Posted by: mackenzieindeed on: February 18, 2009
I have a larger post brewing on the topic of call centers, but in the meanwhile, I wanted to share the giggle-worthy Headset Hotties, which encourages you to rate the perceived helpfulness of attractive women wearing headsets who supposedly work in the call centers a customer would contact for support.
I must say, some of these representatives look awfully helpful!
Posted by: mackenzieindeed on: January 23, 2009
I’ve been working with customers in some capacity almost non-stop for the past ten years. I’ve worked with children and their parents in an educational environment, I’ve stood behind a register, I’ve been the first point of contact for a company with over 10,000 employees. Customers are what I do. I like to talk to them, and I like to help them out.
As a result, I’m a very picky customer. While I’ll always give a company the benefit of the doubt, I expect the same devotion to service that I try to exhibit personally. Work can be busy and stressful, and companies often don’t give customer support groups the resources they need to wow the customer, but I know from your voice on the phone and the tone of your writing if you actually care about me.
For e-mail based support, I am particularly particular. I’ve done this job. I’m good at it. I’m looking for this job now. Seeing it shoddily done frustrates me. When I send a company an e-mail, there are five things a representative can do to make me feel that it was worth writing in:
Thank Me
I don’t have to e-mail you. My contact gives you the opportunity to improve your product or service. I could just take my business elsewhere. It takes time out of my day to write to you. I’m even polite and I never yell. So throw me a bone and say you appreciate me taking the time to contact you.
Customize the Form Letter
I know you’re using a form letter. Any company worth its salt has a large array of form letters tied to their CRM software. You plug in a keyword, it spits out a letter. Take the thirty seconds to add a touch of personalization to your reply to me. Echo some of my words, remove lines that are clearly not relevant to my issue, stop and think about whether or not this is going to lead to a resolution to my problem. For certain customizations — location and product names, for example — your CRM software might even do this for you based on information the customer has already provided.
Resolve My Issue
You wouldn’t think I need to mention this, but I do. It’s great to know that you appreciate my comment and actually read it, but if you don’t fix the bug or get my package delivered to me, it doesn’t matter. Tell me what you’re doing or have done to resolve my problem. I don’t need you to ply me with freebies, but I do need to leave our exchange(s) feeling like I’m being taken care of.
Follow Up Internally
If I contacted you about a poor restaurant experience, communicate my thoughts to the store. If I contacted you about a feature that I want to see on your website, e-mail the dev team. In some cases, all this means is making sure my contact is properly logged and your CRM reporting processes will do the rest. I won’t see this step, but if I go back to your restaurant in a month and the employees are still surly, or it’s been a year and that feature still hasn’t been implemented, I’ll know just how much my feedback mattered.
Make It Easy for Me to Contact You Again
If you really want to win my favor, you’ll give me your name (first and last initial, please) and a case ID number. If I end up contacting your company about this issue again, I want to be able to say who I talked to. I want to be able to give you a case number so you can look over the notes of your colleagues. I don’t want to have to explain myself all over again.
When these five steps are taken, I am made to feel like a human being, not just a customer. This engenders in me a strong sense of loyalty in your company and brand. Given the potential for such a win/win, I’m surprised by how many companies take the lose/lose approach.
Posted by: mackenzieindeed on: January 23, 2009
So, at 4am, I finally got a reply from Mint.com:
Thank you for contacting Mint.com.
Please do the following to edit duplicate transactions:
1. Locate the transaction that is a duplicate on the transactions’ tab.
2. Click on the box before the Transaction Date .
3. then Click on Edit Details, drop down box will appear
4. Click on Check box “This is a duplicate”
5. Then “I’m Done” to save the changes.
Important note: To distinguish a duplicate tagged transactions, this will be categorized as “Duplicate”. To revert it back just do the same steps but this time Uncheck “This is a duplicate” then “I’m Done” to save the changes.
Note: This feature currently only supports marking duplicates one at a time. In addition, marking a transaction as a duplicate will not change your account balance.
Additional Note: We do a great deal of backend work to minimize duplicates. Issues like how banks record transactions, however, these are beyond our control so duplicates will never be an issue where we catch 100%.
Thank you,
$representative
Mint.com
For those keeping track at home, this isn’t the issue I’m having. But, hey, maybe I wasn’t clear enough in my original e-mail. I e-mailed them back, and figure it will be another two weeks before I’m able to use my account. It’s a good thing I don’t depend on Mint alone for my budgeting!
I tend to find it a little bit insulting when I get a form letter that clearly hasn’t been customized at all, but that’s a topic for another post.
Posted by: mackenzieindeed on: January 21, 2009
When a site has a support link on their website, I will use it if I encounter a problem with the site. When I do this, I expect to receive a reply. In fact, I expect to receive a prompt reply. What “prompt” means varies by company. Generally speaking, my expectation is that I will hear back from a person (not an autoresponder) within three days. When I’ve worked in customer support, the SLA was one business day.
I use Mint.com to manage my finances. I’ve found that it’s quite useful, mostly as a budgeting and life analysis tool.
A few weeks ago I noticed that Mint was listing my Visa card twice. The balances were slightly different, but the transactions were the same; one was just a few transactions behind the other. So, all of a sudden, my budget and net worth calculations are useless.
I wait a day to see if it clears itself up. Then I click on “Get Help” and send in an e-mail saying “Hey, help!” with a description of the problem. This was the morning of January 9th. I’ve heard nothing.
It’s been twelve days since I could effectively use Mint.com. I recognize that this is a free service, but at a point where they are actively courting new customers and are still seeking long term funding, leaving a customer hanging for almost two weeks isn’t a great call.
But, hey, I’m looking for work. Mint.com, you need another customer support person?
Posted by: mackenzieindeed on: January 20, 2009
Since I picked WordPress up again, I’m noticing when blogs I visit use WordPress. I was reading Stuff White People Like just now and said to myself “Wait, I recognize that favicon!”
It made me stop reading and look around to see how the page had been laid out, and put thoughts in my head about how I might lay this blog out, assuming that I continue to come up with content to place in a public forum.
I know LiveJournal inside out at this point — having a new platform with new flexibilities and features is really fun. I think that the Excerpt is my favorite thus far.
Posted by: mackenzieindeed on: January 18, 2009
When I’m browsing jobs, even if I’m leisurely browsing, there are certain features I like to see on company websites:
A Site that Works Without JavaScript
I use NoScript, a JavaScript, Flash, and Java blocker. I whitelist the majority of the domains I visit, but I shouldn’t have to. I expect to need scripts enabled to submit a form, but I should be able to look at your front page without being nagged to enable it or seeing a jumbled mess of text. Think about your clients who are using screen readers – is this how you want to reach out to them?
The Elevator Speech
Right there, on your front page, I want a summary of who you are. When you’ve got under 30 seconds, how do you explain what your company does? I don’t want buzzwords that you feed to VCs; I want you to talk to me. I’m just a normal person. It can be a sentence or a paragraph, but I should leave saying “I know exactly what you do.”
A Support Link
I’m a customer support professional, and I’m looking for companies that have a real, sincere desire to work with their userbase and serve their needs. “Support” should not be a subset of some random “Contact Us” page. It should be a giant, blinking marquee on your front page. It’s unlikely that your product is so awesome that every user will dig to get your help. So tell me where your FAQ, your forums, and your reps are. Don’t hide them.
A Clear Link to an Employment Section
I don’t mind if you’re not hiring. I’m not running screaming from my job, either. That doesn’t mean I should have to click “About”, then “Our Team” then “Join Our Team” at the very bottom. Put a link to jobs or careers on your front page, even if it’s at the bottom of the page in tiny letters. How you hire tells me something about you as a company, and it’s presumptuous to think people will just overwhelm you with resumes if you make it easy to find out what’s available.
Inspiration
I’m good at what I do. I’ve got web savvy and not a lot of free time. Give me a reason to stay on your site and explore it. I’ve joined beta tests for sites I initially came to looking for work. I’ve sent resumes and cover letters out to companies that weren’t hiring because their product spoke to me and I wanted to support it. Make me feel welcome and I’ll make myself at home.
When a website doesn’t have these features, it’s very likely that I’ll just close the tab. If there’s an obvious careers section, I’ll pull it up, but if there’s nothing there that fits my qualifications, I won’t bookmark it and come back later. I’m a demanding customer and I want you to do all the work (because if you think I should have to, we have a problem). Happily, I’m pleased to say that there are a lot of sites out there that meet my needs. They make up for the bad eggs.
