http://blog.support-professional.com Subjective notes on customer support, customer care, helpdesk infrastructure, tools and systems Mon, 21 May 2007 14:07:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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 ... http://blog.support-professional.com/2007/05/getting-real-on-customer-support-volume-4/ 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 ... http://blog.support-professional.com/2007/05/getting-real-on-customer-support-volume-3/ 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 ... http://blog.support-professional.com/2007/05/getting-real-on-customer-support-volume-2/ 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 ... http://blog.support-professional.com/2007/05/getting-real-on-customer-support-volume-1/ 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! Why Customer Service ... http://blog.support-professional.com/2007/04/weekly-linkdump/ 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. http://blog.support-professional.com/2007/04/microsoft-customer-support-is-officially-stupid/ 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 ... http://blog.support-professional.com/2007/04/customer-service-is-marketing/ 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. http://blog.support-professional.com/2007/04/9-challenges-to-making-product-support-transparent/ 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 ... http://blog.support-professional.com/2007/03/what-is-going-on-with-icq/ 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: Email Support forums Knowledgebase Live chat VoIP Helpdesk 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 ... http://blog.support-professional.com/2007/02/6-technologies-to-provide-customer-support-without-going-nuts/