Support Ops

Learn to be a customer support pro.

The Apple Developer Website Hack

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From Apple:

Last Thursday, an intruder attempted to secure personal information of our registered developers from our developer website. Sensitive personal information was encrypted and cannot be accessed, however, we have not been able to rule out the possibility that some developers’ names, mailing addresses, and/or email addresses may have been accessed. In the spirit of transparency, we want to inform you of the issue. We took the site down immediately on Thursday and have been working around the clock since then.

I finally received this email Monday night, a full four days after Apple’s developer website went down. That feels like a long time to be leaving your customers in the dark on what’s going on. I understand they needed time to investigate but Apple left everyone in the dark on what was happening for several days.

How would you handle informing your customers in this kind of situation?

 

A Reminder About Empathy

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From Emily at 37signals:

In customer support, empathy is everything—we need to be able to put ourselves in our customers’ shoes, feel their pain, give them the kind of help we’d want to receive whenever we have a problem. Potential hires are even tested for empathy before joining the team. — Every once in a while, admittedly, my empathetic skills can be … challenged. And sometimes I make mistakes.

A great reminder on how important empathy is when it comes to customer support. Sympathy is one thing but you want support reps to be able to empathize with your customers.

Found in Translation

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From Jim at 37signals:

The first thing I do when I read an email from one of our customers is to mentally translate what they have written into how I would write that email. I take each sentence, break it down, and rewrite it in my voice, with my understanding of how our software works.

We all tend to do this translation on the fly with customer emails. I love how Jim breaks it down and looks at how it helps.

The Customer Support Weekend Roundup #12

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Every week, there’s some great articles out there on customer support and the overall customer experience. Most of us working on support teams tend to be busy helping customers so we don’t have a chance to go scouring the web for them.

Hangout articles

We’ll also use these articles on Monday’s live Support Hangout. You’ll get to hear what our panel of customer support pros think about them. I recommend reading through the articles this weekend rather than having to skim them quickly during the live show.

Make sure to join us at 5:30pm Central / 6:30pm Eastern for the live Support Hangout!

Bonus articles

These articles and links didn’t make it onto the list for the live hangout Monday. But you should still definitely check them out!

Did you see a good article that I missed this week? Leave a link to it in the comments. I’ll include it in next week’s support roundup!

The Customer Support Weekend Roundup #11

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Every week, there’s some great articles out there on customer support and the overall customer experience. Most of us working on support teams tend to be busy helping customers so we don’t have a chance to go scouring the web for them.

This week’s roundup is a tad different. Our show on Monday will focus on a single theme – live chat support. We’ll talk about the great, the good, and the bad of it. So all the articles this week center around this theme.

I recommend reading through the articles this weekend rather than having to skim them quickly during the live show.

Make sure to join us at 5:30pm Central / 6:30pm Eastern for the live Support Hangout!

Did you see a good article that I missed this week? Leave a link to it in the comments. I’ll include it in next week’s support roundup!

The Customer Support Weekend Roundup #10

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Every week, there’s some great articles out there on customer support and the overall customer experience. Most of us working on support teams tend to be busy helping customers so we don’t have a chance to go scouring the web for them.

We’ll also use these articles on Monday’s live Support Hangout. You’ll get to hear what our panel of customer support pros think about them. I recommend reading through the articles this weekend rather than having to skim them quickly during the live show.

Make sure to join us at 5:30pm Central / 6:30pm Eastern for the live Support Hangout!

Did you see a good article that I missed this week? Leave a link to it in the comments. I’ll include it in next week’s support roundup!

Taco Kickstarter Project

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taco app

I don’t usually care much for Kickstarter projects, mostly because I rarely find one that fits what I need. But when Troy sent me a link to his new project Taco, I knew I had to share it with you all (or ya’ll as they say here in Tennessee).

If you’re like me, you’ve probably got to-dos scattered all over the place. There’s some in Basecamp for feature requests, some in GitHub for bugs that customers reported, and then don’t forget about the odd home to-do list that’s over in Gmail. Taco puts all those to-dos in one place.

I really like two parts of the design:

  1. It’s super simple without lots of junk cluttering things. I’m a fan of less is more and Taco delivers on simplicity.
  2. You can’t create tasks in Taco. That’s right – it’s only for seeing your tasks and deciding which ones to work on at that moment.

If that sounds like something you’d like, then go support the team behind it. You can find their Kickstarter page here.

The Customer Support Weekend Roundup #9

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I’ve been so busy with things here at Support Ops, the Weekend Roundup dropped off the radar for a bit. But it’s back!

Jeff Vincent and I were talking about how it’s a great place to preview the articles we’ll be talking about at the Support Hangout on Monday. So I’m revamping the roundup just a bit and posting the article links before the show. It’s a chance to read through them rather than having to skim them quickly during the live show.

You’ll get to hear what our support pros think about each of these articles this Monday. Make sure to join us at 5:30pm Central / 6:30pm Eastern for the live Support Hangout!

Did you see a good article that I missed this week? Leave a link to it in the comments. I’ll include it in next week’s support roundup!

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.