
What is good customer service? - hajrice
http://www.helpjuice.com/blog/what-is-good-customer-service
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edw519
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
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

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larrys
"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
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

~~~
the_bear
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.

~~~
larrys
"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."

Exactly the point I was making.

Same applies to a service contract.

If you offer a service contract for a price and the customer never has a
problem they are less likely to renew the contract.

I've noticed that the home warranty people cheerfully and quickly take care of
any claims so to motivate you to renew your contract for the next year.

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spking
"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
Absolutely agree with you. Should have mentioned that in the article :)

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iamdave
_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!

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the_bear
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
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
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..

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lotharbot
[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
[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 ?

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javery
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>).

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)

~~~
pbreit
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
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)

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gjkood
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
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.

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ww520
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.

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adavies42
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.

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

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

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joshuahedlund
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
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.

