Just check out this list of the most coveted customer service skills:

Technical knowledge is not in the top five, but communication skills dominate the chart.

Over time, service representatives develop the ability to solve problems quickly and efficiently. They know a quick resolution benefits both the user and the company. 

Hence, watch how your most experienced reps structure the answer or what resources they provide to the customer. Often, you’ll be surprised at how few words or how little time they need to break down complex inquiries.

What wording do your reps and customers use to describe products, services, problems, or solutions? Brevity and simplicity are key. Use the same principle when crafting your customer service and support content.

Now, how would you go about collecting that feedback from customer-facing teams? 

You can shadow your reps at work or regularly review their interactions with customers. Also, encourage service teams to submit content ideas the same way they forward feedback to product teams.

You can also dig into your CRM, helpdesk, or whatever tool your teams use for ticketing and support. 

Most of these tools feature workflows, tags, or codes for organizing issues. Some platforms have built-in AI tools that analyze notes and scan for frequently used keywords or terms.

Soon, you’ll identify the key issues your support teams face as well as what it takes to solve them.

Input From Product Teams 

Sourcing ideas from customer-facing teams is a reactive exercise. You find what people commonly ask, and then create content around that.

If you want to be a bit more proactive, check in with the product team to see what they’re up to. 

Is the product team planning new releases or updates that could disrupt the user’s experience? Can you inform users beforehand via blog posts, social media alerts, in-app announcements, or email, like in the example below? 

A sign of good service and support is making your users aware of possible changes and disruptions before they happen. 

And a good portion of your customers expect a proactive approach, according to this Freshworks report.

This follows from the previous section of this article: keep the lines of communication open between your teams. 

Sourcing customer service content ideas from customer-facing and product teams ensures your content is accurate, relevant, consistent, and efficient.

In one word—better.

Reviews from Your Customers

If you haven’t had a chance to collect many reviews from your customers yet, feel free to skip this step. In the next section, we discuss how to mine your competitor’s reviews for the same purpose.

Review mining is a common tactic for product teams to find problematic stuff. But you can (and should) also use reviews to find relevant topics when creating and updating your customer service content.

Much like questions to service reps, reviews come straight from the customers’ mouths. 

However, reviews don’t just revolve around an immediate, pressing issue. They also mention other weaknesses and strengths of your product or service.

If you want to start mining reviews for content ideas, the three places you should look first are:

• reviews on your website
• reviews on social media
• specialized review sites (Techpilot, AppExchange, Capterra, G2, etc.)

While analyzing reviews, make a note of the goals customers frequently mention in their reviews. 

Also, pay attention to the integrations they mention. How do they feel about installation and setup? What about customization options, reporting, analytics, confusing prompts, etc.? 

This is what you’ll want to help them with through helpful content and other resources.

For inspiration, look at how Fathom uses G2 reviews to stay on top of users’ needs.

Fathom is an app for recording and transcribing Zoom calls. While checking out their reviews on G2, we noticed that several Fathom reviewers were confused about starting Fathom and Zoom on desktop. 

Here’s what Fathom did about it.

Kris, Fathom’s Head of Customer Experience, replied to the user, acknowledged the issue, and, best of all, made sure this and other users knew that the onboarding materials had been updated to clear up this common confusion.

Does this approach work for Fathom?

We think so because lots of other reviewers praise Fathom’s service or mention they could easily solve a problem with the documentation available. 

You can make your review mining process as simple or as complicated as you need, depending on your goals, your customer journey, or the resources you have. 

Group and organize the responses, and you’ll have a pretty clear picture of the content you should create or update.

When you also take time to acknowledge reviews and act on them, customers feel heard. It’s a small effort that pays off in more loyal customers and rapport with potential customers. 

Competitor Product Reviews

Reviews of similar or competing products that target the same user profile can show you what your target audience commonly struggles with. 

Obviously, the technology will differ, but the main principles apply. You’ll learn what the ultimate goal of a user is, what prevents them from achieving it, and how your content can help with that. 

Here’s an example of service and support content gold you can find in competitors’ reviews:

This user, who reviewed InEight, a construction scheduling software, found that creating estimates within the software was too complex.

Okay, maybe there’s little you can do to affect the product’s complexity.

But we’re talking about service and support here. Your job is to help your user be less intimidated by the complexity. 

Unfortunately, this reviewer found that InEight failed on that front too, judging by the second part of the review. The user felt disappointed and left to their own devices. 

This review also contains a great hint on what sort of help resources users wish for. The user would have preferred video tutorials. 

If you were a competitor in his field, that’s some invaluable information for how to organize and distribute your help content. 

Go the extra mile; create videos on building estimates within the tool instead of sending users on a YouTube scavenger hunt.

Some review sites even make competitor review mining extra easy for you. Capterra, for instance, allows reviewers to share why they switched from a competitor to the product they’re reviewing. 

Here’s an example from Buildertrend’s reviews:

Some of these insights can help you stand out from the competition and create a better customer service experience from the word go. 

Dig deeper into reviews to find information on where service falls short, and you’ll discover lots of customer support content ideas. 

For instance, if we were Descript, this information about customer support content would be extremely valuable to us:

We found lots of great insights in just a few examples. So hopefully, now you see how much you can learn from user reviews. 

Reviews of similar or competing products can point out lots of advantages and disadvantages of other products on the market. When it comes to improving the customer experience, learn from criticism and mistakes. 

Even better if they’re not your mistakes!

Social Media Feedback

You can collect plenty of customer service content ideas just by monitoring what users write on your Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube page.

Sometimes, service requests will be direct and immediate, like this request for assistance under one of QuickBooks videos:

But many times, users won’t tag or message you. That doesn’t mean you should ignore those interactions. So hit that search button (or employ your social listening tool) and check for mentions of your brand name.

Social media monitoring has specific advantages over feedback from other sources.

First, it’s the sheer volume and diversity. Nearly 5 billion people use social media nowadays. And 80% of your customers expect brands to interact with them on social media.

That’s a huge pool of insights to tap into, as opposed to maybe a handful of users who will go to such lengths as creating accounts on review sites or participating in user surveys.

The next advantage is immediacy. Feedback and inquiries happen in real-time. By being in tune with what users ask about your product, you can catch trends quickly and adjust where needed.

This is especially valuable if you’re rolling out changes to your product. You’ll quickly gauge initial, immediate feedback to optimize your support content. 

Online Communities and Forums

There’s great value in building and maintaining proprietary product-centric communities to foster engagement and unburden your support and service teams. 

But if you’re not there yet, don’t worry. There are plenty of public online communities to explore. So grab the popcorn and tune in. 

There’s no shortage of industry-specific forums and communities. For example, if you serve the construction industry, you’ll probably want to check forums like ContractorTalk to find out what’s irking construction professionals. 

Aside from industry-specific forums, there are some general and open communities, like Quora or Reddit.

Discussions on these forums often have a lot more context and specificity attached to them. Aside from finding out what customers are asking about your product, you can also learn:

• what they use it for
• what other tools do they use it with
• what alternatives to your product they consider. 

Just to illustrate how customer-centric companies use Reddit, here’s an exchange we found in a subreddit on Notion alternatives. 

The CEO of Slite, Christophe Pasquier, regularly responds to user questions. Not only that, but he also keeps a close eye on how users compare Slite to one of its strongest competitors. 

Clearly, there’s great value in listening in on forums, and we have the data to prove it.

A research study from 2020 called “Voice of the Users: A Demographic Study of Software Feedback Behavior” analyzed the different habits and behaviors of users leaving feedback on the app store, on social media, or on forums. 

The survey found that 70.37% of respondents cited getting help as their motivation for writing feedback on forums as opposed to social media or app stores. 

Furthermore, respondents working full-time reported using product forums at a higher rate than those working part-time or who are students. 

That means you’re more likely to hear the voice of your professional users (and buyers) on forums than on any other feedback channel.

And lastly, when it comes to feedback frequency, forum posters reported posting up to four times a year, so there’s no shortage of feedback to consider.

To recap, forums and communities are excellent sources of customer service content ideas. They’re the go-to source for users needing help, they provide usage context and are likely generated by people who use your product day in and day out.

Google Suggest and People Also Ask

Sourcing ideas from the Google Suggest and People Also Ask sections is a good content ideation tactic for any sort of content. Customer service content is no exception.

When you type in a search term related to your product, Google pulls related terms and questions that customers search for online. 

In the screenshot from Google below, you can see what sorts of doubts Confluence users face:

Try this exercise with your product or any other product or service you can think of. Don’t you think the results look like a solid foundation for a FAQ section on a website? 

Once you pick one of the queries Google suggests, you can go even more granular in the People Also Ask section.  

Very convenient, but there are more advantages to this method than meets the eye.

First, it’s the timeliness. Google knows what real people search for in real time. The queries are user-driven, authentic, and timely, which is especially valuable if your product is experiencing frequent updates or upgrades.

The second advantage is the proximity. The queries provided by Google are the very exact words your customers use when looking for help. 

This can help you optimize your content and messaging to better resonate with customers. You’ll avoid falling into the jargon trap that ails many knowledge bases and helpdesks.

Lastly, you can then implement those keywords into your SEO and content strategy to ensure your content shows up higher in search results. You’ll create more helpful content and make it easy for customers to find it.

Industry Trends, Reports, and Research

We said it in the beginning, but it bears repeating: customer service and support are not one-and-done assignments. 

As your product and users evolve, so does the market. At all times, you need to know what is happening in the broader ecosystem you operate in.

Let’s examine a real trend to see how research reports can help you cut to the chase when it comes to market conditions.

As we speak, AI and ML are spreading into every pore of the market. But that doesn’t mean everyone is readily jumping on the trend.

The finance and accounting sectors, for example, are somewhat split on the adoption of emerging technologies. 64% of decision-makers in the sector are confident about its implementation, while a considerable 36% still have reservations.

The penetration of those technologies is inevitable. But if you plan to embed such technologies in your product, the research findings pose a few questions for you.

For example, how responsive and adaptive is your target audience to emerging technologies? What barriers and objections do you need to overcome? How do you plan to assuage the skeptical 36% when push comes to shove? 

Hopefully, you won’t be an ostrich. Stay agile and ready to adapt and pivot. Excellent and timely service doesn’t just happen; it’s planned and carefully constructed. 

So if you haven’t already, make it a habit to read industry reports through a customer-centric lens.

Where Do You Find the Best Customer Service Content Ideas?

Creating your first set of documentation and tutorials is the first step. But after that, customer service and support should never stop evolving. 

To keep your users happy, you have to keep raising the bar. Sometimes it’s about improving the information you provide. Other times, it’s choosing the channels, formats, or types your users respond to best.

As more and more users prefer self-service and support, the content you create will play a crucial role. Users will talk to your face less and less, so you’ll need to source feedback and relevant topics anywhere you can find them. 

In this article, we showed you eight sources to keep an eye on. Which one of these will uncover the most value for your customer service and support efforts?