6 ms·

Alla Klein: a fake person in charge of customer support

72 points by dblock 15y ago

martey 15y ago
It looks like the lesson to take from this is not to create a fake persona for customer service, but to provide exemplary support. Other than the customers looking for a date, I doubt that satisfaction would be lower if "Alla" was actually "Daniel".
- jguimont 15y ago
  There is the case where your name is not common or not recognized easily by your target audience. I have a french name (Julien), try and pronounce that so an american knows what you are talking about (we target construction workers). Maybe the response wouldn't be "who are you again?" if my name was John or Eddy.
  - martey 15y ago
    I assume non-Francophone English speakers would pronounce Julien like the English "Julian". My first name is the same as my username. In both email messages and phone calls, I am inevitably called Marty, Martin, or something else that is close to my name but still wrong. I like to think that it helps people remember me, and that in this globalized age (where small software companies can sell to people in 40 countries), it is not preventing me from getting or keeping clients. edit: I guess I have not really responded to your comment, since you are talking about having people understand how to pronounce your name when you tell them. I am not sure that was applicable to the author's situation, since his company was selling in 40 countries, all of which might have different ideas about how to pronounce "Alla". For example, Alla is not a common name in the United States, while Daniel is.
  - GuiA 15y ago
    I'm Guillaume. I regularly tell people to just call me "William" :)
    - smokinn 15y ago
      William is my uncle, not me. When people struggle I just tell them it's 2 syllables: Gui and Ohm. They go oh! and get it right from then on.
- dblock 15y ago
  In our case we shared the support load between two people behind one name.
ben1040 15y ago
I remember setting up a website back in the 90s for a construction equipment company. They had no way of easily tracking leads from the website versus people who just saw them in the yellow pages or something. So, their solution was to have a fake salesman's name on the website. People would call and ask for him, and the caller would be told he was out of the office and someone else would be happy to help out. Meanwhile they'd know right off the bat how that customer got their number.
- MartinCron 15y ago
  The first company I worked at would advertise with different extensions, such as (800)555-1212 x 123 in different publications, when we answered the phone and somebody asked for x123, we would just log what they requested and say "I can help you with that..."
evanhamilton 15y ago
I have to agree with martey here: the way you did support is fantastic, creating a fake persona is not. People like honesty and hate being fooled. If your customers found out about Alla, I think they would be very upset. Especially the ones who asked her out!
- peterarmstrong 15y ago
  That would have been really funny at a .com I was a developer at: our support persona was the CEO's dog's name...
- biggitybones 15y ago
  At the end of the day I don't think customers care whether it's a script, person or alien solving their problem. All that matters is a great experience and a resolved issue.
  - evanhamilton 15y ago
    So if I told you that I wasn't a person but in fact a 15-person team who posts comments across the web, you wouldn't be weirded out? :P
- tomkarlo 15y ago
  Using a pseudonym for customer support is a fairly accepted practice. Unfortunately, when it's your job to deal with a lot of customers you're inevitably going to have some that are unhappy with your response, no matter how well you do your job or how great your company is. If you deal with enough customers (thousands) over time, some of those unhappy customers are going to try to track you down outside of work and make your life difficult. Customer want honesty from a company / service and good customer support. They want to be able to reach the contact they talked with before again, at the same name / extension. I don't think they generally care very much if the name they're given is the operator's legal name, so long as there is a consistent response from the pseudonym. Especially if you have an easy to Google name (you're not "John Smith"), using a pseudonym for customer support means you can leave your job at the office at the end of the day and not worry about risk to yourself or your family.
matdwyer 15y ago
I think the point of creating a "fake" person is so everyone involved can provide the support when ever they are available, and it looks like a unified source. I've done this a few times and it works very well, rather then having different people constantly responding.
- andrewflnr 15y ago
  Actually, in this case, they made sure only one person was on a thread at a time, to make sure "Alla" had a consistent voice.
marquis 15y ago
>She was also asked on a couple of dates. Maybe things were different in the 90s (well, I know they were) but celebrating the success of your support offering based on gender isn't great advice to offer others.
mattcofer 15y ago
This reminds of of a story. I once worked at a place that would transfer solicitors and similar callers to our fake employee Helen Wait's voicemail (pronounced hell 'n wait). "Can I speak to somebody about where you buy your paper products?" "Sure, let me transfer you to Helen Wait."
gergles 15y ago
Ah, a page out of the Citibank playbook. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703545604575407160128452040.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870354560457540...)
- rokhayakebe 15y ago
  Great story
  - lanstein 15y ago
    And Danny Sullivan is quoted!
jhensley 15y ago
Is Alla Klein a veiled reference to their search engine, Alkaline? Is this just a more elaborate version of "Let me Google that for you" ?
- dblock 15y ago
  Yes. You could call it "lack of imagination" :)
MartinCron 15y ago
Back in the early 90s, I worked for a very small (12-ish people) technical graphics software company. The CEO and lead coder would help with tech support calls when we were slammed, but he would use a pseudonym to make it appear that we were a larger, more established company than we were. I think that it may have been a more appropriate facade then, but there are quite a few precedents for very small companies providing stellar service and support now so customers should be a little less anxious about buying boutique software.
- lurker17 15y ago
  Interesting. Our CEO makes a point of identifying himself by name when he jumps on a support call or email. I figured he figures it makes people feel special, or he just likes being straightforward.
bitwize 15y ago
In Boston there is a column for gay men to write anonymously to for help and advice with their medical issues (especially sexual and psychological). It's called "Ask Dr. Cox". (hurr, hurr) "Dr. Cox" is actually a pseudonym for a small group of physicians who respond to the questions. Nevertheless the idea of having a single "name" and "face" to address your concerns to seems to be working -- and it helps these doctors contribute to a much-needed service without occupying too much time from any one of them.
- lurker17 15y ago
  Is that known to be more effective than "Ask the Docs?"
Riverbed 15y ago
The Alla Klein approach is also used when CS moves to Bangalore behind the scenes...
dougaitken 15y ago
Wow, Myabe it depends on the business but I used to work in customer service in a retail company's call centre and we used to send out letters with our own names on them.
FreshCode 15y ago
We have someone like this. Her name is Christine. :)
akshat 15y ago
We had done something like this for my first attempt at a startup. We had this product in India, and my name as well as those of our co-founders can be spelled in many ways. This can be confusing. So we picked a name which is like the most common name in India, which nobody gets right.
jaylevitt 15y ago
When AOL was Q-Link, we did something similar; all of our newsletters were written by "Jenny Crocker" (Betty's daughter, we decided). It was convenient to have a representative character that always spoke in a consistent voice, yet could be staffed by multiple people. At first we were coy about whether she was real, but it eventually became an in-joke among the entire user base. Ronald McDonald isn't just one clown, either.

72 points by dblock 15y ago

It looks like the lesson to take from this is not to create a fake persona for customer service, but to provide exemplary support. Other than the customers looking for a date, I doubt that satisfaction would be lower if "Alla" was actually "Daniel".

jguimont 15y ago
There is the case where your name is not common or not recognized easily by your target audience. I have a french name (Julien), try and pronounce that so an american knows what you are talking about (we target construction workers). Maybe the response wouldn't be "who are you again?" if my name was John or Eddy.
- martey 15y ago
  I assume non-Francophone English speakers would pronounce Julien like the English "Julian". My first name is the same as my username. In both email messages and phone calls, I am inevitably called Marty, Martin, or something else that is close to my name but still wrong. I like to think that it helps people remember me, and that in this globalized age (where small software companies can sell to people in 40 countries), it is not preventing me from getting or keeping clients. edit: I guess I have not really responded to your comment, since you are talking about having people understand how to pronounce your name when you tell them. I am not sure that was applicable to the author's situation, since his company was selling in 40 countries, all of which might have different ideas about how to pronounce "Alla". For example, Alla is not a common name in the United States, while Daniel is.
- GuiA 15y ago
  I'm Guillaume. I regularly tell people to just call me "William" :)
  - smokinn 15y ago
    William is my uncle, not me. When people struggle I just tell them it's 2 syllables: Gui and Ohm. They go oh! and get it right from then on.
dblock 15y ago
In our case we shared the support load between two people behind one name.

ben1040 15y ago

I remember setting up a website back in the 90s for a construction equipment company. They had no way of easily tracking leads from the website versus people who just saw them in the yellow pages or something. So, their solution was to have a fake salesman's name on the website. People would call and ask for him, and the caller would be told he was out of the office and someone else would be happy to help out. Meanwhile they'd know right off the bat how that customer got their number.

MartinCron 15y ago
The first company I worked at would advertise with different extensions, such as (800)555-1212 x 123 in different publications, when we answered the phone and somebody asked for x123, we would just log what they requested and say "I can help you with that..."

evanhamilton 15y ago

I have to agree with martey here: the way you did support is fantastic, creating a fake persona is not. People like honesty and hate being fooled. If your customers found out about Alla, I think they would be very upset. Especially the ones who asked her out!

peterarmstrong 15y ago
That would have been really funny at a .com I was a developer at: our support persona was the CEO's dog's name...
biggitybones 15y ago
At the end of the day I don't think customers care whether it's a script, person or alien solving their problem. All that matters is a great experience and a resolved issue.
- evanhamilton 15y ago
  So if I told you that I wasn't a person but in fact a 15-person team who posts comments across the web, you wouldn't be weirded out? :P
tomkarlo 15y ago
Using a pseudonym for customer support is a fairly accepted practice. Unfortunately, when it's your job to deal with a lot of customers you're inevitably going to have some that are unhappy with your response, no matter how well you do your job or how great your company is. If you deal with enough customers (thousands) over time, some of those unhappy customers are going to try to track you down outside of work and make your life difficult. Customer want honesty from a company / service and good customer support. They want to be able to reach the contact they talked with before again, at the same name / extension. I don't think they generally care very much if the name they're given is the operator's legal name, so long as there is a consistent response from the pseudonym. Especially if you have an easy to Google name (you're not "John Smith"), using a pseudonym for customer support means you can leave your job at the office at the end of the day and not worry about risk to yourself or your family.

matdwyer 15y ago

I think the point of creating a "fake" person is so everyone involved can provide the support when ever they are available, and it looks like a unified source. I've done this a few times and it works very well, rather then having different people constantly responding.

andrewflnr 15y ago
Actually, in this case, they made sure only one person was on a thread at a time, to make sure "Alla" had a consistent voice.

marquis 15y ago

>She was also asked on a couple of dates. Maybe things were different in the 90s (well, I know they were) but celebrating the success of your support offering based on gender isn't great advice to offer others.

mattcofer 15y ago

This reminds of of a story. I once worked at a place that would transfer solicitors and similar callers to our fake employee Helen Wait's voicemail (pronounced hell 'n wait). "Can I speak to somebody about where you buy your paper products?" "Sure, let me transfer you to Helen Wait."

gergles 15y ago

Ah, a page out of the Citibank playbook. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703545604575407160128452040.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870354560457540...)

rokhayakebe 15y ago
Great story
- lanstein 15y ago
  And Danny Sullivan is quoted!

jhensley 15y ago

Is Alla Klein a veiled reference to their search engine, Alkaline? Is this just a more elaborate version of "Let me Google that for you" ?

dblock 15y ago
Yes. You could call it "lack of imagination" :)

MartinCron 15y ago

Back in the early 90s, I worked for a very small (12-ish people) technical graphics software company. The CEO and lead coder would help with tech support calls when we were slammed, but he would use a pseudonym to make it appear that we were a larger, more established company than we were. I think that it may have been a more appropriate facade then, but there are quite a few precedents for very small companies providing stellar service and support now so customers should be a little less anxious about buying boutique software.

lurker17 15y ago
Interesting. Our CEO makes a point of identifying himself by name when he jumps on a support call or email. I figured he figures it makes people feel special, or he just likes being straightforward.

bitwize 15y ago

In Boston there is a column for gay men to write anonymously to for help and advice with their medical issues (especially sexual and psychological). It's called "Ask Dr. Cox". (hurr, hurr) "Dr. Cox" is actually a pseudonym for a small group of physicians who respond to the questions. Nevertheless the idea of having a single "name" and "face" to address your concerns to seems to be working -- and it helps these doctors contribute to a much-needed service without occupying too much time from any one of them.

lurker17 15y ago
Is that known to be more effective than "Ask the Docs?"

Riverbed 15y ago

The Alla Klein approach is also used when CS moves to Bangalore behind the scenes...

dougaitken 15y ago

Wow, Myabe it depends on the business but I used to work in customer service in a retail company's call centre and we used to send out letters with our own names on them.

FreshCode 15y ago

We have someone like this. Her name is Christine. :)

akshat 15y ago

We had done something like this for my first attempt at a startup. We had this product in India, and my name as well as those of our co-founders can be spelled in many ways. This can be confusing. So we picked a name which is like the most common name in India, which nobody gets right.

jaylevitt 15y ago

When AOL was Q-Link, we did something similar; all of our newsletters were written by "Jenny Crocker" (Betty's daughter, we decided). It was convenient to have a representative character that always spoke in a consistent voice, yet could be staffed by multiple people. At first we were coy about whether she was real, but it eventually became an in-joke among the entire user base. Ronald McDonald isn't just one clown, either.