Is the Experience you’re Offering Enough for your Customers?
Have you ever had a customer support experience that made you fall in love? Not only are you never leaving that company for a competitor, but you’re going to tell everyone you know about it, because the support is just. that. good.
Creating a world-class customer experience starts by understanding your product’s support climate. What do your users expect? How can you plan or anticipate to go above expectations if you don’t understand what the baseline for those expectations are and how they came to be?
There are a ton of logistics to think about in this regard, but most importantly:
What’s the story?
What’s the story your product is trying to tell, and are your support team members really good story tellers? At Calendly, the product is built to be clean, sophisticated, yet simple to use. We bend and shift to do what we can to make it self-serviceable throughout the entire customer journey. From the product functionality and design to the 300+ Help Center articles and videos, we do what we do so that our customers can find the answer on their own.
It’s not because we don’t want to help our users, but because we know no one wakes up in the morning with a desire to contact customer support. They woke up with an intention to create business, schedule meetings, and make money. Our climate is just that, if they are writing in to support, they are being blocked from doing what they wanted to do today, so we have to act fast and get them back to their goals.
Be real
A great customer experience comes from a support specialist/agent/person who feels a very real need to provide a good solution and have the answer the customer is looking for. Surprise and delight, sure, but also set an expectation to be world-class and never disappoint. If you do disappoint, know that nothing can’t be fixed. Take a second look at that very deliberate double-negative I wrote. It’s important. If you adopt that, as a back-up plan, you’ll move swiftly with confidence through your queue. Transparency is key in making your customers trust you, so be honest if you mess up. They’re human, too, and they’ll appreciate you coming clean.
Do this
- Think fast and think smart
- Know your stuff, and be ready to react if you don’t. (Resources → honesty)
- Be thoughtful about who you’re speaking to and how you’re speaking to them. (Busy business person? K-12 Head Master? Software dev?)
- Be empathetic to their concerns, find solutions and answer their questions directly. (“Understand that frustration.” “Yes/No” “Here’s why”)
- Understand that no one wants to speak to support, they want to move past the thing that’s blocking them from being successful. (They may not want to speak to you but you’ll make it not miserable)
- Understand these things and work with them as your driver.
Measure, monitor and mediate
Customer Satisfaction, or CSAT, is the backbone of a customer-centric organization. To measure the growth or decline of CSAT against any process changes is the only way to make sure you are continuously putting your customers first. Scale your support team? Add new technology? Change processes and workflow? You are free to experiment as much as you need as long as your CSAT remains consistent (and good.)
Measuring Customer Satisfaction is not only imperative to the success of your operation but also incredibly impactful on your support agents and their motivations. If you hired well, your team members aim to please and want to do right by their customers. They also may be a tad bit competitive and want to get the best scores and great feedback.
About a year ago, I implemented Stella Connect into our Support operation and it changed the game. It allows humanization of our support agents as well as the ability for users to provide thoughtful and actionable feedback. Star ratings give flexibility in satisfaction instead of the black and white “Satisfied” or “Unsatisfied.” The real-time stream allows my team to keep an eye on their scores, feel immediate gratification from a job well done and most productively, attempt to recover negative ratings in real time. It promotes live coaching while ticket responses are fresh and moldable. You can manage and control the experience your team is providing, and customers love it. Teach, don’t test.
(Most underrated Forrest Gump quote, IMO. Read into it, servant leadership? Selflessness? Blissful ignorance? Anyway…)
Recap (Read this!)
Hire people who give a damn about your customers and the impact they have on them. Foster that customer-centric environment and reward for it. Teach focused and methodical solutions, wrapped in kindness and clarity. User error is real but always give the benefit of the doubt. Do your research, do that one extra thing, be encouraging to your customers. Challenge your team to go above and beyond for the customer by thinking strategically and quickly. Teach empathy and efficiency and transparency. Acknowledge great feedback and coach in real time. Celebrate opportunities for improvement and go big. Thank your customers for their kindness and understanding and mean it. Nothing can’t be fixed, but try hard not to screw it up in the first place.
