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October 07, 2003Why Customer Service is ImportantI have always enjoyed the insight Tom shares with us through his blog over at A Shareware Life, since as a fellow developer working with the shareware model, it is good to learn from other's experiences. I just finished reading a post from him, which I really don't agree with. I know EXACTLY what he is saying, and have on NUMEROUS times fell into this trap in the past. I would guess he was a bit perturbed and stressed as he posted, as his insight has usually been extremely positive towards the customer experience. Even though he means well and just wants to fix the problems the customer has, its the underlying attitude that might be something to look at. His post was uncharacteristic of him, and is something I would like to respond to in a constructive manner. (Please take no offense Tom, I mean you no personal disrespect) One of the worst things we did back in the Merilus days was have an internal attitude towards customers that was negative. Worst was the developers. Support engineers would commonly refer to difficult users who had no clue what they were doing as id-10-t errors (Read it closely... idiot). Even though we had some of the best customer support reps on the phones that customers were always happy with, we still had a negative position deep within the company. Once a sale was made we rarely followed through to ensure their satisfaction. And we would easily be frustrated when customers couldn't communicate what issues they would have. Saying "it doesn't work" drove us batty. Worse yet was that we never had any real policies defined on how to deal with our customers. I routinely would ask for a customer service plan, and would get useless flow charts that didn't really mean anything. We had nothing written down for the whole company to read on how we would deal with our customers. (Customer service has to be a company wide effort, not just a few amazing service reps on the phone) I started getting frustrated and when we would have potential customers who would take up DAYS in man hours in the support system I would start asking the support team WHY we were wasting our time. We were losing money on people not even buying the product! I WAS WRONG. Since then, I have actually invested time and money on a few courses on strengthening customer service and my attitude towards it. It is one thing to always seem nice on the phone, but it it entirely different to take the position that great service is measured by customer satisifaction first, and gross profits second. Training at SEP taught me that. One of the text books I got in one of the courses had an interesting set of stats that relate to customer loss:
I look at Tom's problem and remember feeling that way. WAY to many times to admit. The reality is that everytime a customer complains it's an opportunity to improve our business. There was a survey done years ago which showed that a satsified customer tells eight people that he or she is pleased. A dissatisified customer will tell twenty people about his or her unfortunate experience. A customer who was dissastifies and had a tough problem resolved to their satsifaction will tell sixteen people he or she is pleased. Clearly fixing the issues where dissatisfaction exists has the most benefits, even though it takes more work. And by doing so and then applying what we learn from that experience to prevent it from happening again, we are actually investing in the success of our business. Tom talks about how he wants customers to act responsibly and follow his company's "Customer Responsibility Policy", which defines to him in some respects how to be a good customer. I'd like to respectfully turn that around. It's already implied that they want to be a good customer. They have invested money and expect that the product simply work. The attitude should not be "Be a good customer to me". It should be "How can I strive to beat my customer's expecations and satisfaction". How could this be done? Well I agree it is never helpful to get reports like "it doesn't work". Instead, provide a mechanism for them to report an issue to you in a positive and productive manner. Each company will have their own way of dealing with this. I am not sure how you would do this. Perhaps it is in a better customer service portal which can screen incidents better by hand holding them in a more structured manner. (I recommend the use of ServiceTraq by CyberHQ, it works great for my needs) Perhaps it is some sort of incident reporting system built into the software. If you use a defect tracking system, perhaps you can help get defects/bugs reported through a much easier to use interface which can extract common questions (platform, versioning etc) and insert it for them. Making the customer experience better by being able to listen effectively is key. The communications between you and the customer has to be easy to them, so they will talk to you! There is an old story that drives this point home: I'm a nice customer. You all know me. I'm the one who never complains, no matter what kind of service I get. Get the picture? I am not perfect in this. I have fallen into the trap Tom has many a time. But when I finally realized that without the customer we are nothing, it totally changed my outlook on customer service. I now have a detailed customer service plan which includes conflict resolution, how to deal with difficult customer and how to increase customer satisfaction and retention. I treat it much like I do my business plan. A living document that changes and gets better as the business progresses. I learn from experiences I have with customers and apply it to make my company better. I don't make the customer work for me, I work for the customer. And that makes all the difference. Tom ended his post with "Be a good customer". I'll respond by simply saying "You will be satsified. I will be a good vendor". Posted by SilverStr at October 7, 2003 01:50 PM | TrackBackComments
I agree with what you say, SilverStr, but... What's not in my post is what we do when someone sends us the "It doesn't work" type of emails. Our response is to ask for details. To ask if there was an error message, to describe exactly what happened. To try to get the customer to give us the detail that they didn't in the original email. Much of the time, that will get a response. And the customer will give the details and we'll be able to solve the problem. But the process of having to respond back and ask questions to get the necessary detail to solve the problem can in some cases take days (from the delay of answering on both ends). The point of my post, which may not have been emphasized enough, is that, **from the customer point of view**, you can get your problem solved faster and better if you just provide more information up front. It's not just that it is easier for us if that information is there, it's easier for the customer because it can take days off the amount of time to solve the problem. As a customer, you want to get the fastest service possible. You can make it much more possible to get the service faster if you're a good customer. Being a good customer doesn't really have anything to do with being "nice" in the sense of the word as in your quote above. It doesn't mean they don't complain, criticize, or nag, and so on. It does mean that when they complain, they actually say what they are complaining about. I have an MS support story to share with everyone, and will in the next couple of days. Been meaning to do that for a while :) Anyway. As far as the customers go, the thing is, customers are stupid. More exactly, people are stupid. They throw up their hands and say "it doesn't work" because that's a lot easier than debugging it themselves and figuring out the problem. That and the average person just doesn't think the way that "we computer people" do. Hell, trying to explain stepping through a simple for() loop to an arts student will show that. So support people have to deal with customers who do not necissarily have the best knowledge of the problem, or are pissed off, frustrated (generally with their own lack of knowledge as much as the delay in "just get it fixed" or the support person's own frustration. To break it down: they have to deal with stupid people. I know I'm perpetrating that bad attitude, but when it's all broken down, that's how the support person sees it (depending on their level of intoxication or newbieness of course). While I joke about stupid customers, I did do support for some of the worst people you can do support for for 4 years. I joke about it, but in a way I have to, to keep myself sane. Just hit the posts in alt.tech-support.recovery or alt.sysadmin.recovery and you'll see that to stay sane you have to have a mute button, be able to scream into your pillow, and randomly disconnect users on a whim. How to fix this? No idea. Hire really good support people who can deal with this in a friendly, knowledgable and curtious way (believe it or not I consider myself this sort of support person, when I do support... hey, stop laughing!). Even if they scream and yell after they hang up, the main thing is that the customer feels they actually care. Also make sure that there is a good way of communicating from the support department to the developers. Bugzilla, an internal system, IM, or something that allows both departments to do their job (ie: the CS aren't bugging the coders when they are coding, and the CS aren't waiting days for answers or bug fixes). While a good attitude after the call is done is important, I don't think it's essencial, but the attitude can spill over in the dealing with users. Not every user can be educated in how to give information, or made to have a good attitude towards the CS however, and that is the frustrating part. A "good" call could make my day a whole lot better, just as a bad one could make me change random users passwords to "penis". Support people have to have thick skin, but being yelled at, critisised and abused verbally day in and day out will get to anyone after a while (according to a.t-s.r the average burnout for support is 18 months). Sadly there's no real way to stop this from happening, though it depends on what field you're supporting of course. Posted by: Arcterex at October 8, 2003 11:05 AMIn my recent book, "The Indie Game Development Survival Guide" (Charles River Media, ISBN: 1584502142) I devoted a whole chapter (#26) to customer support. I boiled down customer support to these essentials: 1. Think first, then speak. The foundation of all of these, I think, is the understanding that the customer is unhappy and regardless of what you, as a support person, might think, it's your fault. Fix it. -David |
 
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