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Archives for January 2014

Focusing on Replies and Response Time

January 29, 2014 By Chase Clemons

From Micah at Zapier:

We want to get people solutions, and we want to do it with as little back-and-forth as possible—replies allows us to track both. As for response time, it’s always been something we look at, and now a bucketed measure of how many users are getting replies within X hours is front and center.

Every team has their own personal metrics they like to track. But I think Micah really gets to some solid ones here with the number of replies and response time. If either are those are high, customers will be frustrated.

Throw in the customer happiness score and that’s the core of any good metric tracking.

Hangout #31 – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Support Experiences

January 27, 2014 By Chase Clemons

Since we’re all customer support pros (customer champions, happiness heroes, etc.), we’re in a unique spot to really look at interactions with other customer support / service teams. It’s kind of like how you look at dining out a little differently if you’ve ever worked in the restaurant industry.

So on this show, we’re going to talk about some of the great support experiences we’ve had along with the not so great ones. You’ll get to hear some stories along with things that we learned from them.

Listen / Watch the Episode

http://media.blubrry.com/supportopshangout/p/s3.amazonaws.com/supportops/hangout/hangout31.mp3

Ways to listen or watch: iTunes | MP3 | YouTube | RSS 

This week’s shownotes

  • Emma
  • Josh Pigford and Temper podcast
  • Support Ops Job Board
  • Email us! Jeff / Carolyn / Chase L. / Chase C.

This week’s shoutouts

  • From Carolyn – Product Hunt
  • Jeff – Custom Made
  • From Chase L. – QuizUp
  • From Chase C. – Jambox

Episode #28 – Investigating Customer Service with Ashley Verrill

January 27, 2014 By Chase Clemons

This week I talk with Ashley Verrill. She’s the managing Editor at Software Advice and writes some great customer experience articles at Customer Service Investigator. We talk about the trends she’s seeing from other company’s customer service teams. We also touch on self-service support and how companies can get better at it.

Listen to the show

http://media.blubrry.com/supportopshangout/p/media.blubrry.com/supportops/p/s3.amazonaws.com/supportops/podcast/supportops28a.mp3
Subscribe to the podcast: RSS | iTunes | Download 

Show Notes and Links

  • Ashley Verill-  Twitter | Website
  • Customers Service Investigator
  • Software Advice
  • “Is Amazon’s Mayday Support Model Right for Your Organization?“
  • “How can we provide better customer service? Create software that lets customers serve each other“
  • Music heard on the show is from Dexter Britain under a Creative Commons license.

But It’s Not an Automated Email

January 23, 2014 By Chase Clemons

P.S. Though this is not an automated email, we keep on sending out these emails to all those people whom we find eligible of using our services. To unsubscribe from future mails (i.e., to ensure that we do not contact you again for this matter), please send revert E-mail with “remove please” as subject.

Sure, that’s definitely not an automated email. If you find yourself adding a P.S. like this on your emails to customers, just don’t even think about sending it.

Hangout #30 – The Best Support is No Support

January 21, 2014 By Chase Clemons

This week we’re talking about the idea that “the best support is no support”. It sounds kinda crazy, right? How could support pros actually advocate ways to support the customer by not having them contact support? But there’s actually solid reasons to do this.

Listen / Watch the Episode

http://media.blubrry.com/supportopshangout/p/s3.amazonaws.com/supportops/hangout/hangout30.mp3

Ways to listen or watch: iTunes | MP3 | YouTube | RSS 

This week’s shownotes

  • Stop Teaching and Start Fishing: the 3 scenarios when support teams should skip the how-to
  • Josh Pigford and Temper podcast
  • Support Ops Job Board
  • Email us! Jeff / Carolyn / Chase L. / Chase C.

This week’s shoutouts

  • From Carolyn – Misfit Shine
  • Jeff – “The Best Service is No Service” | Temper.io
  • From Chase L. – Diceware strong password generation
  • From Chase C. – Munchkin

 

Hangout #29 – Empowering Your Support Pros

January 14, 2014 By Chase Clemons

For this weeks’ hangout, we’ll talk about what it means to empower your support team. If you want a solid support experience from a support team that’s lean and nimble, you have to empower them to take ownership of that support experience. But what does that even mean? What does that look like with your team?

Listen / Watch the Episode

http://media.blubrry.com/supportopshangout/p/s3.amazonaws.com/supportops/hangout/hangout29.mp3

Ways to listen or watch: iTunes | MP3 | YouTube | RSS 

This week’s shoutouts

  • From Jeff – Calm.com
  • From Chase L. – Pebble
  • From Chase C. – “S” by J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst

How to Host an Online Class

January 14, 2014 By Chase Clemons

I love hosting online classes for Basecamp. Twice a week, our team gets to meet with customers and show them how Basecamp can help them be more awesome. And every time I talk to other support teams about our classes, the conversation always turns to how to get started.

I fully believe that you should be offering classes to your customers this year. So let’s talk about how to get you started with them.

Steps for hosting a successful class

1) Create the class.

You’ve got to start somewhere on this, right? So start with laying out the class itself. Pick the general topic first. If this is the first class you’ll offer, go with a general introduction to your product topic. You’ll want to cover things like the basics of what your product can do to help your customers be more awesome at their job.

After you pick the topic, write out a list of items you want to cover in the class. Then work those items into a natural flow that a person new to your product might go through. From that list, create a script for yourself to follow during the class. That’ll come in handy for the first few classes. Save the improving for when you’re more familiar with how you want this class to go.

Last point on this one – save time at the end for a live Q&A. A class without a chance to ask questions is just a video. By having a Q&A, it becomes a two-way street and gives you a much better experience.

2) Pick a video conference tool.

There’s a lot of them out there. GoToWebinar, Adobe Connect, WebEx, Google Hangouts, etc. I use GoToWebinar because it works well when you’ve got a few hundred people in the class. If you’re looking at a smaller class, Google Hangouts are a great, free option.

3) Set up a landing page with upcoming classes and sign up.

You’ll need a page to direct people to for signing up. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. Just tell people what the class will be about, give a list of upcoming class times, and include a link to sign up for each class time that you offer. By having them sign up, you’ll have a good idea of how many people will attend each one. Plus, you’ll get their name and email so you can follow-up with them after the class. (More on that part later).

4) Add a link to that landing page on your marketing site and any welcome emails.

The page only works if people know about it. So send it out on a regular basis. Add it to any tours that you have on your marketing site. Include it in any welcome emails to new customers. Getting new customers to take a class will help with any product onboarding that you do.

5) Test it all out!

Don’t let a customer try any of this before you test it out. Check the entire flow from registering for a class to showing up at the right time for it. I’ve seen too many people not test their tech and end up with egg on their face come class time.

6) Record it.

Every customer won’t be able to make your live class times. After you get a couple under your belt, record one of them and add it to your sign up page. That way customers can always watch a class on their schedule rather than waiting around on yours.

7) Follow-up with attendees.

After the class is over, send the attendees a short follow-up email. You got their name and email address back in step three, right? This gives you a chance to say thanks for attending. They get a chance to ask you any lingering questions.

Things to keep in mind

The more you host an online class, the more little things you’ll learn. Here’s a few quick little things you’ll want to keep in mind.

Keep them short.

Even if you offer these classes for free (and you should), customers are still paying by giving you their time. 30 minutes is more than enough for an online class that’s a general intro to your product. More advanced classes make take longer but even then, I’d recommend to stick close to 30 minutes or less.

Make them easy to register and attend.

If customers have to fill out huge sign up forms, you’ll see a drop off in registrations. All you need is their name and email. That’s more than enough to sign up for a class. For the attending part, don’t make them download some video conference app that only works on a specific operating system or browser. That’s just more hassle for them.

Don’t call them a webinar.

Seriously, don’t use the word “webinar”. It’s dumb, stupid, and just sounds wrong. Really, who though putting “web” and “seminar” together was a good idea?

Make time zones easy.

Unless your product is only used by people in one timezone, you’re going to run into the joy of time zones. On your landing page, make sure you show the timezone clearly. Otherwise, you’ll have people like me showing up an hour early or an hour late because I didn’t know you meant Pacific Time for the class start time.

Customers love online classes

I’ve been part of online classes for over two years now and the majority of customers I’ve talked to love them. They love getting free training and having the live Q&A to get answers right there.

Give it a shot this year. I’m betting your customers will love it too.

Advanced Email Sign-off

January 7, 2014 By Chase Clemons

Earlier this week, I got an email from Andy Lang over at Figure 53 with a great tweak to my normal sign-off. I’ll let him explain:

I’ve been using a modified version of your “Have an awesome day!” signoff, with Typinator’s handy insert day/insert tomorrow’s day functions, but finally had the spare time to sit down and put together an AppleScripted version of it that gets a lot fancier, which I thought I’d pass on. It works with Typinator and TextExpander, and should work with any other expander that can run AppleScript.

Basically, this script is called from an expansion snippet, and then returns “Don’t hesitate to reach out again if we can help with anything else, and have an awesome _____!”, and inserts a different value depending both on the day of the week and time of day (morning, evening, or night). It’s admittedly way overkill, but I’m a geek, and it was a challenge I wanted to crack to make things a little more custom.

From Tues-Thurs, it simply returns “Tuesday” up until the evening, “Tuesday night” during the evening, and “Wednesday” once it’s nearing bedtime.

On Friday, once we hit evening it simply says, “weekend”, which continues through Saturday, and then on Sunday it’s “Sunday” during the day, and “week” starting in the evening, until it’s time to switch to “Monday night”. (I figure that if somebody’s emailing support that late on a Friday, all hope for an awesome Friday night is pretty well gone at that point!)

Like I said, it’s probably more than a bit a bit over the top, but having done the hard work, I figured I’d share in case it’s of interest to anybody else  🙂

I’ve been using it with TextExpander and it’s working great. And if you like it, make sure to give Andy some thanks!

Update: Andy made a few more customizations and fixed a weekend bug with it. Here’s the most recent version to download.

Hangout #28 – It’s Season Two!

January 7, 2014 By Chase Clemons

And we’re back for season two!

This show’s focused on customer support and service in 2014. It’s a brand new year, which means we can all wildly speculate about what will happen and see how close we get by the end of the year.

Seriously though, the start of 2014 does give us a chance to look at what we want to do with our support. It gives us a time to dream big and see what we can accomplish.

Listen / Watch the Episode

http://media.blubrry.com/supportopshangout/p/s3.amazonaws.com/supportops/hangout/hangout28.mp3

Ways to listen: iTunes | MP3 | YouTube | RSS 

This week’s shoutouts

  • From Jeff – Calm.com
  • From Chase L. – Pebble
  • From Chase C. – “S” by J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst

The Live Support Ops Hangout is Back!

January 2, 2014 By Chase Clemons

I’m sure you’ve seen lots of people saying all sorts of motivational things about 2014 already. I’ll spare you yet another article on that subject. I’m more interested in helping you be a customer support pro.

That’s why we’re kicking off the first Support Ops Hangout of 2014 with a look at the big themes and trends that’ll happen this year. You’ll see Carolyn, Jeff, and the other Chase give their thoughts on the support channels you need to focus on, what ideas you need to test out, and how to keep scaling your support as you grow this year.

If you’re set on creating a better support experience for your customers this year, make sure to tune in to the show this Monday at 5:30pm Central / 6:30pm Eastern. Double check and convert that to your local time if you’re in a different time zone.

You’ll be able to watch the show here as soon as we go live.

I’ll see you Monday and until then, enjoy the start of the new year!

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