I spoke to a group of entrepreneurs recently regarding the connection between Support and Customer Development. This has been a favorite subject of mine for some time, but this was the first time I tried to do a comprehensive presentation on the topic. As I put together the presentation, I realized that there was really…
Category Archives: Measurement
Why do customers call you?
Call deflection has been a big thing in support for years. Get the customers to look it up themselves; give them some stuff from the knowledge-base before letting them submit a case – heck, some companies even leave customers on hold just so that some of them will go away. But why are these customers…
Silos and Collaboration
Michael Fauscette has excellent advice on fixing the silo problem and implementing collaborative workflows: Organizational fixes * Change incentive compensation plans to encourage and reward working across departments * Reward and recognize cross group collaboration efforts (and do it in big, visible ways) * Build cross functional teams to attack problems and issues. Reward their…
Discipline and Improvement
A great support organization is disciplined. it makes commitments and delivers. But it also understands that it not only needs to handle whatever problems come, but also that it needs to understand those problems deeply and ensure that they are fixed. In the context of the product, the support organization brings a back to the…
What good are data, anyway?
Every customer care team I see is buried in data: call durations, inbound call rates, case deflection rates, survey results, case closure time, and all sliced and diced by category, time of day, and product line. It can be overwhelming and confusing. Most of the data monitored is useful only as indicators of the health of…
Go where the conversation is happening
Customers have always talked about your brand. Those conversations have gone on in the bleachers of the little league game, at weekend parties, over lunch, and of course, at the water cooler. Those conversations were happening, but you had no way of knowing it. There was no way you could find them and listen in,…
