Support Ops

Learn to be a customer support pro.

Customers Love Emoticons

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From our friends at UserVoice:

Some people think emoticons are stupid or unprofessional, but the fact of the matter is: nobody will get mad if you use one…but plenty of people may get mad if they think you’re being cranky with them (when you’re really not). We’re just fine overusing emoticons if it makes our communication clearer and users happier.

 I use smileys and such on occasion when customers use them first  but never really thought about how useful they might be. It’s true that they do help convey non-verbal expressions better than just typing out a sentence. Cool to see some data showing what they found when using them with customers.

Service and Raw Horsepower

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Darren Murph from Engadget:

“My advice to both startups and monoliths alike is simple: never lose focus on service in the race to win hearts and minds with raw horsepower. Don’t brush empathy aside for the sake of crafting a superior user interface. Don’t breed a culture of indifference — one that throws out “no” more frequently than “yes,” simply because it’s expensive and mentally taxing to truly solve the problems of those who pay for your wares”

You can always add more servers, more power, more buttons, more options, or more whatever in the race to be the best out there. But you can’t forget about the customer side of everything.

Tim Cook’s Letter

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Tim Cook’s letter about Maps in iOS6:

At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.

I don’t know if Cook wrote it himself or had someone else do it, but it’s a pretty great letter to say sorry. Make sure to read the whole letter.

Give Them a Link

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Every so often, I’ll pass on some friendly, easy tips and tricks to make support easier and customers happy.  This week, it’s all about the link.

Instead of telling a customer to “Go sign in at your account login page and then click on the Settings page”, just give them the link instead.  An email might look like this:

Hi Tom!

It’s easy to change that setting. Just head over to https://supportops.mystagingwebsite.com/account/me to see that settings page.  Once you get there, you can bookmark it so you won’t have to hunt around for it again.

If you have any other questions, just let me know and I’ll be happy to help. And have a spectacular Friday!

– Chase

It saves your customers a step of trying figure out where they should click inside their account.

If you want to check out some other quick and easy tips and tricks, head over to the Tips section of Support Ops. 

It’s in the Details

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w-hotel

While I was in Austin last week, I stayed at the W Hotel downtown. The staff has perfected the art of a hotel experience down to the smallest details.  Out of all of them, there’s one single act that stood out the most.

Every day, the hotel staff changes the floor mats depending on the time of day. The one above shows “Good Evening” but there’s also a “Good Morning” and “Good Afternoon”.  Not only are the mats always clean because of the frequent rotation, the attention to detail here shows me the staff actually cares.

When it comes to your emails, nail the details. Use their name when you open an email. Instead of “Have a good day” go with “Have a great Monday!” so that they know when you replied. Customers always pick up on these same details and they’ll love you for it.

Now go out and have a spectacular Monday!

Unknown

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“As far as customers are concerned you are the company. This is not a burden, but the core of your job. You hold in your hands the power to keep customers coming back – perhaps even to make or break the company.”

5 Ways to be a Better Support Pro

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I’m in Austin this week on a semi-secret mission. More on that later. But this came up with a friend the other day so I thought I’d share.

He wanted to know a few things to work on that were simple and easy.  I thought about it for a bit and came up with five things that he (and you) can do right now to be a better customer support rep.

#1 – Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

If you tell a customer that the order will be there by Friday, it better be there by Friday. If you can’t guarantee that, don’t tell it to the customer. It’s better to say it’ll be there by the weekend and then have it show up a few days early.

#2 – Help even if it’s not your product.

I get emails all the time about a customer’s Outlook not working or their phone getting Twitter messages as texts. It’s not an app that I provide support for but I still help out. Customers remember the people who help them.

#3 – Throw in a lagniappe if you can.

A lagniappe is a small gift throw in with a customers purchase like free shipping or an extra loaf of bread when you order a dozen. When someone pre-pays for 12 months at once, I usually throw in the 13th month free as a surprise. Customers love it.

#4 – Answer every complaint.

You’ll have customers that right in emails the length of short stories to complain about something. Answer them – it’s the very least you can do since they’ve spent the time telling you what’s not working for them.

#5 – Know when to stop.

Especially if you provide online customer support, it’s tempting to answer emails at all hours of the day. Sometimes you just need to disconnect from it.  Don’t get burnt out answering emails all day because it’ll show up in your interactions with the customer.

Any others that you’d add to that list?

Make It Easy

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When a customer is trying to reach your support team, make it really easy for them. A frustrated customer only gets more frustrated if they have to figure out the right phrase or URL to use to find help.

Two quick and easy tweaks:

  • With your website, make sure you’ve got the right redirects in place. If you’re support site is at supportops.co/support, redirect supportops.co/help to your help page.
  • Same goes for email. If it’s support@supportops.co, make sure help@ goes into your support queue.

Sure, it sounds like a no brainer but people forget to do it anyway. I just ran into it where I actually had to use a search box on a site to find the support contact info. They had it buried under help-me@theirdomain.com.

Go easy on your customer. Make sure the obvious ways to reach you actually do reach you.