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: Support Fundamentals
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…
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…
Some rules to live by…
Joseph Jaffe wrote a fun piece over at DestinationCRM on the 10 New Rules of Customer Service. I especially like #10: 10. Customer service is alive — Mistakes will always happen, but as long as they only happen once, they’ll most likely become learning opportunities. There’s no playbook or script when it comes to working…
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,…
Crisis Management – learn from Apple
A quality that I find hugely important but increasingly rare in people is the willingness to admit mistakes. Growing up I wasn’t really part of a culture in which mistakes are openly discussed and used as an opportunity to learn. For a long time, my own approach was therefore one of just moving on or…
Promises and Expectations
Our local Apple store is the Palo Alto store on University Avenue, known by some as “Steve’s Store”. My wife’s iPhone has lost its backlight, so I stopped in today to get it replaced or repaired. The store is packed, of course. I realize I should have made an appointment. Ah, but it’s till worth…
The UX of SupportUX
[Customer Experience] isn’t about being nice or having people like you. It’s bigger than that. It’s about winning. And winning well.
Customer Engagement
Real Customers Your Support team is talking with customers every day. Real customers. These are the most frank conversations with real customers about how they are actually using your product. The resulting understanding of how your customers engage with your product is invaluable. Support is the primary customer engagement engine, not a cost-center to be…
