Ross wrote a short post the other day about a funny customer service request we received and mentioned that we have handled well over 100,000 customer service contacts since we launched less than 3 year ago. I looked at that number and my jaw dropped; I know intellectually that we handle a huge volume of support requests, but as we answer our users questions, respond to their problems, thank them for their suggestions, and fix the bugs they report, we don’t think much about how many of these we actually answer, solve, implement and fix. It’s kind of like aging, one day you turn around and your kids are in college and you’re another decade older. How does that happen without you even being aware that it is happening? Same with customer service: the requests come in, you deal with them one-by-one and the next thing you know you’ve done 100,000. Wow.
We are (of course) huge proponents of great customer service and we strive every day to provide a world-class level of support to our users. We make ourselves available 7 days a week, we celebrate the quick response, and we endeavor to solve all requests within 24 hours. And we’ve gotten pretty good at it: we are proud that our average response time is under an hour, and we solve over 80% of requests in under a day. To us great customer service is part of a great user experience, and more than that, we view it as a marketing strategy: great support engenders great word of mouth, and W.O.M. leads to more customers. A virtuous cycle if ever there was.
Not every customer who contacts us is an easy customer. For every whimsical contact that we receive about apples, we get ten more from folks who are upset, angry, vexed, annoyed, indignant, or irritated: the site isn’t performing to their standards; a problem is not being resolved fast enough; a credit card was overcharged; or another user has posted a rude comment. The true art of customer service is not in how you handle someone who gets in touch to have a little fun on the topic of fruit, but in how you handle a seriously upset customer with a real issue. The kind of issue that ties your stomach in knots and that leads to holding phone 10 inches away away to protect your eardrum, or (please Lord, no) an email written in ALL CAPS with crazy punctuation!!??
Here are a few tips for dealing with the these most difficult of customers; some of these are relevant to everyday run-of-the-mill contacts, but for the most exasperating support requests, these 9 tips may be particularly helpful:
1. Know a difficult customer when you see one. Then pounce.
Watch for the signs: profanity, sarcasm, and overt anger are pretty easy to spot but sometimes an upset customer might not be so immediately evident. Watch for keywords like “payment,” “issue,” “problem,” “bug,” or “slow” as these can be good signs that a support request has the potential to escalate. Once you know which they are, make sure that these appeals are not allowed to languish; you should be sure that the most difficult requests move straight to the top of the queue. A happy customer tends to be much more patient than an unhappy one, so deal with those unhappy folks first, ok?
2. Stay on the lookout. Everywhere.
Great customer service can happen anywhere, anytime, but only if you are aware that there is a customer who needs help. The trick is to keep your finger on the pulse and we do this monitoring in several important ways: 1) we make support easily accessible via an obvious “contact us” link at the top of every page, a crowdSPRING user account to which users can easily send us a message, and a chat feature available on certain key pages on the site; 2) We monitor social media for angry customers by using search terms in Twitter, carefully observing your Facebook feed, and making LinkedIn and other services available as contact methods for our users; 3) Watch the blogs and message boards for people expressing their dissatisfaction. Google alerts is a great tool for watching the web for random mentions and comments – set up search terms with your company name and be sure to watch the results closely for trouble.
3. In customer service, it is the hare who wins the race.
In the ancient fable, it is the slow, steady tortoise who wins the race, but in customer service it is the fast response that wins the hearts. People like to know that someone is paying attention and the faster your response, the stronger the message that you are doing just that. Difficult customers especially are time-sensitive and an immediate response will go far to reduce their angst.
In these recessionary times, all of us who operate startups and small businesses struggle to meet our bottom line, pay our monthly bills, retain our great employees, and grow our businesses in spite of the challenges presented. What to do, what to do? Well, one time-proven marketing strategy that increases customer lifetime value, cements loyalty, and drives word of mouth, is simply doing what your mom tried to teach you to do always: say “thank you.” It is a truism that it costs more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, and this simple strategy goes a long way towards this.
