Let’s not fool ourselves, we all want to sound clever, organized and professional. And it’s getting in our way. In customer service that is.
When we talk to customers, we don’t talk to them like friends or neighbors. We don’t use language that feels personal. But why?
Customers open support tickets or cases, and we’re asking them if we can close those, else their issue needs to be escalated. When a friend sends me an email, it’s just that, an email. I’m having a conversation with them. When we’re all set, I’ll ask them if my answer helped them. Case closed.
When we reply to a friend, it looks like an email. When we reply to a customer, it looks like Zendesk.
We patronize customers with standard phrases. We’re making an effort to sound friendly, fun and interesting when friends write, but with customers, we hope that they “don’t hesitate to contact us in case of further questions.”
We avoid accountability and we hide behind a “we”. You’re a great team, I get it, and there’s no “I” in “Team”. But when it comes to genuine contact, it’s all about you and the other person. I am happy to answer any other questions that come up. I invite them to contact me again. I’m fully aware that they might end up with one of my colleagues, but for now, I want to tell them that I’m there for them and that I’m not ducking out, hoping that someone else will take their next question.
We create bug tickets and feature requests, they have numbers and we forward things to the department in charge. If our customers were friends, we would “talk to one of our engineers” or “chat to a product manager to tell them about their idea”.
Look, I’m not saying that we should give up any processes. They’re good. We’re professional. We need a ticketing system, a CRM system, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), feature requests.
But we don’t have to let that shine through in the way we talk to our customers. We can make this a personal, genuine conversation and all we need to do is change a few words.
Call me a stickler for details. But, words really are a big deal.
