How do we prioritise customers who need a faster response?
- “OMG this is URGENT!! Is there anyone there???”
When I scan our support inbox and see an email with an all-caps subject line, I steel myself; I take a deep breath, and lean in. Someone needs help right now.
I know it’s likely that this is someone who’s in the middle of a really bad Buffer experience. It could be someone who’s tearing their hair out, mad as can be, because we’ve let them down. This is a relationship that might already be beyond repair. Something has gone wrong with a payment, maybe they’ve lost access to the account, or something’s just not working — and there’s a publishing deadline looming close.
So, how do we prioritise the people that need us most?
How we normally work through the queue
We typically approach our inboxes as if our customers are waiting in line, working through from the oldest to the newest. Fair’s fair, right? That said, when you spot a subject line with red flags all over it, you’ve got to jump in. An unexpected $1000 subscription renewal is likely to be hurting someone badly, and a refund takes just a minute (the apology slightly longer).
That said, urgency is relative. Something that can be a day-ruiner for one customer is a “just a heads-up, y’all” for another. We aim to respond to the customer in a way that reflects both what they’re telling us, and the tone of their email: we avoid second-guessing the emotion that’s being expressed. If anything, there’s something kind of pure about those emails — people in a pinch tend to get straight to the point!
3 types of ‘urgent’ we commonly see
1. Urgent requests: The ones who make it obvious — all-caps subject lines, and strong emotions. Often the customer clearly tells us when they need us the most. It could be an error the customer has made, or a critical bug — either way, we need to help get things straigtened out as soon as possible, (if not earlier).
2. New customers having a tough time: A more subtle message that’ll hopefully catch our eye, is one from a new customer having some trouble figuring something out. They may not mark the email as urgent, from our side of view we know that making a bad first impression can be hard to recover from. This scenario is also the biggest opportunity to showcase ourselves through quick and effective support, so we want to catch these quickly and hopefully earn some goodwill, too.
3. Signals that show us bigger trends: The sense of urgency doesn’t always come from a single customer. Sometimes, we come across several emails with the same message, perhaps something along the lines of ‘hey, not sure if it’s just me, but your ‘Add to Queue’ button isn’t working right’. Those are signals that something’s broken across the board, and we’ll get our engineers involved pronto. (We always bear in mind that for the number of people reporting an issue, a much larger number may have experienced it and not let us know).
For now, we’re working through our inboxes from the oldest to the newest, with an eagle eye for an all-caps subject line or some of those trigger words: ‘Help!’ ‘Urgent’ ‘Refund’ or even ‘CALL ME NOW!!!!’.
We can definitely do better when it comes to striking the right balance, and surfacing the customers who need priority care. One thing we’re looking at is filtering emails into an ‘urgent’ folder by automatically scanning for key words and phrases.
Do you have any thoughts on strategies for the best way to prioritise customers? We’d love to open up this subject up for discussion. We welcome any thoughts, questions or comments. Thank you!
