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I'd go one further and say that everyone (especially engineers) should spend time (either daily/weekly) on customer support (forums, emails, etc.). There's noth
by terpua 16y ago
I'd go one further and say that everyone (especially engineers) should spend time (either daily/weekly) on customer support (forums, emails, etc.). There's nothing like a customer gripe that gets engineers to prioritize stuff.
Having said that, I couldn't find Jackson Fish's 800 number.
- aquark 16y ago1-888-947-8679 from the top of http://www.astorybeforebed.com/about http://www.astorybeforebed.com/about
- terpua 16y agoWas expecting it on the homepage and not buried under about :)
- hillel 16y agowow. amazing. you're absolutely right. it's on every page but the homepage. Woops. We just built a new homepage, and I forgot to make sure it was up there. Every other page has it. I've made myself a to-do item to fix. Thanks!
- shaddi 16y agoOne other point, which you may already be aware of, is that the font size on the image next to the phone number, as well as the links for "about", "contact us", and "legal & privacy" is quite small, and I had trouble reading it. Given your audience is elderly people, it might be good to increase the size of these items -- having to search for a small link to find the phone number mostly negated the effect of seeing a real 888 number for me.
- hillel 16y agoI agree, and luckily that's not necessary. The 888 number is large on every page of the site (except for the intro page for unregistered users). And it will be there soon too.
- smallblacksun 16y agoThe problem with that is that you are having engineers who cost the company $75+ an hour spending time doing the job that can be done by someone costing ~$30 an hour. Also, you run the risk of annoying your engineers.
- terpua 16y agoIt has to be part of your culture (ie when hiring). As for the cost, it pays back in understanding your customer better and getting engineers working on the right things. I have been part of too many engineering teams working on the wrong things because of a lack of customer interface.
- markkanof 16y agoAs long as the developers really have the ability to make changes based on the support requests they are receiving. I've been in the situation where each developer would take a day of the week handling support. But the support requests could be for any of the software built by the entire development team, not just the things that the individual developer worked on. So then in many cases the developer was acting as an extremely expensive email/call filter. And the only lesson being learned was that some of the other developers weren't very good at their jobs.
- samaparicio 16y agoThe cost of prioritizing the wrong things and ignoring what's important to your customers far outweighs the higher cost of engineers. Also, consider that engineers can fix problems faster.
- studer 16y agoExcept that "what's important to your customers" isn't necessarily "what's important to the last caller, or the angriest one". That model doesn't really scale beyond a certain number of customers...
- anguslong 16y ago"gets engineers to prioritize stuff" Yes. And jives with Kayak.com founder's Big Red Phone tactic: "About a year ago, I bought a red telephone with a really loud ringer for the office. Whenever a customer calls the help number on our website, that phone rings. The engineers initially complained about it. They said, "That's so friggin' annoying!" And I'd say, "There's a really simple solution: Answer the friggin' phone and do whatever it takes to make that customer happy. Then hang up, unplug the phone, walk it down to the other end of the office, and plug it in down there." http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100201/the-way-i-work-paul-english-of-kayak.html http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100201/the-way-i-work-paul-eng...