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You are painting with an overly broad brush. Where I work, our Support Heroes (yes, we call them Heroes because the lengths they go to for our customers are he

You are painting with an overly broad brush. Where I work, our Support Heroes (yes, we call them Heroes because the lengths they go to for our customers are heroic) are one of the main reasons so many of our customers love us and stick with us so long. You've probably heard that it can cost ~5x more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. An exceptional Customer Support team is your front line in fighting churn, and are an invaluable asset, not a liability. They can also be critical to making sure your product and engineering teams are up-to-date on everything they need to grow a successful product that your customers want to pay for. Unfortunately, many companies simply don't realize this or don't care because they have a captive market (for now). I would encourage you to research more about how customer support can be done "right" vs. "wrong." If customer support is a "cost center" for you, you're doing it wrong.

smenko 12y ago
Is this supposed to be ironic?? Given, you know, the original poster's grievances.... Support Heroes?.. No?
- shostack 12y ago
  Not at all ironic. OP was posting about how customer support is a cost center, amongst other claims. He stated that it is like this in any company. I completely disagree and have experienced the proof of that first hand. I'm a little unclear from how you worded things--was the question around the notion of firing people as heroic juxtaposed against what we call our support team (ie. Heroes)?
  - cma 12y ago
    I think by OP he confusingly meant the person in the article, not the post at the top of the thread. Support hero's would be an ironic concept in relation to that.
    - shostack 12y ago
      Ah, that makes more sense. I admittedly read and responded to his initial comment before RTFA. I can see where that might be considered slightly ironic (while simultaneously terrifying that anyone would ever describe mass firings as "heroic").
  - shalmanese 12y ago
    What your example demonstrates though is how much of a difference happens when a company thinks of CS as a profit center rather than a cost center. That's great for you guys but there's lots of industries where CS genuinely is just a cost center and should rationally be treated that way, with all the attendant pathologies that go along with that.
    - shostack 12y ago
      I've heard this argument before and with all respect, I don't buy it. Can you provide any examples of industries where there is no opportunity to turn CS into a profit center vs. a cost center? Sure it might be very difficult to model and prove out the exact impact it has on the bottom line, but I'm not convinced there are any scenarios where pissing off your customers with a poor experience is better for business than making them feel loved and, well, supported. :)
      - shalmanese 12y ago
        Sure. The airline industry, for example, has been notoriously unfriendly towards most attempts at differentiation based on quality. Margins are razor thin (http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/03/travel/how-airlines-make-less-than-6/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/03/travel/how-airlines-make-less-...) and customers are incredibly price sensitive. While many consumer's stated preferences are for things like more legroom and less delays, their revealed preference is they'd rather save $5 on a $300 ticket and suffer the indignities. I would argue you're seeing the same narratives play out in the ride sharing space right now. Lyft tried to compete with Uber with their friendlier drivers vs we'll get you there faster and cheaper messaging and we'll see how long that differentiation lasts since Lyft seems to be rapidly backing away from their branding and into competing on purely on price. Markets which are natural monopolies like Comcast also don't profit from extra CS. When your choice is shitty broadband vs no broadband, there's little CS, good or bad can do to sway your decision. Markets where the purchaser is not the end user like enterprise sales also benefits from investing more money in sales than support. Every doctor I've ever been to has bitched at length about basic usability issues with the software they're forced to deal with but they have no real power so the software stays uniformly bad. Markets where purchases happen infrequently. I recently had to buy a spare part for my refrigerator. Amazon didn't carry it, and the sites that did seemed uniformly low rent and amateur. I ordered from 1 site that said it was in stock and chose reasonably fast shipping. After not hearing from them for 2 days, I sent an email and they got back to me saying that due to a clerical error, it was actually out of stock and wouldn't be shipping out for another 4 days. Meanwhile, the website still listed the part as in stock. They didn't care, what's the worst I could punish this retailer for? Denying them all of my future spare fridge part purchases? Sure, there's always exceptions to be found in all of these areas but by being the exception, you relegate yourself to a niche of the market and it becomes hard to expand outside of that niche.
  - _trb_ 12y ago
    In large companies, customer support is a cost center. This can invert in SMB scenarios.
    - shostack 12y ago
      Disney would like to disagree.[1] [1] http://www.helpscout.net/blog/disney-customer-experience/ http://www.helpscout.net/blog/disney-customer-experience/
  - beachstartup 12y ago
    the original assertion that customer service is somehow a cost center is prima facie false, since there are such things as services/consulting companies, and they are some of the largest.
enraged_camel 12y ago
>>You've probably heard that it can cost ~5x more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. Not only that, but support tickets are also an excellent opportunity to turn unhappy customers into evangelists.
- thrownaway122 12y ago
  THIS so many times over this. These days when I phone or email a company and get someone capable who can actually help me I go around the next few weeks recommending the company to everyone who will listen. In some ways could a few small glitches and fast useful responses could actually be better than it just works?
guelo 12y ago
Another way to combat churn is platform lock-in, which I think is more Apple's strategy. Also the Genius bar, no other consumer tech company gives you in-person access to support employees.
- shostack 12y ago
  There are many ways to combat churn. My point was that doing what is right to make the customer happy can be an awesomely powerful and more importantly POSITIVE weapon in the battle against churn. Platform lock-in is a negative, customer-hostile approach. The positive alternate version of "lock-in" is "stickiness." Ie. the concept that your product/service/experience is so amazingly awesome that your customers have many reasons to keep coming back and using you. Platform lock-in has always come across to me as a crutch for some flaw in a product/service/pricing model. I understand businesses need to manage risk and their investment in customer acquisition, but focusing on customer-positive ways to do so seems better aligned with all parties interests, no?
  - marknow 12y ago
    This: "Platform lock-in is a negative, customer-hostile approach." Absolutely. At my office, it was amusing when others would adopt the latest iPhone, but the charger was different... yet again! People would scurry about looking for a compatible charger, while the few of us with android phones would look at each other and mouth the words, "micro usb". Simple. Good products can still be good while conforming to industry-wide standards -- something I seem to find less prevalent in my years of experience working with Apple products. (Design agency)
hobs 12y ago
I disagree. You are using your company as a counter example to all other companies, and you admit that in your last sentence. I am glad your company treats your people right, and it bodes well for your EVERYTHING. I have worked at a dozen or so support jobs, and no matter how much the customers stayed because of the support team or how much we drove the value our clients got out of the product, we always were a cost center and treated as such. That always meant they we got the second best of everything, were always last on the list for raises, promotions, new hardware, proper chairs, whatever. We were left out of planning, and whenever another department decided at the last minute it wasnt their job now became ours to complete forever. The second I switched over to being a consultant and making money for people instead of helping to avoid lost revenue, their attitude changed towards me and became much more positive and friendly instead of unreasonable and demanding (both on management and customer side). I dont even know if this is a conscious or unconscious decision, but support/helpdesk job position is reviled for a reason, and the reason is that it is an unforgiving job with little acknowledgement, pay, or chance for promotion. It gets even worse if you are doing stuff like Apple support (I trained iphone/ipod then ios/cpu at a vendor site) and almost everything he said rang true about them specifically (and the call center management world in general.) Apple's training team was pretty cool and one of the few saving graces, I am glad I got to hang with them in Austin, they definitely were trying to build a robust system to train people with reproducible results. It was the best training I had gotten from any corporation before or since, it was what got me into training in the first place.
- shostack 12y ago
  OP said: >"customer support in any company is like this." My post was specifically in response to that, because it was an inaccurate statement. I'm really sorry to hear you've had such poor experiences in support. That sucks, and I realize how hard/impossible that can be to turn around from a business and culture standpoint. Sounds like you have found a path that works better for you, so congrats!
  - dietrichepp 12y ago
    When someone says "any company", it's easy to interpret that as meaning "any company without exception". This is a very logical interpretation, but it is not necessarily reasonable to interpret it that way. My experience is that (1) most companies do a lot of things wrong (2) the respect which support receives varies from company to company as well as industry to industry, with business support taken more seriously than consumer support. I'd be curious to know what industry you happen to work in.
balls187 12y ago
> Where I work, our Support Heroes Smugmug? Smugmug's support staff is great. There is a huge difference when dealing with regular customer support, and customer support that goes above and beyond to provide exceptional service. Smugmug Crutchfield Dreamhost Nordstrom All provide great, consistent support.
- shostack 12y ago
  Yep, SmugMug :) Thanks for the kind words! I'm not a Support Hero, but have to say that everyone who works here from the top down has nothing but utter respect for our amazing Heroes. It is an exceptionally challenging job and thus warrants exceptionally talented individuals--I sure as heck know that I couldn't do what they do. I wish all companies had our level of customer support, but I know that isn't realistic. Fortunately for us, that creates a great opportunity to win customers for life.
  - jenius 12y ago
    Woah, really impressive that he was able to guess the company. That seems super crazy to me. I guess I'd better check out SmugMug if it's that above and beyond!
    - brightsize 12y ago
      I immediately guessed Smugmug as well. I've been a customer for ~4 years now, and the few times I've needed their help, it's been nothing short of phenomenal. Support tickets answered in minutes by people clearly knowledgeable (if not experts) on the platform. Smugmug is a wonderful service, and would be fully worth the price even without such high levels of CS, so I wonder what motivates them to excel in that area?
      - shostack 12y ago
        If we could answer in seconds we would. What motivates us to excel in that area? If I had to take a stab at it, I'd say there are two main reasons... First, we view our support and our product as two sides of the same coin. We are immensely proud of what we've accomplished at SmugMug, and it simply would not enter the thoughts of the caliber of people who work here to have an awesome product and mediocre support. Second, and more to the point, photos and photography are intensely personal pursuits and businesses warranting equally personal service. Whether we are protecting customers' memories and art or enabling them to live the dream as a pro photographer, they need to know they can rely on us no matter what when things hit the fan (as they unfortunately do on occasion). That trust is a non-negotiable part of our relationship with our customers, and our Heroes are amazing at earning it through every ticket they help with, large or small.
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na85 12y ago
>If customer support is a "cost center" for you, you're doing it wrong. But Google showed us that you can build a billion-dollar multinational with abysmal customer support. Valve Software performs similarly well, and is renowned for having awful customer support.
- agapos 12y ago
  One of the few reasons why I prefer GOG.com over Steam.
lotsofcows 12y ago
Your support will put there life on the line for a customer? Wow! That's incredible!
mariojv 12y ago
Our company treats support with great respect as well. They're essential to the running of our business.
josteink 12y ago
> If customer support is a "cost center" for you, you're doing it wrong. I think this can even be rephrased to "your engineering-team is doing something wrong". Where I work we had a product which represented without any doubt the majority of our customer-service's tickets. Almost all of the tickets were related to deployment-issues. This got communicated back to engineering. We fixed deployment, and now it's hardly in the support-stats any more. If the organization just ignores feedback like this, customer support being costly should come as no surprise.
swayvil 12y ago
In the place I worked we had this old ho who could take 3 in the ass, 3 in the vag and 2 in the mouth. Simultaneously. We called her a hero. That stupid stretched-out bitch made us a pile of money. Of course we never called her a "stupid bitch" to her face, that would be tactless. We called her a "hero". I think she died of kidney failure or something.
- nathan_long 12y ago
  Oh my gosh. I don't know if this was supposed to be a joke, but it is not funny at all.
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  - swayvil 12y ago
    some might call it tragic
exelius 12y ago
Customer support absolutely is a cost center. The approach you're speaking of doesn't scale, which is why Apple went a different route. Apple's approach to "customer experience" is many-fold: I would argue that the first line of customer support for Apple is actually the Apple Store. Here, they spend money to make it a good experience because it's a revenue driver. They can provide personalized assistance, but the techs can also build a relationship they can use to sell more stuff. Apple also spends a lot of time making their products intuitive (or at least "fail safe") so many customers don't need support in the first place. Phone support? Not so much. It's 100% a cost center because they would prefer their customers use other methods of support that involve them walking into a store and getting the full Apple experience. Your comments are probably true for a small or medium sized company, but not for a global behemoth like Apple. Everything is so siloed (out of necessity due to the size) that any customer feedback likely wouldn't make it up the 15 layers of middle management back to the product teams anyway. You can't have 10,000 support agents feeding things back to a team of 100-200 product developers; there's just too much noise. The product teams make enough revenue anyway that they can afford in-depth market research on a scale that small companies can only dream of.

smenko 12y ago

Is this supposed to be ironic?? Given, you know, the original poster's grievances.... Support Heroes?.. No?

shostack 12y ago
Not at all ironic. OP was posting about how customer support is a cost center, amongst other claims. He stated that it is like this in any company. I completely disagree and have experienced the proof of that first hand. I'm a little unclear from how you worded things--was the question around the notion of firing people as heroic juxtaposed against what we call our support team (ie. Heroes)?
- cma 12y ago
  I think by OP he confusingly meant the person in the article, not the post at the top of the thread. Support hero's would be an ironic concept in relation to that.
  - shostack 12y ago
    Ah, that makes more sense. I admittedly read and responded to his initial comment before RTFA. I can see where that might be considered slightly ironic (while simultaneously terrifying that anyone would ever describe mass firings as "heroic").
- shalmanese 12y ago
  What your example demonstrates though is how much of a difference happens when a company thinks of CS as a profit center rather than a cost center. That's great for you guys but there's lots of industries where CS genuinely is just a cost center and should rationally be treated that way, with all the attendant pathologies that go along with that.
  - shostack 12y ago
    I've heard this argument before and with all respect, I don't buy it. Can you provide any examples of industries where there is no opportunity to turn CS into a profit center vs. a cost center? Sure it might be very difficult to model and prove out the exact impact it has on the bottom line, but I'm not convinced there are any scenarios where pissing off your customers with a poor experience is better for business than making them feel loved and, well, supported. :)
    - shalmanese 12y ago
      Sure. The airline industry, for example, has been notoriously unfriendly towards most attempts at differentiation based on quality. Margins are razor thin (http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/03/travel/how-airlines-make-less-than-6/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/03/travel/how-airlines-make-less-...) and customers are incredibly price sensitive. While many consumer's stated preferences are for things like more legroom and less delays, their revealed preference is they'd rather save $5 on a $300 ticket and suffer the indignities. I would argue you're seeing the same narratives play out in the ride sharing space right now. Lyft tried to compete with Uber with their friendlier drivers vs we'll get you there faster and cheaper messaging and we'll see how long that differentiation lasts since Lyft seems to be rapidly backing away from their branding and into competing on purely on price. Markets which are natural monopolies like Comcast also don't profit from extra CS. When your choice is shitty broadband vs no broadband, there's little CS, good or bad can do to sway your decision. Markets where the purchaser is not the end user like enterprise sales also benefits from investing more money in sales than support. Every doctor I've ever been to has bitched at length about basic usability issues with the software they're forced to deal with but they have no real power so the software stays uniformly bad. Markets where purchases happen infrequently. I recently had to buy a spare part for my refrigerator. Amazon didn't carry it, and the sites that did seemed uniformly low rent and amateur. I ordered from 1 site that said it was in stock and chose reasonably fast shipping. After not hearing from them for 2 days, I sent an email and they got back to me saying that due to a clerical error, it was actually out of stock and wouldn't be shipping out for another 4 days. Meanwhile, the website still listed the part as in stock. They didn't care, what's the worst I could punish this retailer for? Denying them all of my future spare fridge part purchases? Sure, there's always exceptions to be found in all of these areas but by being the exception, you relegate yourself to a niche of the market and it becomes hard to expand outside of that niche.
- _trb_ 12y ago
  In large companies, customer support is a cost center. This can invert in SMB scenarios.
  - shostack 12y ago
    Disney would like to disagree.[1] [1] http://www.helpscout.net/blog/disney-customer-experience/ http://www.helpscout.net/blog/disney-customer-experience/
- beachstartup 12y ago
  the original assertion that customer service is somehow a cost center is prima facie false, since there are such things as services/consulting companies, and they are some of the largest.

enraged_camel 12y ago

>>You've probably heard that it can cost ~5x more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one. Not only that, but support tickets are also an excellent opportunity to turn unhappy customers into evangelists.

thrownaway122 12y ago
THIS so many times over this. These days when I phone or email a company and get someone capable who can actually help me I go around the next few weeks recommending the company to everyone who will listen. In some ways could a few small glitches and fast useful responses could actually be better than it just works?

guelo 12y ago

Another way to combat churn is platform lock-in, which I think is more Apple's strategy. Also the Genius bar, no other consumer tech company gives you in-person access to support employees.

shostack 12y ago
There are many ways to combat churn. My point was that doing what is right to make the customer happy can be an awesomely powerful and more importantly POSITIVE weapon in the battle against churn. Platform lock-in is a negative, customer-hostile approach. The positive alternate version of "lock-in" is "stickiness." Ie. the concept that your product/service/experience is so amazingly awesome that your customers have many reasons to keep coming back and using you. Platform lock-in has always come across to me as a crutch for some flaw in a product/service/pricing model. I understand businesses need to manage risk and their investment in customer acquisition, but focusing on customer-positive ways to do so seems better aligned with all parties interests, no?
- marknow 12y ago
  This: "Platform lock-in is a negative, customer-hostile approach." Absolutely. At my office, it was amusing when others would adopt the latest iPhone, but the charger was different... yet again! People would scurry about looking for a compatible charger, while the few of us with android phones would look at each other and mouth the words, "micro usb". Simple. Good products can still be good while conforming to industry-wide standards -- something I seem to find less prevalent in my years of experience working with Apple products. (Design agency)

hobs 12y ago

I disagree. You are using your company as a counter example to all other companies, and you admit that in your last sentence. I am glad your company treats your people right, and it bodes well for your EVERYTHING. I have worked at a dozen or so support jobs, and no matter how much the customers stayed because of the support team or how much we drove the value our clients got out of the product, we always were a cost center and treated as such. That always meant they we got the second best of everything, were always last on the list for raises, promotions, new hardware, proper chairs, whatever. We were left out of planning, and whenever another department decided at the last minute it wasnt their job now became ours to complete forever. The second I switched over to being a consultant and making money for people instead of helping to avoid lost revenue, their attitude changed towards me and became much more positive and friendly instead of unreasonable and demanding (both on management and customer side). I dont even know if this is a conscious or unconscious decision, but support/helpdesk job position is reviled for a reason, and the reason is that it is an unforgiving job with little acknowledgement, pay, or chance for promotion. It gets even worse if you are doing stuff like Apple support (I trained iphone/ipod then ios/cpu at a vendor site) and almost everything he said rang true about them specifically (and the call center management world in general.) Apple's training team was pretty cool and one of the few saving graces, I am glad I got to hang with them in Austin, they definitely were trying to build a robust system to train people with reproducible results. It was the best training I had gotten from any corporation before or since, it was what got me into training in the first place.

shostack 12y ago
OP said: >"customer support in any company is like this." My post was specifically in response to that, because it was an inaccurate statement. I'm really sorry to hear you've had such poor experiences in support. That sucks, and I realize how hard/impossible that can be to turn around from a business and culture standpoint. Sounds like you have found a path that works better for you, so congrats!
- dietrichepp 12y ago
  When someone says "any company", it's easy to interpret that as meaning "any company without exception". This is a very logical interpretation, but it is not necessarily reasonable to interpret it that way. My experience is that (1) most companies do a lot of things wrong (2) the respect which support receives varies from company to company as well as industry to industry, with business support taken more seriously than consumer support. I'd be curious to know what industry you happen to work in.

balls187 12y ago

> Where I work, our Support Heroes Smugmug? Smugmug's support staff is great. There is a huge difference when dealing with regular customer support, and customer support that goes above and beyond to provide exceptional service. Smugmug Crutchfield Dreamhost Nordstrom All provide great, consistent support.

shostack 12y ago
Yep, SmugMug :) Thanks for the kind words! I'm not a Support Hero, but have to say that everyone who works here from the top down has nothing but utter respect for our amazing Heroes. It is an exceptionally challenging job and thus warrants exceptionally talented individuals--I sure as heck know that I couldn't do what they do. I wish all companies had our level of customer support, but I know that isn't realistic. Fortunately for us, that creates a great opportunity to win customers for life.
- jenius 12y ago
  Woah, really impressive that he was able to guess the company. That seems super crazy to me. I guess I'd better check out SmugMug if it's that above and beyond!
  - brightsize 12y ago
    I immediately guessed Smugmug as well. I've been a customer for ~4 years now, and the few times I've needed their help, it's been nothing short of phenomenal. Support tickets answered in minutes by people clearly knowledgeable (if not experts) on the platform. Smugmug is a wonderful service, and would be fully worth the price even without such high levels of CS, so I wonder what motivates them to excel in that area?
    - shostack 12y ago
      If we could answer in seconds we would. What motivates us to excel in that area? If I had to take a stab at it, I'd say there are two main reasons... First, we view our support and our product as two sides of the same coin. We are immensely proud of what we've accomplished at SmugMug, and it simply would not enter the thoughts of the caliber of people who work here to have an awesome product and mediocre support. Second, and more to the point, photos and photography are intensely personal pursuits and businesses warranting equally personal service. Whether we are protecting customers' memories and art or enabling them to live the dream as a pro photographer, they need to know they can rely on us no matter what when things hit the fan (as they unfortunately do on occasion). That trust is a non-negotiable part of our relationship with our customers, and our Heroes are amazing at earning it through every ticket they help with, large or small.

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na85 12y ago

>If customer support is a "cost center" for you, you're doing it wrong. But Google showed us that you can build a billion-dollar multinational with abysmal customer support. Valve Software performs similarly well, and is renowned for having awful customer support.

agapos 12y ago
One of the few reasons why I prefer GOG.com over Steam.

lotsofcows 12y ago

Your support will put there life on the line for a customer? Wow! That's incredible!

mariojv 12y ago

Our company treats support with great respect as well. They're essential to the running of our business.

josteink 12y ago

> If customer support is a "cost center" for you, you're doing it wrong. I think this can even be rephrased to "your engineering-team is doing something wrong". Where I work we had a product which represented without any doubt the majority of our customer-service's tickets. Almost all of the tickets were related to deployment-issues. This got communicated back to engineering. We fixed deployment, and now it's hardly in the support-stats any more. If the organization just ignores feedback like this, customer support being costly should come as no surprise.

swayvil 12y ago

In the place I worked we had this old ho who could take 3 in the ass, 3 in the vag and 2 in the mouth. Simultaneously. We called her a hero. That stupid stretched-out bitch made us a pile of money. Of course we never called her a "stupid bitch" to her face, that would be tactless. We called her a "hero". I think she died of kidney failure or something.

nathan_long 12y ago
Oh my gosh. I don't know if this was supposed to be a joke, but it is not funny at all.
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- swayvil 12y ago
  some might call it tragic

exelius 12y ago

Customer support absolutely is a cost center. The approach you're speaking of doesn't scale, which is why Apple went a different route. Apple's approach to "customer experience" is many-fold: I would argue that the first line of customer support for Apple is actually the Apple Store. Here, they spend money to make it a good experience because it's a revenue driver. They can provide personalized assistance, but the techs can also build a relationship they can use to sell more stuff. Apple also spends a lot of time making their products intuitive (or at least "fail safe") so many customers don't need support in the first place. Phone support? Not so much. It's 100% a cost center because they would prefer their customers use other methods of support that involve them walking into a store and getting the full Apple experience. Your comments are probably true for a small or medium sized company, but not for a global behemoth like Apple. Everything is so siloed (out of necessity due to the size) that any customer feedback likely wouldn't make it up the 15 layers of middle management back to the product teams anyway. You can't have 10,000 support agents feeding things back to a team of 100-200 product developers; there's just too much noise. The product teams make enough revenue anyway that they can afford in-depth market research on a scale that small companies can only dream of.