Every week, I ask a question to our newsletter community. With such a diverse group of support pros, it’s the best place to turn for questions that need lots of different viewpoints.

This week’s question was simple:

What’s the best piece of advice you have for people new in customer support?

Here’s what you had to say.

“My tip: never forget that we’re here to make up for other people’s mistakes. It’s tough work, but someone’s gotta do it! Might as well do it right.” – Aaron Wheeler

“My best piece of advice for a prospective customer pro is to listen. If you are not a great listener, then I would recommend another profession, or practice, practice, practice. Every customer that contacts a support team wants a solution. It will be your responsibility to provide the right solution to them. Failure to do so will impact their satisfaction rating of your service during the interaction. They may also take their business to a competitor.” – Robert C. Gregory

“To be human” – Rooshdi Ali

“The best advice I can give is to truly be helpful. Find ways that you can help the customer and make their experience more enjoyable.It’s my advice to listen very well to what the customer is saying, ask lots of questions, and then recommend what you would do if you were in their shoes.

Lastly, I would say that you should completely focus on the job that you were hired to do. At one of my previous jobs I was so consumed by what the company had in store for me so I could get a promotion. I was trying so hard to get noticed and show people what I was capable of. When focusing on that, I ended up giving mediocre service. When I realized that I was doing this, I made it my goal to focus completely on the customer and making sure that I matched them up perfectly with what they were expecting and went above and beyond in recommending solutions for them. When focusing 100% on listening to the customer and being very helpful really made a big difference in how enjoyable it was to come to work.” – David M.

What would be your one piece of advice to give to people new to the support world?

When I first began in a role managing customer support at Monk Development, Inc., my goal was to continually acquire means of working faster and with more accuracy to serve an increasing volume of customers. With the phrase, “work smart, not hard” routinely repeating in my mind, every time a support case came in, I’d ask, “How can another person with this same question get what they need and be on their way much faster?” To my surprise, following that path was only fruitful ever so often. Soon I realized that efficiency with a support ticket isn’t the only thing customers appreciate.

“Work smart – not hard.”

Most of us are somewhat regrettably familiar with the idea of “working smart and not hard”. Even if it feels like a nagging voice in our work, we still can’t help but pursue our own interpretation of it almost every day. But what is the phrase really supposed to mean? And when we follow it, are we doing a good thing for the customer?

When I stepped back to rethink my process, I ended up redefining my take on the mantra. The result had a lasting impact on the way our team handles customer support today.

Hard vs smart

Let’s have a moment of honesty about our definitions of “hard” work and “smart” work. By “hard”, we probably mean something that is unnecessary—”busy work” which should have never been had we gone about the task the “right way.” By “smart” we probably mean efficiency, straight up. This usually involves a tool or process that multiplies productivity. Why drive yourself to work every day if you and your coworkers can carpool? Why carry thirty pounds of books in your bag, when you can easily wheel them in a cart up to your office? Working smart and not hard then is a practice that sounds great in theory, because of the imagined savings in time and resources.

However, when it comes to customer experience, are we sure the presumed benefits of the newest tool or methodology won’t translate to added costs elsewhere? It’s how we answer this added question that will determine whether we’re truly satisfying customers or just spinning everyone’s wheels. Even when we believe more efficiency could save us, we should first start out by meeting the hard work at its rightful place in our workflow.

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During a Google Hangout, Jeff Vincent offered up a nice, simple reminder to us:

You are Awesome

It’s easy to forget that. You’re working with customers every day with some of them being fantastic while others are less than fantastic. Complaints and criticisms, love your product and hate it something fierce, you’re the best and you’re the worst – you get to hear it all.

At the end of a long day or a very long week, just remember this. You. Are. Awesome.

My latest post over at Signals vs Noise:

Every new day brings new gadgets and gizmos. Whatever project or product you’re working on, there’s probably something that will make it just a tad bit better tomorrow. And a little bit better the day after that. And a smidge better the following day. But for every thing that makes it better, it means one more day of not shipping.

You can tweak that screenshot or redo that screencast a hundred times. But at some point  you just have to ship it.

Lots of companies out there offer some sort of premium or priority support to their customers. Basically, the customer pays more to get live chat / phone support, moved to the head of the email queue, or some other support related perk.

A 2013 CEI survey shows that 86% of buyers will pay more for a better customer experience. That’s not directly tied to a premium support offering but better support does go hand-in-hand with a better customer experience. Of that 86%, only 1% of customers feel that companies consistently meet their expectations. Ouch.

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Living outside of a small country town, my movie rental options are slim. Usually, I turn to Redbox since they’re cheap one night rentals and there’s several of them close to me.

After reserving some rentals, I stopped at the Redbox location only to find that the machine was broken. Sure, it’d be nice if Redbox would have warned me about that before taking my reservation but hey, it might have gone down after I placed the order. Anyway, I was out money and movies for the night.

When I got home, I emailed them to see if they could refund the charge. Sure, it was just $3.00 but hey, $3 is $3. It’s at least worth an email to see if I can get a refund or something.

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