Customer support is the future of UX and your competitor gets it
My experience with PropTech
I know my title seems serious but I’m actually going to tell you a story about how I planned my escape from home and moved to another city last week while throwing in my UX experiences with the Property Tech companies I interfaced with during my apartment search. However, you need to be patient to get to the crux of this story which is, the most undervalued differentiating factor in software product UX — Customer Support or whatever else it is called in different companies. This single factor, in some cases, can make your users disregard the bugs in your competitor’s product and churn yours. This is my experience.
So, obviously, everyone knows by now that I’ve been sick for two years now and had to move back to my family home but the bliss and happiness you feel in the first few months starts to wane when your parents want to take back that control over your every waking moment. In that case, what do you do especially if they also believe that unmarried ladies should not live by themselves — “It’s not the culture” — and you most definitely are not about to let your life be controlled down to the job you do and the food you eat (Yes, even biscuits. Smh. Story for another day). Anyway, I’d gotten into a deep depression but only my siblings and close friends could tell and at the point of contemplating the S-word and speaking to people about how I was feeling, I decided to change things. Get out. This was two or three weeks ago.
I searched Nigeria Property Center and I found a few great places but since this was an abrupt decision I really didn’t have the money to pay upfront for rent for a year. I also didn’t feel like making that commitment because deep down, I really hope I’m not in Nigeria by this time next year.
When I’d started losing hope of finding a place that fit all my criteria;
- No hard commitment to a distant timeline — Preferably monthly and quarterly rent payments.
- 18–24 hours light so I can be super productive at my job (If you’re wondering why this is here, you’ve definitely never been to Nigeria — Constant electricity is a luxury for us)
- Someplace on the Island (Lagos) because that’s where my friends stay, it’s a short drive to my aunt’s and it’s close to all my favorite places like XO Boutique Bakery (Best Patisserie in town hands down).
Back to my story…
As I’d started losing hope, I made the decision to give it one last shot so, I reached out to my friend and she recommended three PropTech companies in Lagos namely; Muster, which was co-founded by a former colleague at Andela and Twitter soulmate, Ugochukwu Okoro; Spleet and Rentsmallsmall. I’d already checked Muster before speaking with my friend but I didn’t find an apartment that was exactly what I had in mind. So, I was left with RentSmallSmall and Spleet.
I went on both sites and the Spleet site had a few bugs that were slight but annoying, so I churned and tweeted at them saying that they needed to fix the bugs to prevent churn from more people. They responded via a retweet in less than an hour — on a Sunday — apologizing for the glitches I’d encountered. Before I knew it, I’d gotten a DM from their Customer Support Officer asking for my number. However, I’d opened the Spleet and RentSmallSmall websites at the same time so I’d already jumped ship (closed the tab) and didn’t deem it necessary to continue any line of conversation with Spleet.
I signed up online for a virtual viewing which I assume is just them sending me a video or doing a live Zoom or Whatsapp call. I’d also signed up for a physical viewing in error but decided to see the process anyway. Nobody reached out to me on the day of my viewings for neither the Physical viewing nor the Virtual one. So, I gave them a call and this guy (we’ll call him Mr X) picked up and apologized saying someone else will be in touch — So, 24 hours gone- Mind you someone else can book the property without a viewing but they specifically recommended a viewing right? Okay. Stay with me.
Anyway, three days went by and I called Mr X perpetually every day for three days and he gave the same response that it was someone else’s job and they would reach out to me — he gave no alternate solution. Nothing. On day 4, I called him and told him that he had taken so long and if someone else took that place I’d be very cross with him. He was silent and I hung up. Two hours later, I checked the website for this dream place, Lo and behold, my dream apartment had been taken. I called Mr. X back to inform him and guess what he said, “ Ah. Sorry o”. That was literally all he said. I was livid! I tweeted my dissatisfaction with their service and to date, I’m yet to receive a response.
I went back on Twitter as the Prodigal customer that I was and replied to the Spleet Customer Support lady, Felicia. Felicia called me and had me on the phone telling her the issues I was encountering live on the site while she relayed the information to the software developer in real-time. It was fixed and I could finally search their catalog. I found a shared apartment and rationalized that with my health conditions it might be best to stay with people just in case of emergencies. So, I told Felicia that I was ready to pay but I wanted to know more about the apartment. Dear Felicia from Spleet spent over 30 minutes answering my questions about the apartment, the amenities, location, drawbacks, and so on and she was very honest. It actually felt like I was talking to and asking for advice from my friend. In fact, I said this out loud and I recall her saying, “But we are friends”. Bruh! I paid that night and I moved in within a week from Discovery without stress.
I moved in exactly a week ago and so far my flatmates have been great. We had a new flatmate move in at the beginning of the week and I had the chance to talk to him last night. I asked him how he found out about Spleet and he narrated his experience and how despite the fact that RentSmallSmall had better SEO marketing with their website being the first search result, he chose Spleet because “RentSmallSmall was acting like they are the best thing to happen to someone and they were doing me a favor”. This seemed like a deep statement to make plus I wanted the juicy details so I probed further and he said that he’d call and they would not take his patronage seriously. In contrast, Spleet’s Felicia called him, organized a viewing, got someone to usher him into his new place, sent out an introductory email to all the flatmates before he arrived, and a whole lot more.
Customer Support, in most companies especially in Nigeria, is seen as an afterthought — just a department to have to fulfill all righteousness — but in the real sense of it, Customer Support, if utilized optimally can be a company’s differentiating factor. Secondly, Customer Support (CS) is also viewed as a separate entity from Product User Experience (UX), however, with more startups paying attention to core business functions, great User Interface (UI), solid engineering, I foresee a future whereby Customer Support becomes a core function in creating great User Experiences.
I see technology products exhibiting diminishing marginal returns to customers in that the more beautiful and great software products are built, the more alternatives that a user has, resulting in less marginal returns (or happiness) the user derives from the product. Therefore, companies will need to create better User Experiences (UX) and this is most likely going to be hinged on the human interaction element — Customer Support.
RentSmallSmall needs to work on their UX and Customer Support, Spleet is doing absolutely great and I wish many other Nigerian businesses can learn from them because it's a massive differentiator. I hope they keep getting better and maximizing their superpower — Business-user relations.
Below is a quote I found on Stackexchange. I love it because it asks the right questions:
Despite the efforts of UI and UX professionals, users sometimes get stuck, or experience bugs using software. I think we can agree that their frustration is an indicator of bad user experience. Yet, a meaningful, helpful conversation with a customer support person can leave that user feeling even better about the product after their issue.
I have seen it many times where the relationship the customer has with the people that represent the product significantly affects their opinion, dare say their experience with the product.
So why is CS and UX two totally unrelated departments? Is there any company out there that has CS reporting to UX? Should there be?
