Support Ops

Learn to be a customer support pro.

Archives for May 2013

Crafting a Solution

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From Nick Francis at Help Scout:

Customer feedback helps you understand a problem from every point of view, then it’s your job to craft a solution that meets your customer’s needs. When a customer tells you how to fix something, they speak from only one point of view. Great product execution comes from a place of deeply understanding the big picture.

It’s too easy to be reactive when customers are telling you what’s wrong with your product. Instead of just giving them what they want, dig a little bit and find out what root problem they’re trying to solve. Instead of just solving one customer’s problem, you might be able to craft a better solution that will help out all of your customers.

Episode #18 – Tech Support With Carl Holscher

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Carl Holscher is on the show this week. We talk about tech support inside a more traditional institution like the National Institute of Health. He’s supporting some of the best scientists in the world as they work to solve cancer. Pretty cool, right?

Carl shares some of the tips tricks he has for keeping a variety of computers and operating systems running their best. It’s in-person support every day of the week for everything from Mac to Windows to Linux. He’s even working with machines that need Windows 95 to run!

[Read more…]

New Jobs Page Email Feed

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I’ve had a few requests for a dedicated email feed for new customer support and service jobs I come across. Well, ask and you shall receive!

If you want to keep up with every new job that I hear about and post on the Jobs page, head over here and sign up. It’s super quick, super easy, and you’ll stay super informed. (I just had to work that third super in somehow).

Not an email fan? Just keep checking the Jobs page at your leisure.

For those of you on the job hunt, let’s work to find you one!

Support Hangout Episode #2

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The best team in customer support is back for another episode of our live Support Hangout!

This week we talk about things not to do when having a Facebook meltdown along with the best way to communicate to your customers during an outage. After that, you’ll hear how Buffer’s support team gets help from programmers and how their Veggie Days are going. And to round everything off, you find out which of us actually does work from the bed.

Watch to the show

Show Notes and Links

This week’s shoutouts

This week’s sponsor – Sticker Mule

Sticker Mule does one thing really, really well – they make stickers and custom skins for your iPhone, iPad, laptop, and Kindle.

And just like you aim for fast response times with your emails, Sticker Mule aims for fast production and delivery for your stickers. They’ve got the entire process down to five days, which makes them the fastest sticker printer in the world.

Check it out here.

When a Remote Team Travels

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Airliner landing

Imagine this. You’ve got a company meetup next week. Since your team works remotely, they’re flying in for it. Travel day arrives and you realize that all of your support team is in airports or on flights at the same time. That leaves no one taking care of your customers. Yikes!

I know you’re thinking “Chase, our team would never be in that situation.”

Maybe.

But I’ve seen it happen with lots of great teams. They didn’t pay attention to their schedules. They didn’t look at the calendar before booking a flight. They didn’t take into account an airport not having WiFi or their Internet hotspot not working.

It all comes down to one thing.

Communicate your schedules

It’s as simple as that. Communicate, communicate, and communicate some more about what time you’re leaving and what time you’re arriving.

Have a central calendar with that kind of info on it. Mention in your weekly updates. Remind everyone when you start working that you’ll be leaving early that day.

There’s no such thing as too much communication, especially when it comes to making sure you’ve got enough coverage. Because if you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself in a situation where your whole team is on a plane with no one watching out for your customers.

Relax and Refresh

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I’m on vacation this week so I’ll be offline. No posts, no Twitter, or anything else. It’s going to be a time of reading and relaxing with my wife.

But you can still get your fill of support articles and news while I’m gone. Check out these great articles from the archives.

I’ll see you all next week!

A few articles of note

Watch Your Words

The Golden Support Rule

Twitter vs Google Support Match

Need even more?

Check out the archives here.

Or you can catch up on any podcast episodes that you missed too. Here’s a full list of all the episodes so far.

Inject Your Personality

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From Jeff Vincent at Wistia:

After you entrust us with your email info and create your Wistia account, you land on the account thanks page. We struggled a bit with what to put on this page – we couldn’t direct you straight into your account, because you need to activate by email (so we know you are real), but we also know if you don’t end up in your account soon, you might forget we even exist.

The idea of a “thank you and welcome” type video was not widely loved at first, but now it is firmly part of our digital personality. By putting the entire team’s faces in the video, new customers get started creating a relationship with us right away – and we get to introduce them to our goofy humor.

I love this idea. Instead of those boring account creation landing pages that are typically dead ends, Wistia uses it to say thanks. The best part – they get to inject their personality right into the beginning of their relationship with the customer.

Support Hangout Episode #1

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This is a weekly show focused on news from the customer support world. In the very first episode, we talk about the rules for public interfaces, how review systems could be better, and much more!

Watch to the show

Show Notes and Links

This week’s sponsor – Sticker Mule

Sticker Mule does one thing really, really well – they make stickers and custom skins for your iPhone, iPad, laptop, and Kindle.

And just like you aim for fast response times with your emails, Sticker Mule aims for fast production and delivery for your stickers. They’ve got the entire process down to five days, which makes them the fastest sticker printer in the world.

Check it out here.