Posts Tagged netfirms

Scalable Customer Service

Posted on August 3, 2010 by 1 Comment

netfirmsInternet companies can be tricky things and don’t exactly have the best track record for customer service (ever tried to get a Facebook problem solved by contacting someone AT Facebook?). We get it. You’re digital. You’re web based. But it’s not an excuse to wall yourself off from your customers.

Case in point. Over the weekend I was dealing with some pretty decent email outages with certain accounts that definitely were not caused by something on my end. Filing a support ticket with Netfirms seemed to have gone into a black hole and I never got a response. What I (and I think a lot of people) didn’t count on or look for right out of the gate was essentially a non-promoted ‘back door’ support medium via their Twitter account. (Full disclosure – I currently host most of my stuff through Dreamhost – but do still use Netfirms)

After a couple of hours not hearing back on my support request, I sent out a tweet describing the problem and within a couple of minutes had a friendly support person on the case. A few @replies (public) and DMs (direct messages – not public) later the problem was solved. I was impressed. By the way, this wasn’t the first time I’ve had a good experience with Twitter support at Netfirms, but it did get me thinking about the medium as a scalable customer service tool.

Using a medium such as Twitter where search is real-time and robust has other benefits as well. When I tweeted about the problem and got a response, another Twitter user chimed in as they were having the same problem. Support can scale if you can fix the issue in public. Posting what was causing the problem and what users need to do for the solution can spread just as fast as the problem did and would save us all a lot of on-hold time.

Companies used to be able to get away with making it difficult for customers to get support (or at least, as a customer there wasn’t much you could do about crap service). Now, those with bad experiences tell google – and for internet companies this can be a big deal.

It kind of boils down to a basic premise of “If something isn’t working – stop doing it. If something is working – do it again.” Simple, right? If your company sucks at phone support, don’t offer phone support – but DO offer kick-ass online support…support so kick-ass that you’d be a fool to complain about not having phone support. It’s not about having phone support vs Twitter support – it’s about having support. Period.

Ideally it’s about having both – meeting your customers on their terms and using the tools they want to use can and will go a long way to building a long term customer. Just ask Zappos. But if you’re going to make users jump through hoops or use a narrow set of channels to get service and support, it better be a great experience for them.

So, what has been your best experience with customer service on the web and with what company? Who has been the worst? Fire away in the comments, please.

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Filed Under: Strictly Business

Managing Expectations? Manage This.

Posted on December 1, 2009 by 5 Comments

I helped a friend out the other night who was using Verizon DSL and had recently magically became unable to send outgoing mail. This actually isn’t the first time I’ve heard of this problem in the area so I had a hunch that they were simply blocking port 25. I’m not going to get too technical here, but let’s just say we were able to determine this was the problem. After nearly an hour on the phone trying to explain this to a technician at Verizon, they continued to insist that it wasn’t their issue and that could no longer help us. Long story short we switched to cable internet that night and that resolved the issue.

A couple of nights later I had an issue with my Windows 7 license and though the Microsoft technician didn’t solve what I wanted, they were much better at customer service than Verizon. But I noticed what may be a new ‘buzzphrase’ and trend in corporate customer support (besides outsourcing it to India ((no offense, India)) )…

That new ‘buzzphrase’ was this: “So, before we proceed any further I want to set the expectations for this call.” Really? Set the expectations? If I’m calling Customer Service. It’s my expectation that you will FIX THE PROBLEM I’M CALLING ABOUT.

Immediately after hearing that phrase my brain started telling me that I just heard a cop out. It told me that they were going to go through the things that were in the manual, like asking me if I have my router plugged in or if I’ve rebooted the computer before. It also told me that this was the end of the line.

Contrast that with what folks like Frank at ComcastCares are doing. If I’m a Comcast user (which I’m not), I may still think Comcast sucks at the end of the day, but having someone who’s not reading from a script, but talking to me like I’m a human being will go a looooong way toward making me think that they suck less. I promise.

One final example. Last month I had issues with my hosting provider (Netfirms). After getting a not-so-fast response from their helpdesk line (phone), I sent out a Tweet regarding my problem. Almost immediately I got a response back from Netfirms’ rep on Twitter with an acknowledgement of my problem, the promise of a follow up (with ticket), and a speedy resolution. That, my friends was a kick-ass and unexpected surprise. They turned an angry customer into one that would still recommend their service to others.

If your business starts off a call with letting the customer know that they’re going to set expectations before they even start working on the problem, it’s probably not going to be a fun experience for your customer. But if you engage like a human being, give a crap and know that it’s the customer who is setting the expectation – you’ll fare much better (or at least make people dislike you a lot less).

Now more than ever it’s customer service that is going to make and break brands just by the nature of how conversation scales online.

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Filed Under: Strictly Business