It’s from 2007 but Seven steps to remarkable customer service is a fantastic post from Joel Spolsky. Through a link in the post I also found this great post about dealing with abusive customers. Good advice throughout.
Tag Archives: support
When empathy becomes insulting:
A natural, caring organization designed to create passionate customers stretches and bends. A rigid business bureaucracy looks to nail every T on policies, procedures, and practices—customers be damned.
A happy cup of coffee
More often than not my customer service experiences with other companies leave me disappointed. Here’s a story about a company that not only hit the mark for good service but absolutely obliterated it and became the standard from which I now define good service. A… Continue reading →
Notes from UserConf
Last Friday I was in San Francisco for the first ever UserConf. It was a fantastic day filled with great speakers and fun conversations. Like I mentioned on Twitter, it was the best conference I’ve been to in a long time. The wifi was sketchy during… Continue reading →
Thomas Brand, writing about the importance of setting the right expectations:
The most valuable part of setting expectations is telling the truth, even if the truth means you don’t know, but are willing to find out. I am much more likely to remain a customer of companies that treat me with respect by setting expectations, and sticking to their word.
So true. Trying to set a false expectation or trying to cover up that you don’t actually know the answer may have short-term benefits, but in the end the customer will find out the truth. If you’re up front and honest with them from the start things work out much better.
This post from Marco Arment, about a less-than-stellar experience his grandparents had at an Apple Store, is such an important lesson to learn:
It wouldn’t be the first time a technology expert lacked empathy for a customer, or made bad assumptions about what would be fast and easy for the customer to do on his own — especially when deciding to perform an easy, predictable, cure-all “restore”.
Reminds me of something I wrote earlier this year about asking questions and avoiding assumptions. Spending the time to do something right matters much more than doing it quickly.
The pace of support
A story A while back my Google Apps email broke. I could still send and receive email through the web interface but all application-specific passwords were not functioning. I spent most of a Monday trying various steps. Nothing worked. I remembered that Google offers phone… Continue reading →
The speed of support
When we help people in support we want to quickly solve whatever problems they face. There is an urge to get the answer sent as soon as we can. The faster reply is the better reply. But, that is not always the best way to… Continue reading →
Rubber Duck Problem Solving. Jeff Atwood explains why Stack Exchange cares so much about how you ask your question. Their “How to Ask” page is pretty interesting, too. The more effort you put in to your question the better the answer tends to be.
Writing beginner level tutorials. Great tips about what to consider when writing tutorials aimed at beginners. My favorite nugget is, “[people looking for help] won’t be searching for the solution – they’ll be searching on keywords relating to the problem.” (via Daniel Bachhuber)