Great Customer Support

I was reminded again about the bus analogy dealing with the people on the bus helping you reach your destination. If along the way you found a passenger on the bus that was pulling you in the wrong direction wouldn’t you want them off your bus? Yes! And you should be willing to pay their fare to get on a different bus if you can! The key here is that you remove people or things that are not contributing to the success of the organization. That may be people, responsibilities or even a product line. If it creates drag on the organization, get rid of it. The core that is left will be more successful by eliminating the things that hold it back. Think about companies that stopped a brand or stopped a business because it did not help the core business. You will find that they are more successful today as they focus on what they do do well and succeed there.

If I were to sum up what makes a great support organization it would be the people! The right people tend to overcome any obstacle, figure out how to get the job done, and become the people you can always trust. In Jim Collins’ book he mentioned having the right people on the bus. The procedures and processes for support are good, but the people you have tend to figure things out without the need for step by step instructions. They often come up with the process by doing what is needed and then the processes “write themselves” as these people learn the best way to solve a problem and write it down so it can be shared!

Once you have these people, you do whatever you can to keep them. If you keep them, you stay strong. This is especially true in support where turnover is high and expected. At my company we have enjoyed the best support when we have maturted and trained people and they have stayed for long times.

Easy to say, tough to do!

If you dropped your car off to get serviced and it started to draw near the end of a day, and the service was expected to take several hours, and the station said they would call you when the car was ready, you would start to wonder – “Is my car going to be ready or not by the end of the day?” Imagine  how much better this could be if an update was supplied about half way through the day. You would have a better understanding of what was happening and the assurance it would be done. Or, what if it were not going to be done? This ties into 2 previous posts of “Reset Expectations” and “Do what you say and mean what you do!”

The point is, we need to update our customers. You do not want to overdo it, but we all want to know what is going on, that we are not forgotten, and that the issue that is being worked on will be handled and how soon. We like it. We should provide it!

In our support center we have had days when a customer will call back multiple times to get the answers they want because one representative will do something more than the other and even stretch the scope of what the support organization should be doing. Almost like a kid who will go to a dad to get permission for something and when he is not given the answer he wants, he goes and asks his mom the same question hoping for a different response. Making sure your representatives are telling customers the same thing and performing the same support to all customers is important. It has resulted in poor surveys as well since the customer will feel they did not get the same level of support that they did the last time when they called. Consistency means we have one message and that is more effective. Now, sometimes the message needs to change and be updated. It is important, if this happens, to ensure all are on the same page with the information being supplied. Works in parenting too!

Well, that is a constant message that my boss likes to follow. I agree. If we can be personal and speak with people we achieve so much more by calling than emails back and forth. It is one thing to follow up a call with an email, it is a different thing to call and work through multiple questions and even resolve a case. If you can, calling the customer is so much better than continuous emails back and forth.