6 ms·

What is good customer service?

79 points by hajrice 14y ago

spking 14y ago
"Being #1 is heavily underrated. People want the best; they don’t want to settle for anything less." And the other type of people--those who want the cheapest--are generally not worth having as customers.
- hajrice 14y ago
  Absolutely agree with you. Should have mentioned that in the article :)
javery 14y ago
Nice article - btw, if you haven't checked out HelpJuice we use it for our KB at Adzerk and it is pretty awesome. (http://help.adzerk.com http://help.adzerk.com). All the search data is used to create article stubs and reports that help us create better articles and documentation. (this is totally unsolicited - I just genuinely like the startup and Emil has been awesome to us)
- hajrice 14y ago
  James! Thank you soo much for the kind words. You have no idea how much it means to us :-) Hope you're satisfied with Helpjuice, as you know, you can always contact me directly if you need anything.
- pbreit 14y ago
  Seems crazy expensive for a "knowledge base". For comparison, ZenDesk starts at $20 per year for much, much more. UserVoice is $15/month. Etc.
  - javery 14y ago
    Our bill for ZenDesk would be around $300/month - we have more than 3 agents. (we actually use SalesForce for helpdesk so we pay more than that) For a business if it saves us a support case a week it is worth the $100 a month. Anything under $100/month is essentially the same price as soon as you reach any sort of scale/revenue. (I am sure this goes up as you grow as well)
edw519 14y ago
What makes the best customer service today is the same thing that made the best customer service 100 years ago. From the script of "Gosford Park": "What gift do you think a good servant has that separates them from the others? It's the gift of anticipation. And I'm a good servant. I'm better than good. I'm the best. I'm the perfect servant. I know when they'll be hungry and the food is ready. I know when they'll be tired and the bed is turned down. I know it before they know it themselves."
- hajrice 14y ago
  Great quote. I also really like Jeff Bezos one that goes like this; “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends.If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” – Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com
  - prayaagk 14y ago
    Another quote from Jeff Bezos : "A publisher called me and said, ‘I don't think you understand your business. Your business is to sell books. Why are you allowing these negative reviews of my book on your site?’” Bezos’ answer was, “I'm not in the business of selling books. I'm in the business of helping customers make a good buying decision."
- topherjaynes 14y ago
  Echoing, great quote. "Gosford Park" has been sitting in my netflix queue for too long, time to watch.
iamdave 14y ago
Answer promptly and effectively. A client can contact you at any time throughout the day; if you hear that phone ringing you better get on top of it. Good luck finding additional business streams if you get a reputation for keeping your clients waiting. I agree 100% with the first, disagree slightly with the second. You can be prompt and efficient at resolving your customer's problems and providing them with a quality gateway to the organization, but you can't do this if your support staff is innundated by the constant pressure of answring phones. Things will come to a head where hearing the phone ring starts to become a genuine fear of support reps and CSR's will start avoiding calls just to catch up. This comes from experience, having worked for an established software company that sold a great product, but had very unrealistic and unsustainable philosophies about support, not to mention a severely undersized team (four support reps and about 600 clients in four time-zones and one in the south Pacific) Don't take this the wrong way, I am not saying you should be shirking your customers, or trying to find ways to build barriers to accessing that first line of defense. However I am saying you also shouldn't just assume that because you have support personnel, any opportunity for self-help and self-education should be on the back-burner. What I mean is, if your organization already has tools to help customers find the answer they need, that should be on the forefront, in the customer's face and easily accessible. Then, and only then if your learning resources have failed, are too vague, or perhaps just doesn't answer the question in a way the customer can digest, that's when door number two opens up and it's time to contact the organization. And from there, I'm with you; be a shining beacon, be a smiling face and a welcoming gate keeper. You can learn a lot about your customer base as well as the quality of your documentation by following this strategy. If you want a qualitative and effective team, don't toss them into the middle of a category 5 hurricane, trying to answer phones and create tickets at the same time. This will erode quality AND effectiveness. Great post, otherwise!
joshuahedlund 14y ago
Nothing wrong with these tips, but I don't feel like they added value to all the things I've read about customer service a dozen times already.
- hajrice 14y ago
  Sorry you feel that way, Joshua. I really tried my best to make this really helpful to readers. Would love to hear your suggestions on what you hear good customer service is, Joshua.
- larrys 14y ago
  The value is also in the discussion of the tips in these here comments. Added: Such as the personal experience I had about turning negatives into positives.
larrys 14y ago
"Do you remember the last time you sent an email and got a response back, within a minute saying, “FIXED. Really sorry that you had to experience that…” ?" This is a perfect example of how you can turn a negative into a positive. From my own experience in the past I always noticed that if you make a mistake with a customer job but correct the mistake really quickly you actually form a bond with the customer that is much stronger than if you never made the mistake in the first place. You actually gain because of the error as long as the customer isn't in really bad shape as a result of it. (Of course you would get diminishing returns if you had to correct more than a small number of mistakes in any given time period obviously.)
- hajrice 14y ago
  Thanks! Do you have any other examples where you've seen companies take the negative and turn it into a positive? Would love to hear them
  - larrys 14y ago
    Porsche flew a new transmission in from Germany at a cost of thousands (very heavy) to repair a defective one in new 2012 911 with only 400 miles. The new transmission was hooked up improperly by the tech (forgot to snap something in) so they had the tech return from home that night and fixed the problem. The problem wasn't even major and the car was functioning.
  - the_bear 14y ago
    When I was first getting started, it was common for new users to find little bugs here and there. I'd generally be able to fix them within minutes of the customer contacting me, and that really impressed them. The customers who found bugs were actually happier than the ones that didn't, because the people that didn't find bugs never had an excuse to contact us, so they didn't know we offered great customer service. I used to joke with my co-founder that we should intentionally add a small bug for all new users so that we could "fix it" immediately after they reported it. We obviously didn't actually do that because it's incredibly shady, but I think it would end up resulting in happier customers in the long run.
the_bear 14y ago
I'd add one more item to this list: If you can't give your customer what they're asking for, explain why. I regularly take calls from people asking for features that we don't offer (and probably never will). They normally start out annoyed that we don't have what they want, but after I explain why we can't offer the feature, they normally understand completely and it doesn't seem to bother them at all. Most customers don't have much perspective about your business. They know what they want, and they're not really thinking about how it might effect the overall experience. If you just say, "no, we don't have an iPhone app" they'll think you're brushing them off. Instead say, "I totally understand why you want an iPhone app, but if we made an iPhone app we'd also have to make apps for Android and Blackberry which would mean we couldn't spend nearly as much time focusing on making the core product better, which is why we have a mobile website which will work on all platforms". The customer wasn't thinking about that when they requested/demanded the feature. By explaining your reasoning, you're telling them that you really are listening to them and considering their ideas, but there are good reasons why you can't give them exactly what they want.
- hajrice 14y ago
  I think one of the reasons for that, can be derived from "How to Win friends and influence people" People like to feel important. Now, that's not to say your customers are arrogant, or self-centered, but, people really like it when you make them feel important by complying wit their ideas, and responding to them, in the most sincere way possible.
  - minikomi 14y ago
    The convex is doubly true. I used to use a quite popular simple note-taking app for iOS, and just wanted to change the font to something monospaced.. The developer's reply was "no". Just as bad is an insencere canned "Thanks! We'll consider it for a future version!" reply..
lotharbot 14y ago
[crossposted from FaceBook] The best customer service I ever got was when I was buying an engagement ring (about 12 years ago, from Blue Nile's website). It took weeks to resolve, but every step of the way the rep (Sean P -- made a big enough impression that I remember his name) communicated clearly what the problem was on their end, what solution he was looking into, and how long it would take before he had an answer for me. He was also laser-focused on making sure the solution would work for me -- right style of ring, equal or better quality to what I'd ordered, in time for me to propose. Excellent customer service consists of being dedicated to fixing the problem, making sure that your fix will work for the customer, and being so responsive and persistent in communication that they know those things.
- hajrice 14y ago
  [crossposted from FaceBook] I can't stress how much I agree with you, Tom. We should really highlight this on the blog, wish you posted it as a comment. I can't help but ask...do you think that's because the industry their in is high-margin, or ?
gjkood 14y ago
Good customer service is doing everything that you can for your customer that doesn't make them want to dump you and jump to your nearest competitor. An often quoted statistic in marketing and sales is that it is 10 times more costly to acquire a new customer than to do the things necessary to retain an existing one.
- hajrice 14y ago
  Sometimes we get too carried way by acquiring new customers that we don't sit back and think whether our customers are really satisfied. And the problem is, we can never satisfy everyone as we're all different.
rshlo 14y ago
great customer service starts with a near perfect product. In a perfect world you would need customer service at all.
Mankhool 14y ago
According to Restoration Hardware, "CARING is the ultimate competitive advantage". They're just figuring that out now.
ww520 14y ago
It's all good that we want to have quick response to customer complaint, but I would like to take a different angle on it. Good customer service is to have exceptional delivery to what the most important thing the customers want from you.
adavies42 14y ago
be careful of looking like you're overdoing it tho. some of the replies to the comments on the article are so generic, i assumed they were spam until i checked the author's link (reply to "Joel Parker Henderson" is awful, reply to "Doctor McFacekick" is medium terrible, reply to "Lucb1e" is pretty good). it's a bit like being on hold--i'd far rather hear hold music uninterrupted for five minutes at a time than hear the robot break in every 15 seconds to reassure me that whoever i'm waiting for values my loyalty.

79 points by hajrice 14y ago

"Being #1 is heavily underrated. People want the best; they don’t want to settle for anything less." And the other type of people--those who want the cheapest--are generally not worth having as customers.

hajrice 14y ago
Absolutely agree with you. Should have mentioned that in the article :)

javery 14y ago

Nice article - btw, if you haven't checked out HelpJuice we use it for our KB at Adzerk and it is pretty awesome. (http://help.adzerk.com http://help.adzerk.com). All the search data is used to create article stubs and reports that help us create better articles and documentation. (this is totally unsolicited - I just genuinely like the startup and Emil has been awesome to us)

hajrice 14y ago
James! Thank you soo much for the kind words. You have no idea how much it means to us :-) Hope you're satisfied with Helpjuice, as you know, you can always contact me directly if you need anything.
pbreit 14y ago
Seems crazy expensive for a "knowledge base". For comparison, ZenDesk starts at $20 per year for much, much more. UserVoice is $15/month. Etc.
- javery 14y ago
  Our bill for ZenDesk would be around $300/month - we have more than 3 agents. (we actually use SalesForce for helpdesk so we pay more than that) For a business if it saves us a support case a week it is worth the $100 a month. Anything under $100/month is essentially the same price as soon as you reach any sort of scale/revenue. (I am sure this goes up as you grow as well)

edw519 14y ago

What makes the best customer service today is the same thing that made the best customer service 100 years ago. From the script of "Gosford Park": "What gift do you think a good servant has that separates them from the others? It's the gift of anticipation. And I'm a good servant. I'm better than good. I'm the best. I'm the perfect servant. I know when they'll be hungry and the food is ready. I know when they'll be tired and the bed is turned down. I know it before they know it themselves."

hajrice 14y ago
Great quote. I also really like Jeff Bezos one that goes like this; “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends.If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” – Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com
- prayaagk 14y ago
  Another quote from Jeff Bezos : "A publisher called me and said, ‘I don't think you understand your business. Your business is to sell books. Why are you allowing these negative reviews of my book on your site?’” Bezos’ answer was, “I'm not in the business of selling books. I'm in the business of helping customers make a good buying decision."
topherjaynes 14y ago
Echoing, great quote. "Gosford Park" has been sitting in my netflix queue for too long, time to watch.

iamdave 14y ago

Answer promptly and effectively. A client can contact you at any time throughout the day; if you hear that phone ringing you better get on top of it. Good luck finding additional business streams if you get a reputation for keeping your clients waiting. I agree 100% with the first, disagree slightly with the second. You can be prompt and efficient at resolving your customer's problems and providing them with a quality gateway to the organization, but you can't do this if your support staff is innundated by the constant pressure of answring phones. Things will come to a head where hearing the phone ring starts to become a genuine fear of support reps and CSR's will start avoiding calls just to catch up. This comes from experience, having worked for an established software company that sold a great product, but had very unrealistic and unsustainable philosophies about support, not to mention a severely undersized team (four support reps and about 600 clients in four time-zones and one in the south Pacific) Don't take this the wrong way, I am not saying you should be shirking your customers, or trying to find ways to build barriers to accessing that first line of defense. However I am saying you also shouldn't just assume that because you have support personnel, any opportunity for self-help and self-education should be on the back-burner. What I mean is, if your organization already has tools to help customers find the answer they need, that should be on the forefront, in the customer's face and easily accessible. Then, and only then if your learning resources have failed, are too vague, or perhaps just doesn't answer the question in a way the customer can digest, that's when door number two opens up and it's time to contact the organization. And from there, I'm with you; be a shining beacon, be a smiling face and a welcoming gate keeper. You can learn a lot about your customer base as well as the quality of your documentation by following this strategy. If you want a qualitative and effective team, don't toss them into the middle of a category 5 hurricane, trying to answer phones and create tickets at the same time. This will erode quality AND effectiveness. Great post, otherwise!

joshuahedlund 14y ago

Nothing wrong with these tips, but I don't feel like they added value to all the things I've read about customer service a dozen times already.

hajrice 14y ago
Sorry you feel that way, Joshua. I really tried my best to make this really helpful to readers. Would love to hear your suggestions on what you hear good customer service is, Joshua.
larrys 14y ago
The value is also in the discussion of the tips in these here comments. Added: Such as the personal experience I had about turning negatives into positives.

larrys 14y ago

"Do you remember the last time you sent an email and got a response back, within a minute saying, “FIXED. Really sorry that you had to experience that…” ?" This is a perfect example of how you can turn a negative into a positive. From my own experience in the past I always noticed that if you make a mistake with a customer job but correct the mistake really quickly you actually form a bond with the customer that is much stronger than if you never made the mistake in the first place. You actually gain because of the error as long as the customer isn't in really bad shape as a result of it. (Of course you would get diminishing returns if you had to correct more than a small number of mistakes in any given time period obviously.)

hajrice 14y ago
Thanks! Do you have any other examples where you've seen companies take the negative and turn it into a positive? Would love to hear them
- larrys 14y ago
  Porsche flew a new transmission in from Germany at a cost of thousands (very heavy) to repair a defective one in new 2012 911 with only 400 miles. The new transmission was hooked up improperly by the tech (forgot to snap something in) so they had the tech return from home that night and fixed the problem. The problem wasn't even major and the car was functioning.
- the_bear 14y ago
  When I was first getting started, it was common for new users to find little bugs here and there. I'd generally be able to fix them within minutes of the customer contacting me, and that really impressed them. The customers who found bugs were actually happier than the ones that didn't, because the people that didn't find bugs never had an excuse to contact us, so they didn't know we offered great customer service. I used to joke with my co-founder that we should intentionally add a small bug for all new users so that we could "fix it" immediately after they reported it. We obviously didn't actually do that because it's incredibly shady, but I think it would end up resulting in happier customers in the long run.

the_bear 14y ago

I'd add one more item to this list: If you can't give your customer what they're asking for, explain why. I regularly take calls from people asking for features that we don't offer (and probably never will). They normally start out annoyed that we don't have what they want, but after I explain why we can't offer the feature, they normally understand completely and it doesn't seem to bother them at all. Most customers don't have much perspective about your business. They know what they want, and they're not really thinking about how it might effect the overall experience. If you just say, "no, we don't have an iPhone app" they'll think you're brushing them off. Instead say, "I totally understand why you want an iPhone app, but if we made an iPhone app we'd also have to make apps for Android and Blackberry which would mean we couldn't spend nearly as much time focusing on making the core product better, which is why we have a mobile website which will work on all platforms". The customer wasn't thinking about that when they requested/demanded the feature. By explaining your reasoning, you're telling them that you really are listening to them and considering their ideas, but there are good reasons why you can't give them exactly what they want.

hajrice 14y ago
I think one of the reasons for that, can be derived from "How to Win friends and influence people" People like to feel important. Now, that's not to say your customers are arrogant, or self-centered, but, people really like it when you make them feel important by complying wit their ideas, and responding to them, in the most sincere way possible.
- minikomi 14y ago
  The convex is doubly true. I used to use a quite popular simple note-taking app for iOS, and just wanted to change the font to something monospaced.. The developer's reply was "no". Just as bad is an insencere canned "Thanks! We'll consider it for a future version!" reply..

lotharbot 14y ago

[crossposted from FaceBook] The best customer service I ever got was when I was buying an engagement ring (about 12 years ago, from Blue Nile's website). It took weeks to resolve, but every step of the way the rep (Sean P -- made a big enough impression that I remember his name) communicated clearly what the problem was on their end, what solution he was looking into, and how long it would take before he had an answer for me. He was also laser-focused on making sure the solution would work for me -- right style of ring, equal or better quality to what I'd ordered, in time for me to propose. Excellent customer service consists of being dedicated to fixing the problem, making sure that your fix will work for the customer, and being so responsive and persistent in communication that they know those things.

hajrice 14y ago
[crossposted from FaceBook] I can't stress how much I agree with you, Tom. We should really highlight this on the blog, wish you posted it as a comment. I can't help but ask...do you think that's because the industry their in is high-margin, or ?

gjkood 14y ago

Good customer service is doing everything that you can for your customer that doesn't make them want to dump you and jump to your nearest competitor. An often quoted statistic in marketing and sales is that it is 10 times more costly to acquire a new customer than to do the things necessary to retain an existing one.

hajrice 14y ago
Sometimes we get too carried way by acquiring new customers that we don't sit back and think whether our customers are really satisfied. And the problem is, we can never satisfy everyone as we're all different.

rshlo 14y ago

great customer service starts with a near perfect product. In a perfect world you would need customer service at all.

Mankhool 14y ago

According to Restoration Hardware, "CARING is the ultimate competitive advantage". They're just figuring that out now.

ww520 14y ago

It's all good that we want to have quick response to customer complaint, but I would like to take a different angle on it. Good customer service is to have exceptional delivery to what the most important thing the customers want from you.

adavies42 14y ago

be careful of looking like you're overdoing it tho. some of the replies to the comments on the article are so generic, i assumed they were spam until i checked the author's link (reply to "Joel Parker Henderson" is awful, reply to "Doctor McFacekick" is medium terrible, reply to "Lucb1e" is pretty good). it's a bit like being on hold--i'd far rather hear hold music uninterrupted for five minutes at a time than hear the robot break in every 15 seconds to reassure me that whoever i'm waiting for values my loyalty.