I want to share a few things I’ve learned about customer support in a small shop like ours.
1. Don’t Fear Customers
The first thing I’ve observed is that customers who contact support are the ones most likely to stay with you over time. They’re in for the long haul, otherwise they’d not even bother asking you questions or reporting bugs. Even if they’re reporting terrible bugs, treat them well, provide answers, and they’ll stay. Take the chance to show that they’ve made the right decision when they chose you over other solutions available on the market.
2. Be Personal
Never, ever act like a heartless company and show that you’re human. Avoid using ticket-based support systems, use email instead. When you think about it, a ticket makes you feel like you’re just a number inside a larger system. One of the many. Instead, email is personal. You want personal, one-to-one communications. If you’re wondering how you can manage many support requests via email without dedicated software, the answer is simple: GMail or Google Apps. It might seem foolish, but you can leverage the fact that the same account, e.g. [email protected], can be used by multiple users in multiple locations at the same time. Using labels/folders to distribute workload is very easy, and you get a ticket-less support system that makes customers feel like respected, almost-unique human beings. Priceless (and free).
3. Fix Small Bugs Immediately
It’s likely that you’ll receive many reports of small, trivial bugs. It’s easy to shove them into your issue tracker as low priority, as they’re not dangerous and don’t cause data losses. This often causes that they’ll stay there for a long time, if not forever. Instead of queuing them below higher-priority issues, fix them right away and deploy the fix immediately, then inform the customer that the problem has been fixed. This kind of near-real-time bug fixing is very appreciated by customers.
4. Explain Why Something Bad Has Happened
When customers report something terrible happened, and it’s your fault, take all responsibility and explain why it happened. This not only helps you preserving your credibility, but also gives the customer the feeling that you have everything under control and you can fix the problem. “I don’t know” is fine in lots of scenarios, but not in this one. If you can’t explain why something bad has happened, then investigate and provide a reason as soon as possible. You don’t have to go into much detail, just provide an explanation that you’d be comfortable with if you were the customer (and see #5 and #9).
5. Be Honest
This should be obvious: never, ever lie. Lies tend to be discovered, and when that happens you lose a customer (or many). Even in the worst case, be honest and tell the truth. Jason Fried would say “Own your bad news”.
6. Always Say Thanks
I always answer first-contact emails with “Thank you for your interest in …” and to first support queries from existing users with “Thank you for taking the time to contact us”. Show that you appreciate the fact that the customer took the effort to write you an email. It’s something that takes time and should be respected, especially nowadays.
7. Don’t Expect Thanks
In most cases, customers will not say thanks to you. Expect this, but don’t take it personally. It’s just fine (but remember to say thanks when you contact customer support of some product/service you use).
8. Avoid Temptations
You’ll have disgruntled customers who’ll send you 20-line emails with no punctuation and lots of rage. It’s very tempting to answer them with the same kind of content, but avoid that. Instead, wait a couple of hours and then write a calm, respectful and clear answer. This usually works well and turns a disgruntled customer into a happy one, often because they don’t really expect a decent answer (or an answer at all).
9. If I Were in Your Shoes…
Before hitting Send, always re-read your email imagining to be the customer. Would you be happy with such a response?
10. When in Doubt, Ask
When you really can’t figure out what the customer is saying, simply ask for clarifications. Just make sure that it’s clear what is not clear (no pun intended). It’s always better to delay the resolution a bit rather than providing a wrong or incomplete answer.