Customer Support Professional Blog

The conclusion of the Getting Real series. See post 1, post 2 and post 3 as well.

Get bad news out there and out of the way.

If something goes wrong, tell people. Even if they never saw it in the first place.

For example, Basecamp was down once for a few hours in the middle of the night. 99% of our customers never knew, but we still posted an “unexpected downtime” notice to our Everything Basecamp blog. We thought our customers deserved to know.

…

Be as open, honest, and transparent as possible. Don’t keep secrets or hide behind spin. An informed customer is your best customer. Plus, you’ll realize that most of your screwups aren’t even that bad in the minds of your customers. Customers are usually happy to give you a little bit of breathing room as long as they know you’re being honest with them.
(c) Getting Real. Chapter 14.

Continuation from the series of posts inspired by Getting Real book. See this previous post and this previous post. Please note that what works for 37signals may not work for you as a smaller team or a bigger corporation.

Use forums or chat to let customers help each other.

Forums and web-based group chat are a great way to let customers ask questions and help one another out. By eliminating the middleman — that’s you — you provide an open stream of communication and save yourself time in the process.

At our product forums, customers post tips and tricks, feature requests, stories, and more. We pop in from time to time to offer some assistance but the forums are mainly a place for the community to help each other and share their experiences with the product.

You’ll be surprised how much people want to help one another.

(c) Getting Real. Chapter 14.

This is a sequel of the previous post. Time in support is of the essence.

Quick turnaround time on support queries should be a top priority.

Customers light up when you answer their questions quickly. They’re so used to canned responses that show up days later (if at all) that you can really differentiate yourself from competitors by offering a thoughtful response right away. During business hours, we answer 90% of all email support requests within 90 minutes — and often within a half-hour. And people love it.

Even if you don’t have a perfect answer, say something. You can buy goodwill with a response that is delivered quickly in an open, honest way. If someone is complaining about an issue that can’t be fixed immediately, tell them something like, “We hear what you’re saying and we’ll be working on it in the future.” It’s a great way to diffuse a potentially negative situation.

Customers appreciate directness and will often shift from angry to polite if you respond quickly and in a straight-shooting manner.

(c) Getting Real. Chapter 14.

I’m starting a series of articles inspired by Getting Real book by 37signals. Chapter 14 of this book tells about customer support in software development. And guys from 37signals (creators of Basecamp and Ruby on Rails) have some good points worth sharing.

In the restaurant business, there’s a world of difference between those working in the kitchen and those out front who deal with customers. It’s important for both sides to understand and empathize with the other. That’s why cooking schools and restaurants will often have chefs work out front as waiters so the kitchen staff can interact with customers and see what it’s actually like on the front lines.

A lot of software developers have a similar split. Designers and programmers work in the “kitchen” while support handles the customers. Unfortunately, that means the software chefs never get to hear what customers are actually saying. That’s problematic because listening to customers is the best way to get in tune with your product’s strengths and weaknesses.

The solution? Avoid building walls between your customers and the development/design team. Don’t outsource customer support to a call center or third party. Do it yourself. You, and your whole team, should know what your customers are saying. When your customers are annoyed, you need to know about it. You need to hear their complaints. You need to get annoyed too.
(c) Getting Real. Chapter 14.

I decided to start publishing links to interesting articles and resources related to customer support. I call it weekly linkdump as I’m going to publish it about once a week. However don’t blame me if I miss a week or two if there’s nothing worth mentioning.

So here we go!

1. Why Customer Service is the New Marketing from get satisfaction blog. I’ve already mentioned these ideas in my  older post, but I’m ready to repeat it as many times as needed.
2. Humans for Customer Support from Feld thoughts. Want to get in contact with a human and not an autoresponder in a corporation? Use data from here.
3. An expanded view of customer service from get satisfaction blog. Wonderful article. Must read! It explains how it should be and why.
4. The Wisdom of Customer Crowds from get satisfaction blog. “Wherever you can, keep your conversations with customers public”

Just have a look at this hilarious example of automated email tech support from MS.

I’d rather not answer at all.

And another example of the kind. And again from Microsoft.

Of course, customer service IS marketing and every contact with the customer is marketing. — Steve Miller

I ran into this wonderful phrase reading Steve Miller’s blog post It’s the Customer, Stupid (NOT, It’s the Stupid Customer). Think about it once again: every contact with the customer is marketing. And since customer service is the single most frequent point of contact with the customer it’s essential from the marketing point of view to have perfect customer support.

You don’t just resolve the current customer’s problem. If you are speaking with him for half an hour trying to make his new hardware work it’s your 30 minute block advertising in prime time. Use this opportunity to please the fellow on the other side of the telephone cord. There’s no better marketing channel than the word of mouth.

Remember, customer service is not just about resolving problems, it’s about making money for company.

Have you read 9 Challenges to Making Product Support Transparent blog post by Josh Ledgard? I think there’re good thougts there and recommend you to have a look.

This morning my ICQ client failed to connect to the network.

I tried another client and then meebo.com. Still the same. I asked my friends and coworkers who use ICQ and got the same response: ICQ doesn’t operate properly today.

What’s the cause? I don’t know. But as we use ICQ for supporting our customers it’s a real problem now.

Not a good start of the day.

Yesterday a nice article 6 Technologies to Provide Customer Support without Going Nuts was posted on VerusNova blog. Mike compares 6 approaches to provide customer support:

1. Email
2. Support forums
3. Knowledgebase
4. Live chat
5. VoIP Helpdesk
6. Helpdesk or trouble ticket software

From my experience I would tell that a live chat and a good support forum is the best combination if you want to find the solution really fast and without too much hassle. Having trouble ticket software is also good sometimes but not for all types of business.

What do you think?