9 ms·
Show HN: A collection of support replies to make your support stand out
- eganist 7y agoHey sivaram636, can I request that you redirect port 80 to 443? You've already got TLS and HSTS enabled, but people can still use your site via HTTP, which is what you linked. Optionally, you can follow these instructions to preload your domain to the HSTS preload list: https://hstspreload.org/?domain=supportexamples.com https://hstspreload.org/?domain=supportexamples.com
- sivaram636 7y agoThanks for letting me know. I have added a force redirect to https :)
- nkrisc 7y agoThis is what a customer service response should look like.
- twic 7y agoHi eganist, Thanks so much for commenting about this — I’m sorry to hear that you were caught off guard by our httpd configuration. I can totally get how it can be frustrating to receive a protocol that you weren’t expecting, especially when you’ve just started to use our site. Could you share a bit more information with me so that we can get to the bottom of this? For example, would you mind sending me the URL associated with your request along with the date that you accessed the page? Using that, I can take a look at our system and see how we can get this fixed for you. Thank you, [customer support]
- johnthuss 7y agoAw, I was hoping the summary was sarcasm and this would have humorous examples of things NOT to do.
- defulmere 7y ago"Cribbing support replies from a website" is a pretty good example of what not to do.
- nkrisc 7y agoI know this is generally effective, which is why it's done, but personally I hate it: reflecting what I said back to me and telling me how frustrating it must be. No shit, I know that. Don't make me read that, just tell me how the problem can be solved. I don't even need you to tell me you're sorry. I'm not looking for empathy or a shoulder to cry on, I'm looking for a solution and to waste as little time as possible. The worst is when you're calling support and have to listen to them talk through this BS in real time, at least in an email I can skim over it. For the cynical among us, these responses are probably aggravating. For the majority of people though, they're probably effective.
- this_is_not_you 7y agoI agree. And definitely do not call me if I contacted you via email.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ddingus 7y agoYes, respond on the channel received. I do a fair amount over SMS of all things. It is potent. They can quickly send the trouble, media, etc... I will just open a ticket for them at some point to capture things for later, but a quick response almost always works well.
- michaelt 7y agoRepeating what the customer said back to them only seems popular because the status quo in first-line support is reply with a form e-mail without having read and understood the customer's e-mail
- lbotos 7y agoYou are highlighting something that we are trying to quantify on my team right now. Customers come to you either scared or savvy, or somewhere on that spectrum. You are often a savvy customer, that is being treated like you are scared. That disconnect is where your animosity comes from. Good Support will be able to quickly identify where you are on the scale, and tailor the response appropriately. Problem number two: It's hard to keep good people in support because it's difficult and often underpaid because its a cost of good sold.
- throwanem 7y agoThey stand out as overly verbose and insincere, but I'm not sure that's something worth emulating.
- geocrasher 7y agoI'm all in favor of reusing my own replies to customers as long as I customize them. I'm just saving myself some typing. I teach others to do this as a way to optimize their workflow and save the typing, but not the thinking. What most people intend to do is to optimize themselves, but what they end up doing is automating themselves. Overusing predefined replies, no matter well written, turns one into an automaton.
- josephwegner 7y agoThis. I lead a technical support team - we have very well written macro responses for a variety of topics, some technical and some not, but almost always we modify the boilerplate with ticket-specific context. There's no reason why I should type the description of a Request Timeout error 15 times per day, but it's certainly worth the effort to include that pre-written information with some relevant context.
- kuu 7y agoSo the plan for standing out is by copying someone else's answers...
- sivaram636 7y agoThe plan is to create a place for customer support heroes to share and learn from each other.
- geocrasher 7y agoI am sorry to say this, but this is the opposite of what you have accomplished. You've just given lazy support reps templates so that they don't have to think, they can just copy/paste. I've been doing support for 20+ years in various roles, and I have seen what happens when people have templates: They stop thinking for themselves. It's not good. I wish you the best all the same.
- LandR 7y ago> customer support heroes What an utterly meaningless phrase.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mjmasn 7y agoMight be a British/American difference but I found all of these incredibly patronising and insincere. You need empathy and sincerity to be good at customer service. At the very least just think of the reply you'd expect if you had the same problem with a different company.
- inetknght 7y ago> I found all of these incredibly patronising and insincere I'm American. I find close to 70% of my interactions with support staff is insincere on the part of the support staff.
- karatestomp 7y agoI find about that percentage of my interactions with anyone involved in business, generally insincere and gross. Work and providing value to people can feel great but business is disgusting.
- hnarn 7y agoI don't mean for this to sound patronizing but that's because your compatriots (Americans) expect and want this kind of support. I know this from working in support for a long time and handling customers from all over the globe. Nowhere is the entitlement and expectation for "beyond friendly" service as problematic as it is for US customers. And it's not just B2C, this type of behavior is creeping into B2B interactions as well, to the degree that technical consultants and specially trained staff are expected to act in a vapid and thoroughly "insincere" manner as well, anything else is seen as unprofessional. In most parts of Europe, it's another story entirely. If you know what you're doing and you're doing it well, most people understand you're just doing your job, and they will not expect faked enthusiasm or insincere empathy. In fact, in many markets a dash of cynicism will actually get you closer to the customer. Of course, this is generalizing and there are Americans who "act European" and vice versa, but the minefield of attempting to be sincere to a US customer is like nothing I've experienced anywhere else. It's almost like an angebergesellschaft where some people are just waiting to pounce on you for your unprofessional behavior, knowing that they will be backed up by management because noone wants people to be unprofessional, right.
- brianmcc 7y agoIf "standing out" is your goal, sorry but generic boilerplate platitudes is not the way to go. I reckon the problem is this vague notion that exists about what "professional" looks like - slick, smooth, bland, and relentlessly positive seems to be an easy bar. Honestly if you want to promote replies that stand out, then you need to do just that: make them stand out, not just blend in.
- vinaypai 7y agoSeems like a collection of generic corporate speak. Most of them are some variation on "I'm so [sorry/happy] that you had a [frustrating/great] experience with our product".
- erikbye 7y agoGive me one of these responses and I will leave your service.
- twic 7y agoQuestion for sivaram636: if you contacted a supplier about a problem and received a reply like one of these, how would it make you feel?
- gigama 7y agoHi [customer rep's name] Thanks for taking time to cut and paste your response into your company's email support system. Unfortunately, I will not give you any future business because instead of quickly resolving the issue you are wasting my valuable time with patronizing platitudes and endless ineffectiveness. However, I realize you are just a cog in a wheel doing your job to get a paycheck so I will play a few rounds of cut-and-paste with you just for fun before I call in and play the punch-a-zero-until-reaching-a-person game to actually get the issue resolved. I hope this feedback helps. Let my spam filter know if you have any more questions or comments! Sincerely, [your name]
- thepete2 7y agoI honestly believe that auto-generated messages of any kind should be marked as such. It's incredibly annoying to read through these kinds of messages knowing they're not really written for you. The issue here for me is respecting your customer's time/attention.
- ddingus 7y agoThat is what I do with templates. "Hey Bob, we have seen that one happen and we have nothing special noted on your case so far. Let me send you our internal tech note. Give it a go and let me know where you end up. If anything does not make sense get back with me and we can do it together. They know it is a cut n paste, but one that is qualified, warranted and indicated. Easy peasy.
- agopaul 7y agoThank you! As a non-native English speaker this is actually pretty useful. Of course I don't think this should be used as a copy/paste solution but more for finding inspiration on how to politely reply to customers when hard questions arise (eg. request for discounting)
- ddingus 7y agoI pretty much hate these. When I do support, I treat my users as a peer to the highest degree possible. They are on my team, and I am on theirs and this is how we feed the kids. Or build for our futures... whatever. I do find some need the handling described here. And they get it. No worries. Most do not. They want help first and foremost. I make sure they get it asap. But this stuff as a first response? No way. I much prefer to respond in a way that shows I understand what they are telling me, and either give them options to resolve, or start asking questions so that I can do that. And when I do not know, I say that, asking for their help getting after fixing whatever has happened to them.
- telecuda 7y agoOne way we make our support replies stand out that wasn't obvious when we started: If you provide phone support, email your customer a summary of what their problem was and how you solved it on the call along with links to user guide articles where applicable. The customer can now easily send follow-up questions via that thread, while your team has better documentation of their support history.
- admax88q 7y agoHonestly its things like this which remind me of the "telemarketer singularity." https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/rinesi20150806 https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/rinesi20150806 "The future isn’t a robot boot stamping on a human face forever. It’s a world where everything you see has a little telemarketer inside them, one that knows everything about you and never, ever, stops selling things to you." Template conversations intended to convince the mark they are heard and understood. Scripts designed to simulate a real human interaction and conversation. Sure this is int he context of "support" rather than "telemarketing" but the feel is the same. Substitute real human interaction with scripted simulated interaction, designed and optimized to evoke the desired emotional reaction to the target.
- deeblering4 7y agoYeah, no. The patronizing wall-of-text approach is terrible. Actual useful support replies can't really be scripted, because they are specific to the context of the request.
- hnarn 7y agoAs someone who have worked in support for a long time, these may do the trick for a non-technical customer base that isn't interested in anything but 75% therapy and 25% problem resolution, but I state with conviction that most customers that come to you with a problem of a technical nature, and have the technical competence to understand the crux of the issue, will expect a technical and competent response. That's how you "stand out" in terms of support, because it's pathetically and amazingly rare.
- fudged71 7y agoDoes a site like this exist for sales script?
- sivaram636 7y agoFound this https://marketingexamples.com/ https://marketingexamples.com/ :)
- denster 7y agoHey sivaram636, it'd be fun to collaborate on maintaining this list of responses & how it evolves over time. We've built a quick UI that shows the same dataset & would be interested to see which other features the community would like to see: https://support-samples.mintdata.com/ https://support-samples.mintdata.com/ Thoughts?
- NewsAware 7y agoOn a mobile phone the original is noticeably faster to load, way more visually appealing, and not broken. Mintdata doesn't seem to care for mobile phone display width (in this case?)
- sivaram636 7y agoIt's not loading for me. Do I need to do anything?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Animats 7y agoNone of the answers shown have anything to do with fixing the problem. If I contact support, I want either a fix or a refund. See "Bedbug letter".[1] [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-bedbug-letter/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-bedbug-letter/
- bedosh 7y agoRight now, the second example is an actual example of this === I know that having to go through multiple troubleshooting steps and not having any of them work can be a real pain, especially when you have more important things to be doing.” Lastly, let them know that you have been looking into the issue and that you think it should be resolved: “That being said, I think we might have gotten to the bottom of this." === They forgot to remove the instruction text before replying, I guess this is the modern equivalent of the forgotten Post It note in the bedbug letter.
- meristem 7y agoThis reminds me of how support and related teams are underfunded and undertrained both in their product line and in psychology.
- perlgeek 7y agoYou know what makes support stand out, in a positive way? Actually reading my question. Giving me a competent answer that doesn't include telling me to try thing that I've already tried, and which I've also documented in my original email/support ticket (see my first point). If I hit a bug in the system, acknowledge that it's a bug, and tell me something about its state (has it been triaged yet?). If possible, point me to it in a public bug tracker.
- Jommi 7y agoThe entitlement here in the comments is astounding. I would bet that if you had two competing services, with 1) being expensive but providing you with individual support, while 2) Being cheaper and giving you automatic responses, 99% would go for the 2) option. People are not willing to pay for the level of customer support that they assume.
- ddingus 7y agoSure they are, but those expectations need to be set early on too. Plenty of people will pay for value added. The whole trick is to actually add that value and ask money for it. The ones that buy in will use the support and appreciate its role in their success.
- dimitar 7y agoI've worked for years in various forms of Support, both end users and business clients (basically the bosses of the users). These replies are the most useful when Support is B2C and absolutely crucial for some cultures like the US. When supporting a business I've found that there are other useful skills: * Understanding different stakeholders and how their needs differ. Just because someone's email is person@clientdomain.com doesn't mean they can increase scope and give you more work just because. * Building trust is crucial, and being seen as genuine is extremely important - better err on the side of being truthful, even if it means you might be rude. * If you correct the person you are talking to might be just what the his organization wants and expects from you. * Generally the people you talk to the other side must be treated as peers, because at the end of the day you and they are both hired by someone to achieve a particular goal. They might even turn out to be contractors, but often this information is hidden. * Above all else your job is to make money for your company. It is up to you, not marketing, upper management or sales.
- anitil 7y ago> absolutely crucial for some cultures like the US I'm interested to hear what you mean by this. What does non-US support look like? I'm from Australia but it seems most companies here adopt US-centric support system which seem to sliiightly hit the mark, but I can't quite put my finger on the difference.
- dimitar 7y agoFor example you have to tell customers "I will fix this for you" otherwise seem to get uncomfortable and might call your manager to complain that you are not helpful enough. I've seen it happen enough they train support reps yo use that specific phrase.
- musiccog 7y ago'Customer Support' is treated as a cost-center in far too many businesses. Good customer support can be used as a marketing tool - a differentiator to competitors. But in the case of bugs and feature enhancements, this requires a more (..and I hate to say the words..) a more 'agile' approach. In my experience, there is often a big gap between Support and Engineering. If I were given a choice between delivering new features and fixing existing ones, I would always choose the latter. Make an existing customer happier, and make future sales more viable.
- rkagerer 7y agoThese canned responses totally miss the point. Good support comes from putting knowledgeable people who truly care on the front lines, and giving them the tools and authority to get things done directly. I'm sure everyone here's experienced the difference between a support superstar vs. apathetic call centre zombie. High-caliber reps don't need to fake it with cosmetic literary lipstick. On the other hand if you're using these templates to script the interactions of your underperformers, their tone and empathy will lose authenticity as soon as your customer figures out they were cut and pasted by someone who couldn't be bothered to personalize a response.