Clever way of getting your job openings in front of the people that actually use your product.

Simple idea, right? You’d be surprised at how many people don’t do it.

Sure, it’s easy to take a screenshot. Then you can add it to your help article and detail out how something works. But try to add a video in there as well. It’ll help people actually see what you’re doing and hear you explain it as you go.

It doesn’t have to be a fancy video with lots of graphics and zooms. Just say hi, what you’re going to show them, and then show them how that works. Make sure to give it some personality to set it apart from all the others out there.

Customers will love being able to watch their answer in action.

If you’ve ever called a big company’s support line, you know they’ve got a thick binder full of scripts that they’re supposed to read through. They drone on and on with scripted phrases that just make them sound like boring robots out to frustrate you in even the simplest of things.

With your support, throw out those scripts and rule books. Trust your team to do what’s right with your customers. Sure, you can have a bill of customer rights or a set of guiding values for your support team. But don’t script out their response. Don’t lock them into unbreakable rules that aren’t needed. Just like Nordstrom did with its employee handbook, keep things as simple and concise as possible when outlining how you want your customers to be treated.

If you’ve got those scripts and rules, just go on and burn them. Right now. I’ll wait and listen to a song from my new favorite band while you do.

I ran out to get some take-out last night and of course, the restaurant was packed on a busy Saturday night. I used the restaurant’s online ordering system so my food was ready and waiting when I arrived. However, the take-out line was four people deep. I ended up waiting 20 minutes just to get my food. Why? The person manning the take-out register wasn’t communicating with customers very well.

Here’s how each person’s order played out.

Remember, it’s a busy Saturday night, most of the people in line are checking their iPhones or talking with friends, and non one is really paying attention to the order in front of them.

A customer walks up to the take-out register to place an order. Each order takes about five minutes to complete since they were for multiple people. Plus, the menu’s kinda big so it took a minute to browse through it. After getting the order rang up, the cashier told the customer the total and that it was a 30 minute wait. Naturally, each person decided to leave at that point because 30 minutes is a long time to wait in a narrow corridor with no seating.

Repeat that for three other customers and you finally get to me who’s been waiting for twenty minutes to pick up an order already placed. As we were checking out, I suggested that the  cashier tell people the wait time in advance. It’s a simple tweak that would’ve sped through those other people who didn’t want to wait around.

What’s that got to do with you?

Give your customers an average wait time for contacting you. If you’re running thirty minutes on an email response, the customer will send that short question via Twitter to get a faster response time. They’ll also see that time and double-check the help pages to make sure they can’t get an instant answer there.

Having the average response time shown gives the customer more information, which makes them happier. Every customer in that restaurant that left were frustrated over the time lost placing the order.

It’s easy to head off that frustration by giving them a simple piece of data – your average response time.

Be clear about the features and tools that you’ll be adding. If you’re not adding Gantt charts because you don’t see the use in them, let people know. Even if it’s a no, people will know if they need to stick with your product or find an alternative.

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. 

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.

Smile before you pick up the phone or talk with a customer.

It’s such a simple trick with phone calls.  They’ll hear the smile in your voice, which goes a long ways with a customer.