Slashdot Mirror
Setting the Bar for Customer Service?
meburke asks: "Computer repair, copier repair, customer support: It seems to be mostly done the same way for the last 40 years. That is: 'Something breaks, call the repair guy.' But customers expect more, and they can't tell us what they expect, so where do we develop guidelines for customer service and how do we improve? I've searched the net for three days now, and I haven't found a comprehensive list of actions or standards that distinguish the excellent tech from the average tech. Can anyone point me toward some sources?" It seems that as our technology becomes more complex, the service that is offered to customers continues to fall shorter of the mark. What kind of service do you expect from your vendors, and how close is reality to your expectations?
As an aside, shooflot wonders: "If the definition of 'news' includes 'rarity' then good service must be news. My usual experience includes the kind of sulky and dismissive attitude I got from an Apple rep when my new iPod wouldn't charge (I eventually got him to exchange it). However, I was recently surprised by Rogers, my cellphone provider, when I followed up on some charges for ringtones I'd never downloaded. The service rep not only cancelled the charges but discovered I'd been wrongly charged an extra air time fee for the whole last year and credited me for the entire amount plus tax! What great service stories does Slashdot wish to share which (I hope!) may inspire all those other reps in the trenches?"
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is growing in popularity as the defacto "best practices" for IT services. It's not for the faint of heart (nor cheap), but it's extremely comprehensive.
And to blantantly plug the message board in my sig... this is a topic that we discuss there frequently as well. "What's the difference between a 'computer guy' and an 'IT consultant'?" was one of the threads that comes to mind. I know that one of the more frustrating aspects of my job is having to clean up other techs' messes. And worse: having to charge the customer for my time to do that when they already paid the last guy a pretty penny. With PCs now in the magical $300 range, the divide between the two types of techs seems to be growing. I don't know whether this is helping my business or hurting it yet though.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
I think some of it comes from within - if you have a good people nature, you'll be a better tech, at least in the customer service area.I say this from a long time support background, but I have done a lot of different types of it and that internal desire to help others is a constant. A good heart radiates outward to your outlook, manner of working, etc. Wish I could point you to a specific doc, but meebe this helped instead...
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
That sets the bar pretty low and is kind of a sad commentary on the state of IT customer service.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
AOL
"...if people respected copyright more, like you guys do with the GPL so religiously, [the DMCA] wouldn't be necessary."
The most obvious answer probably is:
Not having to call support in the first place.
This, of coursed, implies assuring high quality, durability and ease of use, in both software and hardware. But sadly, it seems companies are more focussed on producing and manufacturing as cheaply as possible.
Proactive not reactive.
Although "technical support" may seem to be about technology, it's really about people and their behavior under stress. Having filled dozens of support roles in 20 years as a systems guy, I can tell you that the greatest factors in my success have been patience and humor. What book do you go to to learn those things?
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
Apple? Setting the bar for customer service? Have you ever been to an Apple store? Talk about a bunch of elitists who have drank the Kool-Aid. Apple was cool back in the //e days, but now it's a bunch of stuck-up seperatists who look down on *anything* but the mothership.
No thanks
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
And here, I was going to say that you could just walk into the average Best Buy or CompUSA with a complex computer problem, write down everything the technician there does (interactions, attempted fixes, plan of attack, etc.)
The exact opposite of everything you wrote down is exactly what customers would really like.
As we pressure companies for cheaper and cheaper everything, we squeeze out the dollars they need to do support, and they outsource it--to us.
Do I want companies to offer good quality and stand by their work? Sure. Do I expect it? Ha. It's bad enough that I generally just hope the price point is low enough that when it breaks I can afford a new one rather than talk to some unhelpful jerk on the phone.
Look at what's happened to watch repair shops. No one repairs watches any more, they just replace them. Same with shoe repair. Heck, in some regions of the company, away from big cities, it's hard to find contractors to repair houses because the people who know how to do the relevant work find it both easier and more lucrative just to build new ones. Other "technology" will probably follow suit, if it hasn't already.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
I find that my DSL company has excellent customer service. They aren't like the phone company who tries to convince you that you caused the problem and starts out by warning you that it will cost you if the problem is found on your site. I think the trick is that the person on the phone is able to fix 90% of the calls. I've called at 3AM, explained the problem, and had it fixed in 5 minutes.
I don't know what customers expect, but if the service was modeled after Speakeasy, I can't see many people complaining. I think part of the trick is that it's a very flat support organization - you don't need to escalate to a level 2 or level 3 person on the phone. The person you get on the call can do everything short of showing up at your door.
Dell, on the other hand, makes people jump through hoops when they call in with a problem (like a dead hard drive). This even happens on corporate accounts - the field techs at work have been known to spend 4 hours on the phone going through dell's script.
You are kidding, right? Service is getting to the point where all they say is "throw it away and get a new one."
In the early days of microcomputers, we used to do component level repair, for example, diagnosing and replacing individual memory chips, or replacing individual chips on disk drive controllers. It's been many years since that was discontinued in favor of swapping out whole circuit boards. And now that is becoming rare, it's rarely cost effective to replace boards, now the techs just tell you to throw the whole unit away and get a new one.
This is a major problem, the IT industry is not manufacturing technology products, they are manufacturing garbage heaps full of unrepairable electronic junk. I would rather buy repairable products that have a longer life, than to pay less for disposable junk.
being an apple certified technician when i call applecare or dell support for a friend to get them to send a replacement part or have them fix a hardware issue that i cant do without buying parts when it's under warranty i dont want them to treat me like an average joe idiot especially when i'm probably more qualified than they are and just want the thing sent off, the same applies to if my friends mother calls them and they should not jargon them to death, support techs need to tune to the ability of the caller and treat them as such.
I've seen some bad customer service, but I've also seen some shocking customer expectations. A friend works at Apple, and one of his headbutt-the-desk moments that come up all too often is when a customer phones complaining that a new model is out, and their 3 month old powerbook/ibook/whatever is now out of date... and will he give them a refund or a replacement unit.
Having also worked on an ISP helpdesk, some of the customer expectations there are equally insane. One business had thousands of business cards, letterheads and other stationary printed with their email address listed as "http://www.businessname.com/". Who did they immediately phone? us - demanding that when someone sends email to "http://www.businessname.com/" that it get to them.
Pity their hosting wasn't with us, even if their net service was.
The technically clueless just want someone to blame if something doesn't work to their satisfaction - and that's entirely fair - however when they come on all insistent that their problems can be fixed by places they can't, or they don't realise their expectations are entirely unrealistic it's when service providers just turn off and want to go "piss off, idiot"
There are three basic lines of support, which I appreciate - and a methodology that is very important.
Go the extra mile. Thats what I look for in support and customer service.
.
what they actually want instead of guessing or asking people who don't do busines with you (/.).
Trying to purchase some Dell notebooks this week was an excrutiating excercise. The online credit application initially rejected me and gave me a number to call. The person I spoke to was very polite but had absolutely no authority/ability to assist me in getting my credit line established or switching my order to use a credit card instead of the credit line. The order ended up getting cancelled, and the two notebooks I selected from the Dell Outlet site ended up going to somebody else by the time I ended my fruitless 2 hours on the phone. The problem isn't so much that the call centers are offshored, it's that the staff are not provided with any meaningful mechanisms to address customer concerns. They seem to have a list of things that they are expected to respond to and responses they are allowed to give. There is no "go-to" person that you can speak to that can make decisions or provide intervention if the system behaves unexpectedly. Since the call center is located on the other side of the globe from where the orders are managed and shipped, the call center staff is pretty much powerless to act on a customer's behalf.
A remote call center is fine to talk Joe Average in figuring out why their AOL connection isn't working as expected. But when it comes to making a purchase and spending money, I want to speak to somebody who can take action on my behalf. Having my order cancelled and then getting thanked for choosing Dell does not constitute adequate customer service.
A lot of companies treat their customer service as a "bag on the side" rather than as an integral part of the business. As a consequence, the reps aren't empowered to do anything to improve the customer relationship (for example, fixing accounting errors or offering complimentary goodies). Instead, they're held accountable for keeping the costs down by ending calls as soon as possible, by any means necessary.
Worse, I've been at a lot of clients where customer satisfaction is not systematically measured, where there's no incentive for reps to do the right thing, and where there's no awareness that future sales depend on the company's reputation for service as much as on the product itself. This includes some well-known companies where you'd think they'd know better.
The FPP anecdote about Apple is a great example of how great products aren't the end of the experience for customers. The other side of the coin is the somewhat pricey ISP I use. If cost and connectivity were the only drivers, I'd dump them in a heartbeat since broadband is a commodity product. But their tech support and customer service are much better than the (admittedly lousy) average, so I keep on paying the premium.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
I would highly recommend the book: "Customer Satisfaction Is Worthless, Customer Loyalty Is Priceless : How to Make Customers Love You, Keep Them Coming Back and Tell Everyone They Know".
This is required reading at my company. The book has a lot of self-hype, the author can't seem to grasp the concept of ordinal numbers, and is a bit condenscending, but if you get past that it has a LOT of REALLY EXCELLENT customer service advice for all businesses.
Look at the world around you and recall the times you felt you received good service. Doesn't matter if it was from a waitress or a plumber. The first thing that I recall with good service is the persons willingness to step up to the plate and take ownership of you and your problem and following through on doing their best to find a resolution. Even if it's not fixed the first time you know they're doing everything in their power to get it done.
Excellent tech = me.
Average tech = you.
Lousy tech = the one who still does that for a living.
On Thursday this week, I went in to a local Staples store, found a desk and a chair that I liked. I went ahead and ordered it.
A nice man helped me get it all set up for delivery, and gave me the information on some people that can assemble it for me. Wonderful. He says they can email me a delivery time estimate, and that he knows personally they don't sell it or anything like that, so no spam even from them. Very cool.
Yesterday I get a call on my cell, its the delivery guy at my apartment and the managers office won't take delivery or let him in (even at my request) to drop off my stuff. The delivery guy is very friendly, especially considering he's gonna have to come back. He gives me the number I can call to reschedule.
I'm dreading this call. Ohhhhh gawd I think, I'm gonna have to talk to some phone jockey retard who couldn't care less about helping me. So I call. It asks me if I want English or Spanish. BEEP! For a moment, I start to groan to myself as the customer service hoop jumping is about to begin. Wait? What's this? Hello? Holy smokes! A live person, right away! He's friendly and asks me for my name and whats wrong before my order number. He tells me he's going to have to get someone from another department. My stomach sinks again, oh junk, here we go, its the run around. I get about a minute of hold music, and then, woah wait a minute, its the same guy! He's doing a warm/live transfer, and the new guy already has all my info and knows my situation! WOW!
The new guy is friendly too, he gets me set up for a new delivery time, and we part ways.
What's the moral of this story? I mean you'd think it sounded pretty plain. These days, it doesn't. I've come to expect to be punted, lied to, have to jump through 3 dozen hoops until I yell at a manager, just to get the simplest requests past the call center guys that are paid to reduce the amount of customers that want stuff that costs the company more money. Treat me right, give me a little customer service with no bullshit, don't get in arguements with me over who's fault it was I didn't get the email, answer the phone when I call, don't cold dump/punt me, and I am now a Staples customer for life (or at least until they go down the shitty customer service is cheaper route).
~Rebecca
It's always the same. You can find all the guidelines needed to do an excellent job. But if you lack good attitude toward service, the customer will be always doomed. Sometimes is the low level of your will to help people, sometimes is the customer who knows nothing about the problem. Other fact is that the internal politics of a company are too restrictive when a customer rep tries to help. Even when he/she does the best, if the internal politics book says no, is no. So, there's no perfect support with added value, and if so, there's a charge for it, and at the end, it will taste as plain normal support.
Well, wish I had better news...
Mac/PC Mall shipped me a CD-RW drive that not only wasn't "new" as advertised/ordered, but was missing items from the box and *broken*! Rather than ship me out a replacement and a return label I was *told* how I was going to ship the broken device back for a refund, but they had the right to refuse a refund if the box was missing any items! Given that part of the reason for returning the drive was, um, missing items, I called BS.. Over the course of 2 days I was hung up on TWICE and was lectured on how I was being offered a solution, but obviously didn't want to do it. All I wanted was a new working drive, um, like I *PAID* for!
The 2nd recent disaster was an order for some wifi equipment for a client. Their credit card was declined, there were phone calls back and forth between the client and the vendor, then the order was canceled. My calls however were never returned! Que vender rep complaining to me about how his calls were never returned! Heh. Pot, kettle, kettle, pot...
My only recent, and ongoing good cust. service experience is/was with a local PakMail franchise.. Damn, they're great.. If you drop off items needing to be packed and shipped, they go the extra mile to be sure things are packed properly. (as you would expect!) Compare that to other shippers where your items may be tossed into an empty box and taped and shipped w/o bubble wrap, foam, peanuts, etc... (yeah, I've had that happen!)
Wish I had better news.. It's bad out there these days..
People suck..
later all.
I don't want to make a straight comparison between someone who fixes technology and someone who heals people, but I think medical professionals and IT/computer professionals can be evaluated by some of the same basic questions:
:-))
1. Is the problem resolved?
2. Was the resolution as efficient as possible?
3. Will the fix make it harder to help the person/fix the device in the future? (You want a 'no' on that one
4. Did the fix put the person/users of the technology through any unnecessary hardship? (Another 'no', hopefully.)
Good support is like pornography; you know it when you see it, but it's hard to define.
There's not likely to be a useful comprehensive list of best practices because too many would be industry or company dependent making much of the list useless to others.
There's an organization based on improving customer service, but you have to join to get access to most pf their material: http://www.socap.org/
It took me years to figure out why my father came home in a bad mood every night from his TV repair shop. All the phone calls he receives were from people who were (1) angry because their TV was broken, (2) angry because their TV wasn't fixed yet, or (3) angry because their TV was fixed but cost so much. People call customer service because they're upset about something. Many will remain so regardless of how good the customer service is. Using them as a metric for satisfaction makes as little sense as letting the companies rate themselves.
However, if people get good enough cusomer service to remember it long enough to want to tell others publically, then customer service awards sites like The WOW! Awards Website http://www.thewowawards.co.uk/ would at least provide a listing of companies that obtained enough good reports, and one would assume such awards would give the rationale for each case. Hardly comprehensive, but then it'd be simpler to read up on companies in a similar business than try to sort through a long list of variable applicability.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I just tell my customer.. they called tech support... and if they want customer service... call the billing dept. If they want their problem fixed however.. stay on the line.
There is no master list of steps. It couldn't be flexible enough to allow excellence. Here's my vague, hand-wavy suggestions:
1: Do a little more than the support contract says you have to. If it's a serious problem, call the customer a couple days after fixing it to see if it's still fixed.
2: Have your support people educated. Flowcharts and checklists for solving common problems are fine, but don't let anybody answer your phone who doesn't understand the product.
3: Don't use your support system as a sales channel. Solve the customer's problem without fobbing more product on them.
4: Don't put a mediocre support person on first-tier phone support because it's "easier" than the levels for more complex problems. First tier interacts with almost everybody who calls in, it's an important job, get somebody good at it.
5: If a support person in the field calls the home office, the office guy drops everything and deals with it. Make sure you support people know this is an option.
6: If possible, have your field support people familiar not just with your products but with your customers' processes. This helps communication. It's a nice perk when your customers are rather homogenous, but probably doesn't matter for something like photocopier repairs.
The best answer is both simple and complex. As pointed out, better quality equipment would be very helpful, but alas, machines break, it is their nature.
When they break, people are stressed, and quite often they will be trying to get services that they have not or are not really willing to pay for.
Given that these seem universal truths when customer service is required, the best answer is a combination of all answers. Polite and helpful C/S agents who are both knowledgable and able to help customers no matter what the problem is. This ensures a respected and smooth experience.
Second, the technology is now available to make the machines smart enough to know what went wrong, when it went wrong, and what should be done to fix it. (remembering the Load PC Load Letter scene from office space?) They are putting black box type equipment in cars now, so it shouldn't be so difficult to put similar equipment in other machines. Obviously a machine like a desktop PC that is overly customized is difficult to do this right now, but copiers etc. are of fixed function and should marry well to such technology.
Additionally, there are nearly ubiquitous networks that are more than capable of carrying data to and from such equipment despite its location. I'm thinking of the 2-way paging networks. They have good in-building penetration and very large coverage footprints. While they only have about 6kbps bandwidth, this is more than enough for the copier in the break room to tell the service company that the toner is low, and that there have been three incidents of paper stuck in the mechanisms in the last 36 hours, indicating a need for the local tech rep to make a visit.
If its not your copier, perhaps it is refrigeration units that no one pays attention to until the office gets hot... again, very cheap embedded processors coupled to the 2-way paging network will be more than enough bandwidth to allow the service company to keep tabs on the status and health of the equipment that they maintain for you, and give them the ability to call you before it breaks rather than try hard to show up quickly after there is a break down.
Better customer service is about being smart, not simply about charging people for the work you do. Working smarter means making the technology work for you. Its not just about calling them before the equipment breaks (like the dentist will call you to remind you that your 6 month cleaning is due) but think of the value add that this gives your service organization. While you have a tech rep on the south side of the city for a service call, you can make the most of his time and your resources if you are able to schedule other non-failure work around travels that they have to make anyway, reducing wasted miles driven, reducing wasted man-hours, and generally making your service organization more efficient all around because you know what is coming, you know the health of the equipment that you are maintaining, and the relationship between expenditures and salaries etc. is a very real one, done in real time, and predictable over a longer period.
To say that information is power is good, but not accurate, to say that what you do with information is power is closer to the truth. Having the information is the first step, doing the right thing with it will turn your service organization into a world class success.
The answer to technology problems is often enough more technology and better use of it and the information that it can provide.
At least that is my opinion.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
The higher bar for customer service is coming in once a day/week/month running maintenance to prevent problems occurring in the first place. The problem is they don't want to pay for us to come in everyday and check for any problems and fix them while they are small. If they do pay for the service it will not last long when they switch a CFO they will go why do we have a guy looking at the product it never breaks. Alternatively there is also a monthly service agreement where the company pays the service company so much per month and when there is a problem they are there in 1 hour 2 hour 20 minutes or whatever. And will fix the problem without having to pay for replacement parts. The problem is that the better service you want to more you need to pay for. If you want 20 minute service and the company is 15 minutes away you will need to pay a lot of money because when you call they will need to drop whatever they are doing even if it with an other customer to get to your location.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
In the past I've avoided rebates like the plague. To the best of my knowledge Staples is the only company that has an option to submit your rebate online AND has a way to track the rebate even if you've mailed it in.
So, this is something studied for years, and companies still don't get it? I guess especially in technical arenas I've seen they really don't, though I can't begin to imagine why not.
It's really about satisfying the customer... treat 'em like they're people, don't lie to them, do any and everything you say you'll do, don't make promises you can't keep.
My best experiences with any support be it on-line, by phone, or in person have little (if anything) to do with final resolution of the problem, but more to do with whether I was treated respectfully. Some of my best "support" experiences have come from people who clearly didn't know the answer to my problem, but knew steps to take to ensure my problem was addressed.
Companies who drive support to "bottom line" criteria are missing the much bigger picture of what an unhappy customer base does to the bottom line. I go out of my way to stay loyal to businesses who care enough to have a relationship with me. On the other, for example, a bank whose exponential growth over the last 10 years has grown at the cost of their local flavor and service has lost me as a customer... I've moved all of my accounts from them to another friendlier local credit union.
Not sure why this is such a hard problem for businesses to solve...
> That is: 'Something breaks, call the repair guy.'
If someone's computer breaks, they usually end up calling me because I'm the "computer expert" who knows more than the store techs, and I work on the barter system. I'm talking neighbors, parents, cousins.
Is that how it usually works anyway? Something breaks and they call the local computer geek in the neighborhood who'll fix it as long as a steady supply of Dr. Pepper is on hand?
Apple Stores are hilarious, all right. You keep expecting to see a curtain somewhere, with a bunch of people attached to E-Meters behind it.
The amazing thing is that Apple's customers just eat it up. Being processed like something out of a Huxley novel is just part of the "think different" experience.
The most recent issue of Consumer Reports gave Apple by far the best scores in customer service for their computers. They got basically double the points of the next best company.
That is: 'Something breaks, call the repair guy.' But customers expect more...
More what exactly? Psychic predictive repair? Technicians dressed as 1950's pop icons? Free balloons for the kids?
Look, it's computer repair. You can talk about making computers more reliable or easier to use, but there's always going to be a need for the "call the repair guy" option. At that point, the customer just wants their computer fixed. Quickly and efficiently, and preferrably cheap or free.
Yes, there are a lot of companies out there who are horrible at computer service, but there are also some good ones as well. The focus needs to be on improving that level of service, not redefining or creating new services.
They want the broken item FIXED, and fixed QUICKLY. If that is done, then the customers will be happy.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
As a person who has been doing this awhile, the following link was the best article I have ever read on this subject: http://whatexit.org/tal/data/techjob.html/
"But customers expect more, and they can't tell us what they expect" Have you tried asking some customers what they expect?
In my years of freelancing PC repair, I've found that the customers are more satisfied in knowing exactly what I'm doing. I sort of explain things in their terms a bit.
Sometimes I comment just to hear myself typing.
Can't help it.
When a computer motherboard costs less than 15 minutes of qualified electronics repairman's time, there is absolutely no point in even trying to repair it. Just ship it to distributor/manufacturer for replacement.
Someone in some low-wage country will probably one day take a look at it and fix it, if its easy to fix... but in the western world, you can't find a person who'd work cheap enough repairing these things to make it worth it even when compared to the retail prices (let alone wholesale prices) of the broken component.
You just run up too hard against human nature when you get close to technical support. I know this from my own expectations:
- I want it as cheap as humanly possible and will frequently switch providers the minute I spot the opportunity to save a small amount of money on support costs.
- I want the best experience possible, I want the service tech to fix it even before it breaks but if that's not possible I want expert and friendly service that goes above and beyond the minimum required to provide a basic correction to my problem.
If you know how to reconcile those two then please go right ahead and claim the Nobel Prize for Advances in Customer Service.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
There are quite a few books on the topic and a bunch more on business process in general. If your company has more than about 60 or 70 people working in it, I'd strongly suggest hiring a process person whose job it is to look at how your company does things, how your company can improve how it does things and to keep an eye on how everyone else in your industry does things so you know if you're doing better or worse than they are. All processes should be documented and accessable to all employees, but there should also be flexibility to go outside the process on the rare occasions when it becomes necessary.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'll run tests (their diagnostics and others such as memtest), then do a detailed writeup of what I've tested, what the results were, what I think the problem is and any steps I've taken to try to resolve it (e.g. removing & reseating the memory). Then I go to the support site, put in the service tag, and go through the contact us bit and "Email Product Support." It may take a day or two, but it's worked better for me than trying to deal with them on the phone.
fencepost
just a little off
I don't use them myself, but when I've had to help out relations (most of whom I've eventually steered away from the Time Warner Borg service, regardless of the fact that I own stock in them), AOL's customer service has been
(a) prompt to respond -- short hold times
(b) accurate
(c) willing to admit what they do and don't know, and that they have to go ask someone (rather than just, 'hold please'
(d) willing to call back
(e) surprisingly consistent in calling back!
(e) is my biggest pet peeve with my hosting service, by the way.
One other note: helping relations with computer issues is the most thankless job in the world: my mother had me hook up her DSL (jeez, the cartoons on the case the installer disk came in covered everything pretty darn completely), then the painters came and moved everything, and I've had at least three calls which all amount to the #1 item on the tech support tree.
Wait for it.
"Is it plugged in?"
On the other hand, a buddy of mine had me help with some HTML, CSS and CGI stuff, and when I told him my hourly rate, he offered to pay me off in shrimp. Cool!
Design for Use, not Construction!
I expect my vendors to:
Answer the phone. In well spoken and understood english (or whatever the native language is for the region that the hardware was sold)
Respect the fact that I am an experienced system administrator, and I don't need to be told to reboot the machine. Granted, there are people that need to be told that - those customers should be given a different number.
Get me on and off the phone quickly. I'm busy. If you can't get to me right away - thats fine, but maybe you could call me back or even send me an email or IM when you are ready to deal with me.
Don't Tread on Me
To be perfectly honest, I think the thing people expect most is an appeal to the pathos.
40 years ago, the easiest way to apply to the pathos was through a uniformed middle-aged employee (in this type of service). Now, it's a lot harder, but still revolves around delievering the same, cookie-cutter perfect image, just with new packaging.
You know, the unwritten requirement of employees to have a smile plastered on their faces while they do any job. No matter how difficult or frustrating.
Take computers for example, the average person can't look under the hood. All they can do is see and feel the responses of the interface. So services like spyware and virus removal don't really have to be complete, they just have to remove the signs a person can see.
Now as for competent customers, the only appeal one could make is to the logos. Which means having informed people working for them.
In either case, the thing people want the most is good sales people. We want good, quick (thinking and acting) people when the shit hits the fan.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
How about companies that use technology to track whether you are a customer and haven't paid your bill, but can't get their system to work? It's the non-customer who pays (either time or money). Case in point, 3.5 years ago I cancelled my AT&T phone service. Yesterday, I had to deal with them billing me the final bill yet again. Last summer, and the summer before, and other times as well, I've been told that the problem is permanently corrected and I won't have any more problems. Yeah right, I'm keeping my copy the cancled check for $12.27 dated January 16, 2002.
...
....
... don't even think about me!'
At the end of my hourlong session on the phone, the lady then asked:
Can I interest you in our phone
At which point I cut her off stating I was a life-long non-customer of AT&T based on this experience. Then she launched right into:
How about broadband
At which point I said again something like: "I'll never ever even consider AT&T - I want you guys to delete me from your DB completely, don't just flag me as closed. Never call me, never send me mail, don't email
The lady on the phone actually giggled when I said "don't even think about me!"
I'm sure I'll get to reuse the joke next summer when the AT&T bills start coming again (I ignore them and wait for the calls to start -- I figure it costs AT&T more money that way).
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Try to get a blender repaired, or a vacuum cleaner, or a television set, or household furniture in most areas. If you find one or two shops that still do any kind of appliance or furniture repair in a major metropolitan area of several to several dozen million people, you're lucky.
And if you manage to track one of them down and carry in a product made after 1990, they'll likely tell you that it's unfixable because things these days "aren't made to be serviced" and there are "no parts available from the manufacturer."
If you happen to still have an older unit of some kind, and you manage to track a shop down, the price of repair will usually be double the cost of a brand-new unit with twice the features, half the energy consumption, half the noise, far better compatibility with accessories of any kind likely to be sold at department stores.
The nature of the marketplace dictates this; there will never be a major ad campaign for anything other than a new product, because new products are what must be sold in order to fund ad campaigns. In order to sell new products, old products must be made obsolete, either by premature failure, giving the impression that they are lesser (by developing new products with endless silly features), or by associating new products with fashionability (celebrity endorsement, bare ass on screen, young people party picture, etc.) and associating existing products with uncoolness. People want new things all the time, not because new things are better for the job at hand, or because their old things can't be fixed, but because they have been made to want new things by the logic of the capital markets.
In short, letting the marketplace decide what consumers buy and use necessarily leads to an overwhelming marketplace bias toward cheap, low-quality, disposable products and an endless cycle of wasteful consumption and re-consumption in order to drive economic "growth." This bias won't change until the marketplace begins to feel the effects of encroaching, toxic waste from all sides. And of course by then the landfills will have taken over the planet and the marketplace won't be able to do a damn thing about it.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
and then in a deadly, powerful stroke, bash the customer's head. With proficiency, the experienced CSA [customer service associate] only needs to deliver only one blow." -- From Hewlett-Packard's customer service handbook.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The obvious example of excellent tech support to follow is...BicycleRepairman! Quoted from a bicycle web site:
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
Considering that the design and manufacturing of most circuitry has been outsourced to places like Taiwan and China, it is no wonder that computer componentry has become a commodity.
Computers are no longer crafted like they were in the glory days of DEC and IBM. They're more like a carton of milk or a bag of chips. What you're advocating would require a return to the days of "computer carpenters". That won't happen as long as China and India are designing and producing most hardware used in North America and Europe. It is in their best financial interest for computing to remain a wholly commoditized item.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
The library?
Library: {
- A place in which literary and artistic materials, such as books, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, prints, records, and tapes, are kept for reading, reference, or lending.
- A collection of such materials, especially when systematically arranged.
- A room in a private home for such a collection.
- An institution or foundation maintaining such a collection.
}For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
Customer Service for Dummies (ISBN: 0764552090, find at your favorite bookstore) is a good book on customer service, deals mostly with face to face interaction than at an organizational level. However it's those little things that count mostly. Find it and see!
...in bed
My young nephew was telling me about how some of his college buddies have been prank calling Dell tech support centers that they know are in India just to pose such questions to them. Indeed, they'll say stuff like they put their DSL "Intarweb" into the floppy drive. Or that they want their monitor to work but they don't want to connect it to their computer. He told me one story about a call where his friend said he had cockroaches coming out of the computer.
Indeed, if tech support people have to face such horrors, then it is no doubt that the quality of their services will drop! They have no incentive to be courteous and knowledgable.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
The response to that post said it well (and I repeat it here if you don't want to hit the link):
A famous general once said that there are four types of people:
(1) The lazy and smart kind, like him.. These are the thinkers and the leaders.
(2) The lazy and stupid kind. These are the grunts, the soldiers, the factory workers. The world is mostly these kind and the world needs them. They are valuable.
(3) The smart and hardworking kind. These people are the glue that bind organizations together and make civilization function. They are the lieutenants, managers and designers, the people who push things forward.
(4) But beware, said the general, of the fourth kind, the stupid and hardworking man. For he shall certainly be the death of you.
Oh yeah.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
- You go down to PCWorld, and the reps there try to brush you off with the tersest replies they can muster. Worse is the look in their eyes if you ask them something and you can almost see the smirk twirling around their lips as they answer you. Which is wiped only when you trash their whole theory that I should buy a PC, when you tell them how you checked the motherboard and concluded its the SMPS that's busted
- Countless software vendors I've worked with in the past have had the same attitude - 'dude, its your problem.'. Until you send them a log of their own software falling over itself every two minutes, or how it encountered an 'unexpected situation' and keeps writing a wierd error message in the logs.
- Not that I'm dyed-in-wool. I'm currently working for a company recently acquired by Micromuse, and they mess their customers around as soon as they receive the PO. The sheer infighting and the jealousy kills any scope of friendliness and care for the customer. Little wonder the customers turn nasty
I don't think that people have woken up to the fact that buying a software is so unlike buying hardware. If its faulty or doesn't work, the hardware may be repaired or exchanged, while in software, they just mess you around, till you either threaten to sue them, or worse still, get your money back, return their software and lose your precious timehttp://efil.blogspot.com/
I am looking to buy several low-end desktops for my (small) library. I figured I'm probably best off doing something out-of-the-box, so I call Dell, Apple, and Gateway.
Dell: LONG phone tree, but I reach a really helpful guy who gets me what I want and sends me an email quote. The email was basically a long chart of the various features available and what prices they would add to upgrade.
Apple: short phone tree, but I have to talk with a hippie. Helpful, but not at all professional. Also sends me an email, but this consists of text like 40G/288Ghz/E/mes/10.1 . . . no explanations of what these numbers mean, if I didn't already know what was measured in Ghz and what was in K.
Gateway: four phone calls over two days got me four different individual's voicemails, and nobody called me back. I went to the "chat online" function and got a rep who gave me another number - another voicemail. Great. Tried to send feedback to the website that their service sucks, but it won't accept feedback without a purchase number, which I don't have because they won't talk to me. When I finally do get ahold of a rep, he wouldn't listen when I explained what I needed, and kept trying to upsell me to something more expensive. He said he'd send an email, but it hasn't come yet.
So who do you think is out of the running? If Gateway would have only talked to me, they would have probably gotten my business, but as it is I'm going to pay a bit more to go with a company that has a government & educational department that is a bit more with it.
These are what I use to make the customer happy. Althought I can't stess enough that one should also COMMUNICATE!
I base the previous on a Roman Catholic premise (no, I am not a christian). What is Hell? Well if that's a little vague to answer then let us ask "What is purgatory?". Well Dictionary.com says:
purgatory
n 1: a temporary condition of torment or suffering; "a purgatory of drug abuse" 2: (theology) in Roman Catholic theology the place where those who have died in a state of grace undergo limited torment to expiate their sins
So what is the difference between Hell and Purgatory? Knowing! If you know you are in Purgatory then you know it will end.
Now in Hell I don't think you would be told where you were. You would not know. That is what Hell is, not knowing!
So let 'em know! Be Dependable. Be timely. And for the love of the customer be like Horton the Elephant who "Says what he does and does what he says".
You don't have to hear a Who or lay an egg, those activities are optional.
> It's really about satisfying the customer... treat 'em like they're people, don't lie to them, do any and everything you say you'll do, don't make promises you can't keep.
There's a problem with this sentence, and it can be summed up in one word:
Salespeople.
Where I work, we've had the occasion incident where the salesperson told a client our software could do something that (at the time) it couldn't. The feature was in the development pipeline, but no set release date.
The customer (who bought the software because the salesperson told them it did this function) then becomes irate with the support staff who have to tell them that no, the product does *not* do that currently, but it is being worked on.
The salesperson, who by that time has already gotten their commision check, and they are pretty much never in the office anyway, rarely has to take the heat for this. The customer therefore feels that the support provided is poor, and the customer/support relationship gets off to a bad start.
My solution (which I have no power to implement)? The salespeople don't get their commision check until the client states they are satisfied with what they purchased. If the salespeople want to promise features that might not be ready for weeks or months, let them wait on their commision checks. Teach them in a hurry not to promise what can't be delivered when they think it should, rather than when programming can.....
AC, because several of my co-workers read Slashdot.....
For anyone who works at repairing or developing just about anything: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
I've been to an Apple Store many times. And I keep going back because the people there are knowledgable, and friendly.
I remember going to Circuit City once to purchase a PC. Do you know what happened? I got some foreign kid, probably no more than 18, who tried to tell me that I could run OpenVMS on a Dell x86 PC. So I asked him, "Do you know what OpenVMS is?", and he said "I have thoughts that I do, sir!". I told that kid, "Fuck off, moron," and then I went to the reliable Apple Store and got myself a PowerMac system.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I think the most important thing you can do to stand head and shoulders above most repair and tech services is to simply communicate. What does this mean? First, and most importantly, return calls and emails immediately. Nothing worse than not hearing back from your vendor or service for days after leaving multiple messages. Actually, this is really true for almost any business. It seems less and less people can be bothered to return calls. Secondly, don't treat the client like an idiot, even if he is. Take a little time to explain what you are doing/did/going to do in non-techie speech if necessary. People like to be kept in the loop when they are footing the bill usually, and no one likes to be treated like an idiot. And remember no one is an expert on all subjects in life. Ever deal with a mechanic/plumber/contractor who talked down to you and got angry at your innocent questions? Thirdly, when you bill, give a rundown on what you did. Not just "fixed the problem" -- $500. People like to know what they've paid for. Finally, remember the saying (I think it originated in Japan?) that the customer is god. Doesn't mean you need to kiss up. Simply that you should be respectful. All together, these things will make for happy clients who will use you again and tell others about how you are better than your competitors. -BDZ
I've been a consultant for many years and stay busy 100% of the time. How? by consistently delivering to the client MORE than they requested/expected.
It's easy really, the Golden Rule makes an ideal yardstick. If you can close an engagement knowing that you have succeeded completely in meeting the client's needs, then you'll get references and repeat business.
This occasionally means turning down potentially lucrative contracts if they are not a good fit. Will I do Windows work? Not on a bet, but I will gladly refer you to someone I trust, and that only grows my credibility.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence therefore, is not an art, but a habit."
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
That's not the phone company's fault. That's the result of de-regulation and the breakup of ATT.
Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Interesting read, bugger all to do with motorcycles... Or Zen.
Deleted
if something is broken, no need to ask for a repair man. just replace it with a new one.
Are you trying to measure technical Support or Customer support and what field.
The differences are huge and you can't really compare them. Would you rather a Customer support person give you the warm fuzzies and support you with regards to status and account/billing stuff?
Or would you prefer someone who asks you tough questions and makes you decide things possibly without fully explaining the choices.
I have been doing customer and technical support and for more years than I can count sometimes, and I will tell you that the greatest factor that will influence your experience is you.
Don't be the customer that didn't have a support contract and didn't spend 15 minutes researching his problem who then complained that they shouldn't have been charged the 2 hour minimum when the support person refered them to the document they needed in 10 minutes.
Don't be the customer that calls up about a problem with XXXX when XXXX isn't even in the same location and/or the problem no longer exists. And if you do call up in those cases, expect that you will have to call back when you have access to XXXX or when the problem happens again (though in both cases you may/should be able to get a list of general first steps, just be polite)
Don't be the customer that 'knows' what the problem is and just wants the Tech to confirm it, and if you really knew what the problem was then you would have already fixed it. (exceptions can be made for getting access to parts, etc...but expect that the Tech has just had to deal with 10 people who told him what the problem was and 11 of them where wrong (one of them had 2 ideas for the problem.) Work with the tech and if you disagree with a step ask why it's required and quietly state why you don't think it is needed and then LISTEN... the step may be routine or maybe required, maybe the tech didn't know that you had already tried it, etc... but don't yell or call names and always be polite.)
In the vast majority of companies the Technical or Customer support rep is the customer advocate, work with him/her and you will go much farther than if you fight them. They can help you walk the mazes and if they are on your side they can make you aware of options you would never have known about otherwise.
The next biggest factor after how the customer acts is the current priority of the company and the freedom/discretion they give their reps. If the rep can't refund you anything without a manager's sign off then the rep will need to go to his manager to get you a refund, if the manager needs to get approval for a refund over XX then you won't get over XX without the manager getting approval. Sounds obvious but remember this when you ask the rep for a refund, suggest that you can wait if he needs to check with someone and don't be afraid to ask to speak to someone who can authorize the refund.
>
Working as a tech support intern for a non profit company (and, according to most of the folks there, I'm good at 'support', even if I'm still learning 'tech',) I've learned what I should and should not bring with me when I go to work on a person's computer:
Bring: Friendly smile and understanding
Don't Bring: Muttering about the peons lack of knowledge when it's an easy fix
Bring: Assumptions that they don't know shit about computers
Don't bring: The idea that I have to make them realize that if they don't already
This is a big one:
Bring: The ability to say "I have no clue what's going on, but I'll do some research and get back ASAP"
Don't Bring: Bullshit
Before I started working here, they recently had to change the head of the IT section (which was about three people.) The old guy apparently kept on promising to do this or that, and would never admit that he wasn't sure what was going on or that he would have to figure out something. Between this and the facts that he had absolutely no sense of organization and real network knowledge (the local passwords to most PCs were either 'x' or 'c') was what got his ass on the curb.
Yes, customers may feel they've wasted money by calling in someone who can say "I don't know". I've found that when I've been tech support on my own (kind of a freelance hobby), I would suggest what I could, tell them I would call back within x days, and research it in the mean time. If they're still a little hotheaded after that, I tell them that I'll take a bit off the bill for the time I just had with their computer (depending on how far I got to diagnose what I could.)
The worst thing you could do, IMO, is make up something, assuming they don't know tech jargon, and have them decide to call someone else to take a look at it. If that other person makes up his own jargon, or can tell them the real problem, the customer is going to be very wary of you.
Knowing when to say 'when' is a virtue.
The service business is notorious for business failure. Probably 60% fail within a couple of years.
Calculate your costs. Your overhead will be at least 30% of your sales, if not more.
Educate your customers. Good techs (including yourself) cost money, need training and upgrades. Good troubleshooters are rare and worth paying well. Everything you do has to be paid by your customers.
If you increase your prices by 10% and lose 50% of your customers, you are further ahead profit wise. Beat these facts into your mind. They will save your business and your sanity.
Hardware is so cheap these days that any time and repairs can easily amount to more than a new unit. Sell new stuff.
These issues are common to almost all service businesses. Appliance, small engine, automotive, etc.
Remember that good service is not free or a matter of giving something away. It is helping people do what they want to do for a fee.
Derek
When one does component level diagnostics on certain parts (say, memory sticks) one can discover that they underlying problem maybe corroded contact points on the memory or the socket. Customer hands me a system saying "black screen, no boot". I hit the power button and the fans whir to life, no POST. Cutting the power I reach inside and push down on the rockwell socketed BIOS chip, feeling it crunch a lil as it seats. Hit the power agian the system comes to life. Proceeded to reseat all the cables that attach to the board so that the ever-present spectre of corrosion related failures do not arise for some time.
$35.00 later one very happy customer walked out the door.
A GOOD PC tech never should never, EVER forget the fundamentals of component-level analysis.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
I've been there.
With my AT&T long distance, I canceled it, paid the final bill but kept getting the final bill for several months (calling each time it came) until it finally stopped.
With AT&T mobile, switched the bill from my name to my companies name, and the same thing happened.
WIth Chevy Chase Bank, I was planning to move so I called to switch my address to a POBOX. Next month the bill came to the old address. Called, complained, changed my address again. This went on monthly for 1 FULL YEAR before they finally successfully changed my address.
Again with Chevy Chase Bank, I called to get a debit card. Waited few weeks, no debit card. Called back and was told
that I never requested one. This cycle went for 3 or 4 iterations,
before going into a branch and talking to a manager - only to
be told that despite having an account (for several years), they
had NO RECORD OF ME IN THEIR SYSTEM AT ALL. yet the account was working perfectly.
With Comcast Internet, got a call from their canadian call center, saying my modem was outdated (it was), I needed a new one. Bought a new modem that day, called back to activate it and deactivate the old one.
For the next 5 weeks, I got a call every saturday like clockwork from the same call center telling me that my modem was outdated and I needed a new one. Every time I went through the whole process of giving them all my modem numbers and canceling the old modem.
I don't understand what is up with companies these days. They all seem to centralized account manangement systems that any call center employee can access... Yet it's extremely common for information to simply get lost...
I work in tech support and a university and the thing that seems to impress people most is a fast response. If you can be asking them about their problem the same day they call for help, I find that they're usually much more friendly and easier to deal with. Even if you know it'll be a week before you can get there to do any real work on their computer, calling and listening to the problem first hand (and scheduling a service call) is much better than letting their request for help sit in the system for a couple of days.
Far and above the most excellent technical support I've ever received is from Verizon Wireless. Each time I call I quickly get ahold of a human. When I talk to them, the first thing out of their mouth is "Please tell me how I can help you today". They patiently listen to me as I explain the circumstances. Once I've explained my need/want, they always say "I can help with that" and follow up with a clear explanation of options that I have. Each phone call ends with either (almost always) "I'm glad I could help you today. Please call back if you have any other questions" or (very rarely) "I'm sorry that I couldn't help you this time. We're here for you though, so if there is something else that we can help you with, please call us." The people on the phone are reliable, patient, understand what they're supporting, polite and respectful. I can clearly tell that the people on the phone actually care about me and try to help me!
Some of the worst customer support I've ever received comes from computer companies. "We don't support that" or "Thats clearly documented in (some obscure location)".
Debian does an ok job, though Ubuntu does a poor job.
I understand that the first line of tech service is the person who (usually) has little knowledge of the item I'm calling about. They go through the flow chart with you and try to get rid of you as quickly as possible (because that's usually how they are being rated).
However, when my problem persists, I expect to be transferred to a 2nd level technical support person. I want someone intimately familiar with the product I'm calling about. I seldom get such technical support until after I've called several times.
If my problem still persists, I expect to be either transferred to or scheduled to talk to a 3rd level support person. I almost never get to talk to these folks.
At home/work service contracts (which are not inexpensive to purchase) are a joke. Usually you have to talk to many many tech support folks before they agree to send someone to your home.
When I get lousy tech support, I don't go back to buy more of whatever broke.
I support Laserjets for corporate clients for a well known printing company. Both color and mono, through a 3rd party company contracted to take the calls. Previously i've supported the smaller consumer based printers before that with the same client. Our quality standards for customer satisfaction are as follows. Our grading is based on a scale of 1-5 where( 5 == most satisfied) Our contract states we must have at least ~65% satisfied customers (4's and 5's) and ~10% dissatisfied customers( 1's and 2's).The remaining 3's are our worst enemy so far. It usually means the issue is resolved technically, but we didn't go the whole 9 yards with our customers and make their experience stand out. If you're looking for a static solution to get satisfied customers, it's next to impossible. I've yet to see any practice that works best. Our ideas and incentives to maintain high standards in customer care are constantly changing since none of them work, or atleast not for long.
Providing a good support organization is a matter of hitting a balance between "cost" and "competence". Unfortunately, the latter is difficult to measure, so most companies end up being heavily biased towards "cost".
Denial is not a river in Egypt
> Not sure why this is such a hard problem for businesses to solve...
Welcome to MBAmerica.
I never call support. I will never call support. I'm in more of a business analyst role than a technician role, and I don't have the time or experience to diagnose whether the onboard videocard is failing, the RAM is bad, or maybe it has a leaky capacitor. So I pick up the phone, call my Dell sales rep, and tell him to ship me a replacement or send someone out. Your sales rep will never argue with you on this. Because the quarter million dollars you spend every year as part of your refresh cycle is worth the occasional field replacement unit.
Even if you don't spend as much as I do, you should still demand the same treatment as a corporate customer. The service side doesn't make the company money, and obviously the sales side is the life blood--so the sales will always get the job done for you.
I get my car serviced at two different Honda dealers(I commute a lot). One fixes exactly what I need to get the car back on the road and usually is cheaper. The other Honda dealer fixes what my car needs and then says, "You know, your car needed a new timing belt. The water pump usually goes about the same time. You should probably replace it also because if you don't and the bearings seize - it will tear the teeth out of your new belt and you'll have to pay for this all over again." I'm not talking about the regular mechanic who tells me that my brand new radiator needs new hoses again and I should get my brake pads replaced and my oil changed. This small analogy to cars is my attempt at demonstrating the necessity that IT support should fix what is broken, but IMO it is their duty to inform the customer that their computer will become infected with spyware again and again if they don't set up a firewall and antivirus. AND especially if you can point the customer to a website of free Ad-aware, Spybot, etc. you should. AND it is the balance between offering only those things that a customer needs/has a chance of buying vs. mentioning all of the different products available and the possible upgrades to pump up your tech inflated ego.
There are a lot of things you can do to improve your image and worth to your customers.
- Listen to them. You may have heard it all before, but if you let them babble for several minutes they might divulge some critical little factoid that suddenly clears up the problem and makes a solution apparent. Interrupting or cutting a customer short on their description of the problem can make it very difficult to pry the necessary information from their head once they're in "ok I'll shut up now" mode.
- Be patient. They wouldn't be calling on your help if they had anywhere near the skills and knowledge that you do. Expect them to be noobs in every meaning of the word. Explaining the difference between an application and a disk image is no less helpful for a new guy than laying out the finer points of DNS to the techie. Both people need your help and are equally greatful, even when you are supplying what appears to be trivial information.
- Be proactive. If you're fixing a problem for a customer and you notice another issue, bring it to their attention. (don't just quietly fix it and let them discover it on their own!) Sometimes it'll be an issue they didn't even realize could be fixed, or was something that had been bothering them for some time but they forgot to ask you about. Little adjustments and tweaks to the user's experience can have a dramatic impact on how they view and value your help, and strongly encourage return business.
- Explain things to them at an appropriate level. This is probably one of the most challenging things for an IT service provider. Strike up a dialog with the customer for a good two minutes or more, to get a feel for what technical level they are at. Keep in mind some of these people are PhDs and literally don't understand you have to plug in the power cord to make it go. Listen carefully for feedback from them, for clues that you may have confused them or may be talking benieth their abilities, and adjust your technical level accordingly. Use examples and comparisons if needed to explain a foreign concept to them. Do not ever leave without being convinced they understand and remember what you have told them. When in doubt, briefly review what you've discussed to make sure they really do understand what you've said. Keep in mind that many customers will "nod and smile" and give you the impression they "get it" when in reality you lost them five minutes ago. If possible, show the customer how you fixed their problem, and if appropriate, explain to them why it happened, and how they can fix it themselves if it happens again. Most customers won't pay much attention to you when you fix their problem, even though they'd really like to be able to fix it themselves in the future.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Problem is people are so cheap. They send you something and you just have to tell them straight up "Sorry man your mobo is broke" And hearing how they have to spend a couple hundred dollars on a new board they dont wana hear that. Thats where the problem is cheap ass people. Im a technition at a local computer store, i think i do just fine. People just make it harder on us cause there cheap. They try and make US feel bad.
I would rather buy repairable products that have a longer life, than to pay less for disposable junk.
I agree with you, unfortunately most Americans do not, which is why most stuff now is cheap junk designed to last about 3 years. People buy the cheap WalMart special as opposed to the higher quality product from a small electronics store that costs twice as much.
Is this a troll for a business plan or something? I haven't known people to expect more than good service, but maybe I'm wrong. Obviously people are getting "more" than that from somewhere, but where? And why won't this person articulate it? I agree that predicting the future might be a good entrepreneurial angle, so let us know when you figure that one out.
Good service hasn't really changed in the past century. Don't make your customers hate you, and tell prospective customers how you're going to prevent them from hating you in the future. It's not a science, why does it need to change?
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Remember when you could tell people, buy a Dell and that would be a good thing because their hardware was good and their support was great? Well then they shipped all their support to somewhere in India or something. Then the hardware seemed just OK because the support sucked so bad?
Say hello to SonicWall.
Nice hardware, good OS, don't even think about calling them before 2100EST because if you do you will get what must be the WORST support in IT.
Classic:
SWS: I need you to download this file.
Admin: I can't down load anything, my firewall is down.
SWS: Just hook into your router with the cross over cable.
Admin: OK.
*ten minutes of reconfiguring a machine to go out through the router*
Admin: OK. All set.
SWS: Oh you can't download that file.
Admin: What is it?
SWS: The file extracts a tool to tell me if the SonicWall is down.
Admin: The SonicWall is down.
SWS: Can you ping it?
Admin: Well it's not connected to anything right now.
SWS: Oh it has to be connected.
Admin: You just made me unconnect it.
SWS: Are you running Windows XP?
Admin: On some machines.
SWS: It's probably the built in firewall.
Admin: What is?
SWS: The problem you're having.
Admin: No the problem is the SonicWall is down.
SWS: Did you check your IP settings?
Me: Get off the phone with this guy... I have a PIX 515 being delivered.
This
It's really quite easy: excellent customer service is completely transparent. It's when things just work or people get what they need before they even know they need it.
It's Xerox having a machine that lets the company know that there is a problem - and a tech fixing it before the client even knows about it.
It's the waiter getting you the refill before you even asked for it.
It's when you boot up your computer and you can do your work - without calling the tech guy.
From that point of view, your question is a bit of a trick question because you are really asking: How do we follow-up on bad service or products that got the customer on the phone in the first place and be so good that they forget the initial inconvenience?
In most cases, you can't. But, anything you can do to solve the problem and do it with minimal fuss is a plus. The how will depend on your particular circumstances - and your customers.
Unfortunately, satisfying the customer can be impossible or even down right stupid to do. I work at an Apple store and I can't begin to count the number of pissed off customers we've had when we tell them that no, the damage to their iPod is not covered under waranty when you drop the thing down a flight of steps and then proceede to play rugby with it.
Likewise, we don't cover laptops that the customer has taken upon himself to open and trouble shoot and then when they make things worse bring it in. Yet they will scream and holler bloody murder because we're not going to service their "brand new" powerbook that magically has some dorritos and a sticky substance that bears a resemblance to pepsi on the inside
Anyone can uninstall a moutain of spyware, but not many people make sure that the customer really enjoys the expereince of having spyware uninstalled. That is, most often tech don't take time to educate without condescending or to really connect with the customer on a personal level.
I highly recommend the book The Fred Factor by Mark Sanborn (ISBN: 0-385-51351-8). It coveres how to make the expereince you share memorable and that's what builds customer loyalty and sets you apart and makes you "different" than everyone else out there who repairs PCs.
What's good customer service? Three Words:
t -to-talk-to-you.
M-Path-thee (empathy)
Your customer will want the sun and the moon. It's a given. It's human nature. When they ask for something unreasonable, you have two options.
1) Get beligerant & defensive, refuse their request, and call them an idiot under your breath.
2) Recognize where they're coming from, give them some sympathy for their plight, and have a little flexibility to compromise on other things.
The problem with poor customer service isn't that they can't fix your problem, it's that they don't care. Follow the flow chart, push them off on someone else, don't bother to do more than you're required. I-don't-want-to-be-here-and-I-certainly-don't-wan
A customer service rep's job is to make the customer happy. Now, they can't do *everything* that a customer wants, but they can do a lot, even if it's only a sympethetic ear.
I have a summer job answering the phone at a company which sells lawn mower parts. Not mowers, but parts to fix 'em when they break. Not if they break, but when.
I am amazed at how many dozens of calls I take each day where the customers have no idea what part is broken, certainly no idea of what part they need, and they expect a 1-800 number to be able to solve their problems.
Them: "My mow deck isn't working"
Me: (looking through my mower database) "Do you have the model number of your mower?"
Them: (pause) It's a five-horse with a mulching blade.
Me: (with a database of a few thousand mowers matching that description) Do you have a model number? There's not much I can do without knowing more about your specific mower.
Them: (longer pause) It's red.
Me: I'm sorry, but there is no way I can diagnose your problem over the phone, and no way to do anything at all without knowing what exact mower you have.
I like to help customers when I can, and I certainly do not enjoy making customers mad, but they have to be able to meet me halfway. The same should go for tech calls.
http://www.walkingtaco.com
More examples of what not to do... http://bofh.ntk.net/Bastard.html
...and switched to a small 'white box' company that pre-stocks us with spare parts for our PC's. If a part dies, we replace it and then call them. A typical phone call to them lasts about 45 seconds, and comprises of us telling them who we are, where we are from, the serial number of the computer in question and the part we replaced. They then say good day, and ship a replacement-replacement part out - no questions, no annoying scripts, no BS.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
I'd say, before trying to be excellent, be good. Then try to be excellent.
To be good, work out what is bad, and then avoid it.
I've been a bad customer support person, and the main thing that makes bad customer support is anonymity. I could literally tell a customer to 'fuck off' and hang up and they would have no recourse. They didn't know who I was.
I've also been in the situation where they were ringing or emailing and greeting me by name cause my name was listed on the website as support. Even at my shittiest I treated them well enough that they wouldn't have cause to complain.
So, reduce anonymity.
Also, make the person speaking to the customer closer to the person fixing the problem. The support person may understand the urgency, but if they can't communicate that to the engineer, it's no good.
Everyone else seems to be saying 'treat your customer like a person'. I'd say 'treat your customer service people like people'.
All in all, I think it boils down to 'be small'. As a general rule, small companies tend to have better customer service (less people, so less anonymity and closer connections). Large companies have better prices and most of the time that seems to be what people want when they first buy. When they repeat buy, it's for reliability or customer service.
It's the nature of customer service to be asked to provide infinite knowledge and support with little or know reliable input from the customer. And its the nature of the customer to always want more and never feel completely satisfied. End users will never have a good technical understanding of the problems they encounter nor will they know how to communicate that as more than their frustration.
Take auto repair centers. Cars have been around for over a century now, and yet the average schmoe who brings a car in with a problem usually describes it as "there's this noise" or "its just runs funny". And even the most competent mechanics have to put up with the "end user" who feels cheated simply because he/she doesn't have a clue what the mechanic actually did.
The technology may change, but the nature of the people using it and needing support never will.
The best support techs I know are those that have good listening and analytical skills. "People skills". Not necessarily the most knowledgeable people, but the ones that can listen to the end user, break the problem down into concrete areas, and if unable to fix it can at least escalate and communicate the problem properly to those who can.
The comment previously about the Bicycle Repairman skit on Monty Python made a good point.
We don't just go in and do a job. We make sure that, even if we're called out on something small, we check the server(s), make sure everyone around the office is doing alright, and answer any additional questions people have. Clients just aren't clients to us, we try to make them more like friends. We've had quite a few of them for almost as long as our business. Hell, we'll even go drink a few beers with some of them on occasion.
Good customer service (and satisfaction) is really about showing them that you care and are indeed interested in fixing their problem, preventing problems, and teaching them what they can do to help. It's not enough just to go somewhere, fix whatever's broken, and leave. It's very important to be up front with the client, let them know what's going on and what you're doing to fix it. Then, when it's all said and done, if there's something they can do to help prevent the situation from getting this bad next time, teach them to do it. It could be as easy as checking to make sure your drive mirroring isn't broken.
Communication also plays a very important role, not matter what type of service you do. We do both onsite, and remote (desktop and phone) service. If a client calls, we're sure to respond to/return the call as soon as we can. It sucks waiting on the other end for someone to call you back. We try to do it within 5-10 minutes, if that. If we end up doing a phone support call, we never treat them like their stupid. It isn't their job to know the systems like we know them, so we walk them through and tell them what we want them to click on, look at, or type in. A lot of times this proves as a great learning experience for them, so if the same problem comes up they may not need to call us.
We've run our business this way for seven years now, without one advertisement. All of our business has been word of mouth referrals. I'd say that we've been doing something right all these years.
Try actually thinking for yourself. It's quite refreshing.
you're taking it out on the wrong guy. that poor kid's probably trying to make a few bucks in order to have some pocket money.
there was nothing stopping you from politely telling him how/why he's wrong, that he shouldn't be trying too hard to be helpful when it involves saying things he doesn't really know, which can harm people who can end up buying something wrong for them (does Circuit City have a decent returns policy?), and, hey, he'd have had an on-the-job learning experience.
"fuck off, moron"? speaking as a guy with fourteen Macs, I have to say I wish assholes like you wouldn't buy Macs. It's distasteful having to think oh-i'm-so-smart types like you are jumping on the bandwagon. nothing's stopping you from going to ebay yourself some remaindered AlphaServers or something.
you mods who gave this guy +4 insightful - you should be ashamed of yourselves.
Cursing out a young adult and calling him a moron isn't insightful -- it's disgraceful.
Educate whenever possible and treat others the way you wish to be treated. I'm sure the guy that gave you all those mod points was trying to be very very nice.
I think you are lying.
And why the hell would you go to circuit city to ask someone about openvms unless you were looking to start a fight.
And Circuit City doesnt sell Dells.
Who the hell modded you +4 ? Your moron friends have mod privileges today ?
The speak volumes.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
I told that kid, "Fuck off, moron,"
So you counter ignorance with rudeness and wonder why Customer Service is piss poor?
Wanted : A Signature.
IMHO, the best way to get excellent support is to use non proprietary technology. All to often patents cause people to segment and fence off technogoly, have incompatable parts, etc ... This not only leads to product differentaion over service differentation, but it also makes things unsandardized across industries making the market area in a particular service area smaller, thus less choice, thus less quality.
I remember going to Circuit City once to purchase a PC.
Why? Especially since you noted that you purchased a Mac at the "reliable Apple store"? Sounds like you went in there to satisfy your own ego. Sad.
Yes, you can be too rich and you can be too thin.
...never... never... never
But you can
have too much documentation!!!
This is serious for anyone considering selling anything technical.
Document everything. Every detail.. every process.... every little part.... every in-house number... every assembly process.
C'mon, guys, CD's are about 10 cents nowdays. So if you sell something, anything, and especially anything technical, put all the information that you have on it on a CD and include it with the product.
There is no such thing as intellectual property and there is no such thing as proprietary information. And you can never have too much detail.
If you seriously want to reduce your support costs and are tired of answering stupid questions from the people who have bought your products, document the ever-lovin' hell out of it.
Will you lose sales of repair services if your customers can repair the equipment themselves from your included documentation? No! you will gain sales.
When I used to do North American technical support for a little German company that sold PCB milling machines, this was by far the biggest complaint that I would get from the customers. Not enough detail in the documentation. And when my bone-head German boss told me that I couldn't send a schematic of a $10,000 machine that had $50 worth of parts on the main circuit board to the customers that asked for it, I was stunned.
And when my idiot (German) boss told me that I had to tell the people at Fermi Labs, Sandia Labs, and the MIT Media Lab that they had to send their $20,000 80-kilogram PCB milling machine back to Germany in order to fix the $2 part on the circuit board that burned up because the ex-Soviet engineers in the German design shop used the wrong part in a simple power supply, I just about cried.
And when I told my nitwit (German) boss that you really shouldn't treat very important customers like Sandia, FermiLabs, and the MIT Media Labs like this because they wouldn't recommend our product to people who asked about us, well, he fired me.
And within one year, their stock price went from 66 Euro to 3 Euro and is unlikely to ever regain its former value.
But, employees must know their proper place, according to my ex (German) boss.
I remember back when Guy Kawasaki was evangelizing for Apple, his mantra was always "under-promise, over-deliver". I will give you a recent example...
We had a copier with a fan that was going bad. We could hear the bearings creating all kinds of racket every time copied something. I contacted someone whose name I foudn in the local phone directory, and he left me with a very positive impression. Instead of giving us some bull about "such-and-such minimum, so-much for every 15 minutes thereafter," he explained that the repair itself wasn't that big a deal - if we wanted to save some money, we could probably order the part and do it ourselves.
We ordered the part and did it ourselves, and we did save some money in the process. But you can BET that the next some time something serious happened, we'd be talking to HIM as opposed to someone else.
I'm surprised that people pay for service from big companies like Xerox. They charge an absolute fortune, and they won't even answer questions if you don't have an active support agreement.
If you want to impress someone (gain their gratitude and potentially their business), go the extra mile. When you look at how bad things can be, it's not all that difficult.
Well I can't say I've ever gotten really good customer service from a tech vendor, but there is one company that consistently gives unsurpassed service to all its customers: Dillon Precision.
Unless you're a gun nut, you won't have heard of them, they make machines for making your own ammunition. Anyway, here's their deal. They guarantee most of their products for the life of the product. Anytime something breaks, whether due to defect, user stupidity, or outright abuse, you just call them up and they send you the parts for free.
The peace of mind this grants is incalculable. When buying a Dillon product, you just flat don't have to worry about anything.
I don't know that this kind of service has an analogue in the tech industry, but it seems like it ought to. At the very least hardware vendors should be able to follow suit. At a previous employer, we had a Gold service contract with HP/Compaq. Despite paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for that level of support, there were still numerous occasions when a server up and died and it took one or two full days to get it back up because the HP/Compaq field office was stingy about sending their tech with all the parts he might need. Somehow they thought sending him on the 70 mile drive from Colorado Springs to Denver with one part, only to discover he needed another part, drive back, rinse & repeat, was more cost-effective than sending him with a carload of potentially useful parts in the first place. Maybe it was more cost-effective, but it sure made us question the value of our support dollars.
Obviously, Dillon products cost a lot more money due to the lifetime "No B.S." warranty. A reloading press can easily last 20 years, and a guy can break or wear out a lot of parts in that time (and hell if you wear the whole thing out they'll rebuild it for the cost of shipping). Offering that kind of warranty even for 5 years for a Wintel server could double or triple the price.
Curious, though, that no one seems to have tried this approach....
A book that has inspired me to change my attitude towards service for the better is The Practice of System and Network Administration. It's very good for other reasons too.
These two stories should not have been combined.
That is all.
I know that begs the question, but that's what it's all about. Give the customer more than what they expect. Their warranty ran out? Give them a new one for free. They are having trouble setting up a product? Tell them that a technician is on their way (and actually do it).
I work for a theatre company, and we're the best/largest one in the world because that's what we do. Exceed the guests' expectations. If a guest is not happy, we fix their problem, no matter the cost. After all, giving out one free ticket to remedy a bad experience more than pays for itself when the guest comes back with five of their friends.
'Every story, if continued long enough, ends in death.' --Ernest Hemingway
Let's be realistic. How much support should a customer expect, and how much should a support provider be expected to provide? Simple questions, just as simple as the situations in the last dozen or so replies.
The reality is that the environment created by the organizations business practices will determine how much support is required vs. provided. For example, the semi-rural high school I attended in the 1980's might make alot of requests like "Our printer is broke, it says 'low toner' all the time. I think it's out of ink, too, because it only prints on half the page." This is stuff you'd expect from people who have had to deal with me for 8 hours a day during the Reagan Administration.
Now look at the US Government, primarily the Armed Forces. Should someone deployed overseas call his/her home station IT support people from halfway around the world, and expect a legitimate answer to a question like "I forgot the power supply for my laptop, where can I get one here? I need it in an hour to give a briefing..." Or requesting help in the process of installing games or otherwise modifying a government IT resource for the purpose of screwing off. If you only had a clue how often this happens, you'd feel far less guilty about that questionable mp3 collection.
I really don't think there is a correct answer to the question, but one thing is true: No matter how much support you give, they will always ask for more, and ask more often.
I mean like in the US and Europe,you guys have more consumer awareness on the goods and services that you buy.Here in Asia,especially Malaysia,we suffer due to the lack of customer awareness.This makes the customer services slack abit in their services cos they know not many people know of their rights.Another thing i would like to add,the laws in Asia are not particulaly strong to protect the consumers and are more to protect the companies.Blargh,we even have useless monopolies that never offer any good services due to their link with the givernment
Okay, this is just common sense. Here are some thing I expect from technical support:
1. Have a real human being answer your fucking phone immediately, instead of making me navigate an automated phone menu and sit on hold for 30 minutes or longer.
2. Do not under any circumstances assume that I'm a dumbass, or treat me like one by default, and make me go through a series of asinine basic scripted troubleshooting steps. I wouldn't be CALLING tech support if I hadn't already tried all those things first.
3. Admit known flaws with your products. Instead of trying to pretend that design flaw with your hardware or bug in your driver doesn't exist, try being forthcoming and apologetic about it. Add my name to a "to be notified" list for that particular issue so that when a BIOS update or driver fix becomes available I'll be the first to know. That way I can go on about my life instead of wasting even more evenings away trying to get your product to behave in a stable manner when it would be impossible for me to do so due to a flaw in its design.
4. Issue lifetime warranties for all of your products, or at least be more reasonable with your warranty periods. If you make a product, and it dies 30 days after the warranty expired, and I call technical support, from an ethical point of view, I still expect you to stand behind your product and provide me with a free replacement. The fact that it died 30 days beyond the warranty period is a fucking technicality that you shouldn't be using as an excuse to not stand behind your products' quality.
5. Hire tech support reps who are actually experts on your own products and who actually know more about them than I do.
6. If your tech support rep says they will have to call me back, and they go to the trouble of taking down my name and telephone number and they say they will call me back tomorrow with more information regarding my case, then make sure they actually call me back by the time they say they are going to.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Capitalism ... ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ...
Is all about the lying
The cheating
And don't forget about the stealing
For some reason
We think that when a corporation
Or even a person
Gets away w/ something
We think that they're clever
We respect that sort of behavior
It's the culture of capitalism.
A week later - no laptop. Another call to Dell: "Airborne Express hasn't delivered it yet". Lie #2 A call to Airborne Express in Austin: "Dell refused delivery. Dell's got a warehouse full of broken gear waiting to be repaired, and no more room, so they are making Airborne rent a warehouse to store incoming shipments until they are ready for them."
One day, I stayed on hold to Dell's 800 number for 12 hours (they were on holiday, but didn't change the message), so for fun I put it on speakerphone and went about my day. I figured I might get a callback when they saw the large incoming WATS charge - no such luck.
I won't bore you with the rest of the story, except that it involved 11 more lies, and frequent plane trips for my laptop as it was turfed between Dell service centers. High comedy. I finally got the laptop back from Dell 6 months later.
Of course, I couldn't wait 6 months; I went out and bought an IBM Thinkpad, back in the days when IBM really cared about service. Unfortunately, that Thinkpad suffered the very same problem (a broken charger) soon after I bought it. Reluctantly, I sent it in for repair, also via Airborne Express, on a Monday afternoon (Airborne had delivered a packing box that morning).
I get a phone call Tuesday morning from the repair tech at IBM. He had fixed the laptop (it took a few minutes), and it would be sent back that day. However, he wanted my permission to upgrade the BIOS. He was knowledgable, and we had a detailed conversation of the pros and the hypothetical cons of that particular upgrade. We couldn't find any, so he went ahead, and I got the laptop back Wednesday morning. Elapsed time door-to-door, 44 hours.
They asked. They ASKED They were even knowledgable about Linux (which is why they asked about the BIOS change, they had only tested it on a few hundred kernels, not all yet). This treatment gave me the confidence to switch the laptop to Linux, since I could trust IBM to take care of me after I did.
That was the best damned customer service interaction I have ever had, and I have bought half a dozen Thinkpads since (running Linux, of course). Recent repair experiences have not been as good; IBM outsourced their service organization, then outsourced their whole damned PC business to Levono. Oh, well, now I am looking for a trustworthy source of laptops again. It was great while it lasted, though,
Keith
Keith Lofstrom server-sky.com
Although GoDaddy boasts 24/7 support, you still have to wait 4+ hours on the phone and anywhere from 48 to 72 hours before you get an email response.
With GKG, I've always been able to talk to a live person as soon as I call, and if I email support I hear from them within 24 hours or less.
Incompetence is never an excuse for politery! This young man was performing a job and he was not qualified. I am glad I knew enough to know how wrong his claims were. I feel sorry for the poor folks who just dumped thousands of pounds or dollars on a computer system only to find it does not meet up to their needs because the vendor did not know what he was talking about, because he was a fool! He was a moron, and I let him know it.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
there was nothing stopping you from politely telling him how/why he's wrong, that he shouldn't be trying too hard to be helpful when it involves saying things he doesn't really know, which can harm people who can end up buying something wrong for them (does Circuit City have a decent returns policy?), and, hey, he'd have had an on-the-job learning experience.
Nothing stopping me, except I'm not fucking PAID to train Circuit City's employees.
Sheesh.
I recently dined at Lumiere (www.lumiere.ca) which is recognized as the finest restaurant in Canada. I spent almost $400 on a dinner for two and walked away in a very good mood feeling like I got more than my money's worth. The product, presentation, and most of all the service were all the best I had experienced in any commercial transaction in any industry, period. Yes it was just a meal at a restaurant, but it had such an impact that I now try to have the save level of customer satisfaction in my own technology businesss. I want my customers to feel happy to pay a little more because quality of the products and service they receive from us.
Unsure about other companies, but I know that Xerox is going down the route of using SNMP to actively monitor the state of it's networked devices and notify central support centres based on the procedures specified in the individual client contracts.
Don't assume you know everything about a given technology, they can evolve while you're not looking. :)
Disclaimer - Fuji-Xerox Australia employee
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
I bet, when you see old ladies trying to cross the road, you wouldn't help them either, right, since you're not paid to help them.
if you don't buy stuff from circuit city, that punishes them enough. the fellow you were telling to fuck off is a human being trying to make it in this world in a LOW PAYING, BASTARD-CUSTOMER environment.
I lost the battery cover for my cheap (Geko) GPS receiver. I phoned up Garmin UK to find out where I could buy one, and they sent me one for free - arrived the next day. Excellent.
So we sit on the phone for a while and they determine my MoBo is borked. They had a tech at the office in two days with a new MoBo. He installed it and the battery charges now.
Did they get it right on the first try? No. But that would have been a hard one to get right on the first try. Overall, I am reasonably satisfied. I would have preferred that their MoBos last a little longer than a year without needing replacing.
But they did fix the problem without too much fuss.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Ha, yeah, well, I'd agree :-)
Do you think it was him replying to me as an AC?
Anyways if you read his orig post the whole "foreigner" thing kinda irked me too (borderline racist?).
(you have a slashdot acct?)
Customer Service has gotten atrocious.
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne