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Alla Klein: a fake person in charge of customer support

code.dblock.org

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Re: Alla Klein: a fake person in charge of customer support

#21

Post by MartinCron »

ben1040 wrote: post #3

I remember setting up a website back in the 90s for a construction equipment company. They had no way of easily tracking leads from the website versus people who just saw them in the yellow pages or something. So, their solution was to have a fake salesman's name on the website. People would call and ask for him, and the caller would be told he was out of the office and someone else would be happy to help out. Meanwh…

The first company I worked at would advertise with different extensions, such as (800)555-1212 x 123 in different publications, when we answered the phone and somebody asked for x123, we would just log what they requested and say "I can help you with that..."

Re: Alla Klein: a fake person in charge of customer support

#22

Post by alphamale3000 »

dblock wrote: post #18
evanhamilton wrote: post #4

I have to agree with martey here: the way you did support is fantastic, creating a fake persona is not. People like honesty and hate being fooled. If your customers found out about Alla, I think they would be very upset. Especially the ones who asked her out!

Now, 15 years later I totally agree. I definitely had all of the intentions of fooling clients into believing that I had a bigger company than I actually had - inventing personnel speaks for itself. I wouldn't do it again.

Do your clients really need to know the size of your staff?

The most intriguing part is about the BVI incorporation and the cash withdrawals in Geneva. Do you plan to elaborate on that in a further post? Is it worth the trouble?

Re: Alla Klein: a fake person in charge of customer support

#23

Post by smokinn »

GuiA wrote: post #13
jguimont wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is the case where your name is not common or not recognized easily by your target audience. I have a french name (Julien), try and pronounce that so an american knows what you are talking about (we target construction workers). Maybe the response wouldn't be "who are you again?" if my name was John or Eddy.

I'm Guillaume. I regularly tell people to just call me "William" :)

William is my uncle, not me. When people struggle I just tell them it's 2 syllables: Gui and Ohm. They go oh! and get it right from then on.

Re: Alla Klein: a fake person in charge of customer support

#24

Post by bitwize »

In Boston there is a column for gay men to write anonymously to for help and advice with their medical issues (especially sexual and psychological).

It's called "Ask Dr. Cox". (hurr, hurr)

"Dr. Cox" is actually a pseudonym for a small group of physicians who respond to the questions. Nevertheless the idea of having a single "name" and "face" to address your concerns to seems to be working -- and it helps these doctors contribute to a much-needed service without occupying too much time from any one of them.

Re: Alla Klein: a fake person in charge of customer support

#28

Post by akshat »

We had done something like this for my first attempt at a startup. We had this product in India, and my name as well as those of our co-founders can be spelled in many ways. This can be confusing. So we picked a name which is like the most common name in India, which nobody gets right.

Re: Alla Klein: a fake person in charge of customer support

#29

Post by jaylevitt »

When AOL was Q-Link, we did something similar; all of our newsletters were written by "Jenny Crocker" (Betty's daughter, we decided). It was convenient to have a representative character that always spoke in a consistent voice, yet could be staffed by multiple people. At first we were coy about whether she was real, but it eventually became an in-joke among the entire user base.

Ronald McDonald isn't just one clown, either.

Re: Alla Klein: a fake person in charge of customer support

#30

Post by andrewflnr »

matdwyer wrote: post #5

I think the point of creating a "fake" person is so everyone involved can provide the support when ever they are available, and it looks like a unified source. I've done this a few times and it works very well, rather then having different people constantly responding.

Actually, in this case, they made sure only one person was on a thread at a time, to make sure "Alla" had a consistent voice.
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