Superior Support • Hacker News Board

Re: Superior Support

#21

Post by benohear » Mon, May 28, 2012, 6:41 PM UTC

jen_h wrote: post #17

Great advice, I live by this stuff, so it's neat to see it codified. ;) One thing I would add - always strive to respond within 24 hours, but do NOT respond in seconds/minutes. Five minutes after sending, users are often still frustrated and a good number won't read your response before firing back as their adrenaline is still up (also, they think you're a robot because you're too fast and robots can't possibly have…

I disagree, at least from the perspective of a customer. One hosting company I like to work with used to answer competently within anything from 10 minutes to an hour and this turned me into an evangelist. The prompt answers also made me a lot more tolerant when the response wasn't correct and allowed another iteration without waiting for another "within 24 hours".

Re: Superior Support

#22

Post by benohear » Mon, May 28, 2012, 6:46 PM UTC

One thing I'd add is: Once a problem is escalated, put the customer in direct contact with the higher level support. Triage is fine, but not being able to communicate with whoever is working on your problem is really frustrating.

Re: Superior Support

#23

Post by shanecleveland » Mon, May 28, 2012, 10:05 PM UTC

marginalboy wrote: post #7

Whether or not the rule that the "customer is always right" applies is context-dependent. In an educational environment, for example, we can't embrace this principle; it is contrary to our mission to leave people with misinformation that can affect their studies or research. I think it can be reworded to be useful guiding principle in more environments if you're willing to parse it more carefully. Perhaps something l…

Agreed. Context-dependent is an important distinction for this rule. Coming from a manufacturing-based business of mostly customized products, if all of our customers were always "right," then we would be loosing a losing a lot of money on replacing/refunding products to customers who ordered wrong, used the product incorrectly or are just trying to deceive us (which is rare). A good approach, in my opinion, is to not make the customer think they are wrong and find a way to amicably resolve the situation. My initial response is to gather more information and say "let's see what we can do to make this work for you." We find it is a good opportunity to show how accommodating we are, even when the customer is wrong, which can make a reoccurring customer out of them and educate them for future orders.

I am sure there are some types of business that would rather take the customer-is-right approach, which may be easier and less costly. And there are also probably times when letting certain customers take their business elsewhere may actually be best.

Re: Superior Support

#24

Post by shanecleveland » Mon, May 28, 2012, 10:15 PM UTC

chrisleydon wrote: post #6

justshipit wrote: post #5

Rule #1: "The customer is always right: no exceptions". This is absolutely flat-out wrong. Bad customers will chew up your support time, engineering resources, and mental health. The sooner it is recognized that some customers are simply toxic, the sooner you can get rid of them. If you fail to even entertain the notion that customers might be wrong, you're doing yourself and your employees a huge disservice.

I can understand where you're coming from. From a support mentality they have to be viewed as being right, although admittedly there are some customers that are probably worth losing in the long run. The idea behind that point was more to push the team to get things right and go that extra mile to help the customer. If they're rude though then the rule doesn't apply.

There will always be those few customers you are better of losing. But I don't think you want to dismiss a rude customer too quickly. I notice that many customers will initially approach a complaint or support need with rudeness/hostility, as they think it is more likely to get attention or to emphasize how much they have been put out. I often find that they can be quickly disarmed and be very nice to work with if you take the "kill 'em with kindness" approach. Don't go as far as to always say "you are right," but let them know you want to help them, even if they are not a delight to work with. These customers can become your biggest advocates.

Re: Superior Support

#25

Post by schammy » Mon, May 28, 2012, 10:40 PM UTC

jen_h wrote: post #17

Great advice, I live by this stuff, so it's neat to see it codified. ;) One thing I would add - always strive to respond within 24 hours, but do NOT respond in seconds/minutes. Five minutes after sending, users are often still frustrated and a good number won't read your response before firing back as their adrenaline is still up (also, they think you're a robot because you're too fast and robots can't possibly have…

Not true in my experience. Now maybe the difference is my company doesn't have a lot of pissed off customers... if the person is mad, I take time to try to understand what exactly is going on, why it's happening, and how we can fix it. But these are rare. We have good customers.

If I have our support email open a new one comes in and it's an easy one, I often reply in less than 60 seconds. 9 times out of 10 the customer is floored by how amazing that was.

Re: Superior Support

#26

Post by jen_h » Wed, May 30, 2012, 3:49 PM UTC

benohear wrote: post #21

jen_h wrote: post #17

Great advice, I live by this stuff, so it's neat to see it codified. ;) One thing I would add - always strive to respond within 24 hours, but do NOT respond in seconds/minutes. Five minutes after sending, users are often still frustrated and a good number won't read your response before firing back as their adrenaline is still up (also, they think you're a robot because you're too fast and robots can't possibly have…

I disagree, at least from the perspective of a customer. One hosting company I like to work with used to answer competently within anything from 10 minutes to an hour and this turned me into an evangelist. The prompt answers also made me a lot more tolerant when the response wasn't correct and allowed another iteration without waiting for another "within 24 hours".

Depends on the use case. If someone's having a dire emergency (or something that's hit a serious block), I answer them immediately.

However, if they, say, can't find a button on an interface, telling them where the button is in 30 seconds or less will yield an immediate firing back: "I already tried that, that doesn't work!!" 60% of the time.

Waiting 15 minutes to even up to four hours to answer the email will yield "Awesome, that works, thanks and thanks for answering so quickly!" most of the time, in my testing.

In fact, each and every time I deal with a difficult customer, when I go back and look at the thread, der, I answered them in under 5 minutes. I like to answer fast, but I have very much found that it hurts rather than helps so very often.

Gotta wait for some of that frustration to dissipate so that they're calm and able to read and follow instructions again. Frustration does not aid reading comprehension - when you're frustrated, sometimes you don't even read the response before firing back! I myself have been pretty guilty of this as a customer.