If you are serious about customer support, then you will wake up in the middle of the night, search for your mobile phone and your heart should skip a beat when you don’t find it next to you. When you finally find it next to your laptop on your table, with no missed calls from your customers (thank god), you take your phone and hug and take it to your bed.
1. Answer. The person handling customer support should have a good idea of the picture. It helps if the same support person talks to a particular customer every single time.
2. Don’t Escape: When a customer explains a problem, it works for me is never a solution. (web startups/browser issues)
3. Listen to the customer totally before offering a solution. You might have had many customers face the same issue, but don’t jump into a conclusion and throw a solution at him before he finishes.
4. Apologize. Even if it wasn’t your fault, but if your customer is facing an issue, it is YOUR fault. Don’t ever think that the customer is stupid making silly mistakes. Your application should be customer friendly.
5. Act. Act immediately after apologizing. The customer doesn’t need your apology. No one is going to “forgive” you just coz you apologize to them. Act fast. Superfast.
6. Explain. Explain what’s going on to your customer. They understand. Trust me. If things are gonna get delayed, explaining things to customers gives them heads up and they will be prepared.
7. Don’t expect customers to care whether it is your weekend/holiday or how many hours you sleep per day. In short, you human voice should replace the IVRS. Every single time, after 2 rings, they should get a hello, no matter when and where they are calling from?
8. SLA. You should not worry about the digits in your SLA, but you should try to optimize the units. If you take days to answer a customer query, you will be out of business.. If you take hours, try to make that reply in minutes. If you answer within minutes, try to answer within a few seconds. Nothing makes a customer happy than seeing a reply to his mail even before he could sign out.
9. Care. Suggest things for customers which might really benefit them. Not because it involves less work for you. Think from their point of view and suggest a solution by which they save maximum time and money. Your business is not to make money. It saves customers time and money, for which he is ready to pay you money. So, the value of time saved + money saved >> money he pays you.
10. Worship: Jeff Bezos