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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

A couple of days ago Joel Spolsky wrote a very nice article about customer support in a small software development company. Once again it’s nicely written and has a lot of smart points. But what I want to talk about today is not the article itself but an interesting observation based on it and other […]

I don’t think I can add something here.
Just read a bad example.
And a good one.

Yesterday Ian Landsman, the founder of UserScape, Inc. independent software development vendor which stands behind help desk software product HelpSpot published a brilliant article 10 Ways to Convert Customer Service into Sales on his blog.
I couldn’t say the same things better. When I worked for a micro ISV myself we conducted customer service according to these rules and the success […]

There’s a great saying by a futurist William Knoke:
The consumer is not king anymore. He is dictator.
Unfortunately for most of us, it is not true. But fortunately enough it is not true.
I don’t think customers want to be dictators. Dictatorship is inefficient and unpleasant. And what a typical customer would prefer is a mixture of […]