This is a guest post by Andrew Scott, a serial entrepreneur in London, CEO Rummble, Non-exec UnLtdWorld.com, Founding board m.Love & and “lover of all things mobile”.
In 1901 a Swedish immigrant to America called Johan Nordstrom founded the Nordstrom department store. In 1975, by now a national chain, a Nordstrom customer walked into one of their stores to return a set of tyres he’d bought. The salesperson gladly took back the set of car tyres and gave the customer a refund. Nothing weird about that, right? Except Nordstrom has never sold tyres.
Many of you may have heard this story before; it’s one of many legendary tales of great customer service from Nordstrom and best of all it’s true.
According to a chap called Efraim Turban “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation.”
Like us all I have copious tales of despair dealing with corporate giants. I’d say the worst offenders used to be banks, but in today’s world of mobile everything, the mobile network operators have definitely claimed that crown. They whine about infrastructure costs while continuing to fleece consumers with roaming and data charges; and all while delivering a deeply inconsistent customer service experience which can drive grown men of good demeanour to the edge of sanity. I’m one of those grown men.
This got me thinking. As the internet envelopes our world, one of the biggest challenges facing online brands will be to avoid becoming the customer service dogs of the next decade.
With the expectation of “free” which the internet engenders, there’s an inherent danger of a cultural ethos in business in which non-paying “users” don’t have the right to a personal customer service experience.
This would be naïve on two counts: firstly today’s free user is tomorrow’s paying customer, but secondly we ARE paying. The personal data I give (even if out of self interest) to MyFace when I join a group, FPost when I send an email or Chatter when I update my status, is MY data. We trade this in return –hopefully– for value; and ACME Inc get, consequently, to push us advertising.
There are many better places to read about the relationship between giving up personal data in return for delivering value (my friend JMacs blog is as good as anywhere to start) because what I am interested in are the Nordstrom car-tyre returns of the online
world.
If this is all very obvious, then when was the last time you heard someone say “Awesome! ACME.com gave me such incredible service, I clicked the link and they called me back instantly”. It’s rarer than you think. That’s because at scale, it’s really hard. For excellent customer service to survive as a start-up grows into an incumbent, it has to be –and then remain– a deeply rooted driving goal of the organisation.
37 Signals have a fanatical following; but they’re almost equally infamous for a slew of “we know better than our user” style diatribes. Jeff Bezos in contrast says quite simply “Amazon wouldn’t exist if we didn’t obsess about the customer above all else”.
So which online brands are glowing examples of amazing customer service?
I have recently known very happy customers who’ve used Twitter and received prompt, sometimes exceptional, service from brands. @ahousley a friend of mine tweeted in frustration @easyjet (a large UK budget airline) when his girlfriend accidently booked four seats instead of two on the same flight after a double-click incident on the purchase button. @easyjet sorted it out: fast and without fuss.
If Alex had used “normal” channels, he’d have had to dig thru the website to find a buried telephone number, wait on hold for eons (probably on a premium rate telephone line) and then be told the tickets were binding and non-refundable. I suspect we are experiencing a temporary ‘Golden Age’ of customer service via Twitter. Enjoy it while it lasts, because sadly it’s not going to scale.
Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi claims “Brands are running out of juice.” He’s concluded that “love” is what is needed to rescue brands. He asks “What builds loyalty that goes beyond reason?” Customer service – which includes any interaction with your customer – is a huge part of this. Roberts coined the term “Lovemark” as a step beyond the concept of a simply having “a brand.” I love this idea, of a Lovemark; of irrational loyalty.
What are your Lovemarks? Mine include Virgin Atlantic, my Blackberry and Pret (a sandwich store in the UK). In all cases, I’ve at some point experienced a sub par product* but I’ve always received amazing customer service. I’ve become an irrationally loyal customer. Online that’s probably true for me with Kayak.com, but probably not Facebook.
* Virgin Atlantic on 3 flights the entertainment system didnt work, my Blackberry Bold keeps hanging and Pret? well actually Prets food has always been fantastic
Emotions being as they are, this can work in reverse. I was so frustrated with Microsoft Vista on my new laptop last year, I found myself typing “I hate vista” into Google. As a general search it gave 3,310,000 results; being a nice chap I thought I’d do an explicit search instead. Let’s have some fun…
I hate…** |
I love… |
For every hater, X love you | |
| 37 Signals | 2 | 1,070 | 535 |
| Amazon | 2,470 | 20,700 | 8.3 |
| Apple | 27,800 | 133,000 | 4.7 |
| 16,800
(72,900,000) |
132,000
(182,000,000) |
7.8
(2.4) |
|
| Microsoft | 37,200
(73,000,000) |
48,900
(227,000,000) |
1.3
(3.1) |
| Starbucks | 10,800 | 53,000 | 4.9 |
| Virgin Atlantic | 4,700 | 261 | 0.05 |
| Vista | 37,600 | 21,300 | 0.56 |
(Bing in brackets) It’s all rather haphazard of course…no scientific logic was harmed during this experiment and apparently I’m rather alone on my love of Virgin Atlantic.
** BTW not to escape, “I hate Rummble” produced only one result, a tweet [rightly] complaining about the friend connect process –we’re fixing it this week– but “I love Rummble” was equally scant; so I guess we’ve got some serious work to do to.
Traditional business avoids confrontation “What ever we say people will always complain” said an executive to me recently “[Twitter] would be a minefield…” he said. This is akin to letting the bully in the playground simply carry on bullying. Brands must stand up to their customers and be human, apologising where necessary and engage (note, I didn’t say argue) when the claims are unfair. Patience and a measured response are key.
Be careful though, engagement without substance is almost worse. I was recently forwared this reply to an extended query about Facebook privacy: “Thanks for the suggestion. We will certainly keep it in mind as we continue to improve the site. Thanks for contacting Facebook,” I am Robot. Well, actually, allegedly the customer support guy was “Craig”; the point is, he didn’t actually answer the question which was asked.
As anyone in business knows, there are many tombs written on the subject of customer service, along with blogs, podcasts, qualifications, training camps, methodologies and of course the inevitable slew of government supported “standards” with customer friendly titles. In the UK these include “TICSS” and “ISO 10002:2004”.
Much to my frustration, none of these outline why customer service agents who hold ALL my personal details #FAIL on an epic scale when they refuse to give me THEIR full name, extension number or a direct email address. Don’t scream data protection, WTF should I trust you’re not a stalking axe murderer if you don’t trust I’m not? IMHO (lets keep the acronym theme going) these accreditations are all a load of crap. I’m with Johan (remember him?). Good customer service is really rather simple.
Until very recently Nordstrom staff when joining were given only one thing: a card with just 75 words written on it, the core of which said:
“Our number one goal is to provide outstanding customer service. Nordstrom Rules: Rule #1: Use good judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules.”
As modern health & safety madness and litigation has got worse, that same card is now accompanied with an employee handbook, but this simple guidance when combined with employee empowerment remains hugely powerful.
When building your start-up, make sure the zeal today with which you reply to tweets and emails, good or bad, continues tomorrow and into next year. As you grow, there’s no question it is going to be hard. Look at the ACME Inc’s of today; Facebook has a considerable customer service challenge. I got to 25 clicks to find a customer contact form and stopped counting. With no telephone number and “contact facebook” ranked no.1 in Facebook Help’s own search terms, one could argue they’re failing currently that challenge.
Services such as UserVoice, GetSatisfaction and even Twitter, are certainly helping empower the user to provide feedback easily, but you have to go further. My humble advice to your company is find Mr Nordstroms 75 word mantra online, replace “Nordstrom” with your own company name and stick on your office wall, today. Then stick it on the back of the toilet door. Then before you become the size of FaceSpace, work out how you’re
going to live up to it when you’ve got ten or one hundred times the number of users you have today.
I’m a customer. I don’t care whether I’m paying for the service or not; however unreasonable that sounds. Just serve me well. If I AM paying for your service, then I expect to be treated like a God. I’m your customer and I’m the reason your company exists! Johan Nordström understood that.
At the end of my last published article I said I’d write next time on the subject “It’s about the data, stupid.” Well, in terms of delivering valuable functionality to users, that statement remains true; but in terms of your brand and business, it is most definitely all about the customer, always.
Dr Solomon’s Software, the leading European antivirus publisher until it was acquired by McAfee in 1998, won lots of praise, and business, because if someone rang the support line and they had a virus infection, the team would help them sort it out – whether they were a customer or not.
I should mention that I ran marketing and product development there for a while, but this enlightened policy predated my arrival.
Absolutely awesome post!
I’m totally with you on the love/hate of companies based on their perceived value they place within their customers/users and how easy support/being able to get to speak to someone when problem arise is.
Companies that are able to focus on the customer are those I would prefer to deal with. Not only in terms of support, but in terms of engaging with the customer – Microsoft (of all people) have really impressed me with their “Engineering Windows 7″ blog, helping us endusers/customers understand the entire the process and alleviate some of the frustrations that users had from their Vista “headaches”.
I digress though, really good post and I just had to tell you how much I enjoyed.
great post, more like this please
You make a lot of good points. Great post! Thanks.
Fantastic post – Especially about the Google “I love” I hate” stats. A simple yet great off-the-cuff brand check. I had a colleague who suggested using sports teams (eg I hate Raiders vs I love Raiders).
Good article but that Nordstrom’s Tire story has been debunked multiple times. It’s a good story to make a point but unfortunately, it’s just not true.
True, but the tyre story is completely true.
Facebook’s customer service has got to be (hands down) THE WORSE on the internet. Non-explanatory reasons for disabling profiles, no response to emails/inquiries, are just a few of the reasons they may fail. FB can definitely take a page from Amazon and Nordstrom (interestingly enough, both Seattle-based companies. Is there something in the water up there that makes them more polite and accomodating to the users that keep them in business?)
Obviously Redmond doesn’t drink the same water as the companies in Seattle do.
tyres – Swedish for tires?
Unfortunately, the tools that empower customers to express issues don’t often scale to enable growing companies to provide customer support profitably.
A good follow-up article would be a discussion of the services — everything from CoTweet to Attensity — that help companies make sense of the (usually) unstructured queries and sentiments flowing through the Web at any given moment.
Great article. As a previous Customer Service Manager for an online company I know that it is incredibly difficult for customers to experience decent service but it all comes back to cost.
The company I worked for was 100% free and the cost of providing ‘high’ quality customer service was deemed to expensive by the executives so we had to put up with Indian and Philippines as our contact centers.
Having said that, now I look after a local (here in Australia) team and I think the off shore teams are much more professional and work much harder.
Providing great customer service is a nice ideal, but there are real costs to do that. Seriously, how do you provide good customer service to 200 million customers if you’re Facebook?
I’m sure everyone has stories of bad customer service from large online organizations – hard to find how to contact them, and if you do email or fill in their contact form you never hear anything back.
We seem to be gravitating towards crowdsourced DIY customer service. Type your problem into a search engine and find a forum where someone else has solved the problem.
At ekit we provide 24 hour customer service through the phone and email, but it is a significant cost and most of our customers are paying customers. However some of the processes we use could be applied to larger organizations.
We use an internal tracking system to ensure that customer issues and queries don’t get lost. We have an ever increasing collection of standard responses to common questions and problems which can provide quick and consistent responses to customers. We have an internal training process that all new customer service staff go through that introduces them to our products and common issues they will face.
Rupert
I wonder what the general consensus would be on charging for customer service. 1$ per request or 5$ as a package? I bet it would minize the volume of rediculous requests that must get placed.
I know I would be willing to pay in may circumstances. Maybe theres a business in that alone.
At a $6 – 15 billion valuation, I’m sure Facebook can afford to hire some customer service people to handle these customer requests. Either that, or improve their existing customer service processes so that their existing customer service staff can handle the requests. If Facebook is getting so many customer service requests, that means there’s something wrong with their product…fix it.
One of the things I think is most interesting about scaling customer service is how quickly people cut themselves off from feedback.
A friend of mine recently took me to her favorite cafe, with a promise of excellent food. When we were done eating, the owner came over and asked us how we liked the meal, and asked a couple of specific questions about our experience. That continuous seeking of feedback is part of why the food is excellent.
As companies scale, it’s easy to see customer service as a problem to be handled and/or dodged, rather than the source of the business’s most valuable information.
Tomes, not tombs.
Can you point out where you told me how to scale support? I missed that part of the post.
TECH COMPANIES PLEASE LEARN FROM NORDSTROM
This is a great post on an essential, and often sadly ignored, issue – customer service. I love Nordstrom – Nordstrom absolutely sets the standard for customer service. With the lower cost of development (cloud computing, hosting services like Amazon EC2 etc.) and lower cost of sales (freemium offerings, hosted offerings etc.) tech companies need to invest in something that can differentiate themselves, which is customer service. As this article and several comments point out, many tech companies across several sectors are falling short on customer service – e.g., Facebook, Airtel etc. My favorite companies in the area of customer service are (1) Nordstrom (2) Amazon (3) Williams Sonoma.
Thank you for pointing out what I believe is a basic “blocking and tackling” issue – service is an absolute necessity for customers!
@steve Apologies for the typo. You’re quite right, I don’t provide a holy grail. In reality the answer is going to be different for each company, but the starting point to reach that answer will be the same – which is it must be an obsession from day one.
As an aside, the original title was “The Curious Case of Johan Nordstrom”, but I think maybe TC thought this too obscure. In anycase, the title is posed as a question to the floor
@phil Apparently the tyre story is rooted in fact. It occured in Fairbanks, Alaska after Nordstrom had bought a property which previously did sell tyres. Some months later a man who had purchased tyres from that outlet returned his tyres, but Nordstrom, since taking over the premise did not sell tyres. You’re right that many stories like this get distorted over the years. I wonder if the sales clerk is still alive?
Lastly, @pilot “tyres” is the original English spelling, “tires” is the U.S. English version. My spelling is bad, but not THAT bad
Many thanks for the positive feedback from everyone.
Excellent post! I grew up in a small town of Kathmandu, Nepal and spent most of my time at a small store. One thing my dad taught me during my initial years was – “customer is god”. His mantra was exceptional customer service. As a result his customers were extremely loyal and half of our business was from repeat customers. No wonder from a small store we have our distribution centers. And yes – our customer service is still our main strength!
I agree, great post and extremely relevant indeed. I would have love to have seen more concrete ideas or examples on how to implement successfully for fast growing Internet consumer companies.
I love this post!
Google is another big culprit. No way whatsoever to reach them, even if you are a customer using Adsense, making money from them through YOUR online real estate.
Have an Adsense query, or something about Google in general? They encourage you to read their online documentation. And even then if you aren’t satisfied, dig through dozens of links to find a working email address (no phone number) that will be replied to by a bot.
No kidding, but this sort of cavalier attitude to customers is the reason why I switched to Bing. This is the reason why I believe Google and Facebook will die in the long run. MS couldn’t die because there were no real alternatives..but with Google and FB, there are.
Hey Andrew, interesting thought provoking article.
What most of us would love to hear is how you scale Rummble’s own customer service.
At http://edocr.com, most queries comes through “contact us”. We also use Twitter heavily, experimented with UserVoice and restarted using GetSatisfaction. Our FAQs are incomplete and we do not have a forum at present.
There is a further distinction that need due attention. I assume this is true with most tech companies. Our queries are classed into (not systematically, I must admit):
- Spam – don’t ignore this
- Visitors – those who drops in from time to time without registering
- Users – those who does not pay us
- Customers (those who pay us)
I assume everyone will appreciate the order in which each query type is handled. We also call this aspect of http://edocr.com, simply Service (not Customer Service).
Scaling Service will no doubt be a massive problem as we grow. One of the companies who excelled in this area is plus.net, and ISP sold to BT few years back. They automated this aspect as much as possible to ensure queries found responses easily and quickly. More than anything, those responses made it easier for the problems to be fixed by customers themselves as much as possible. Of course, escalation levels need to be in place.
Another thought on this issue is that the buck should stop at the CEO.
Wonder whether you may be willing to share more insight to how you handle these issues within Rummble.
By the way, let’s add this aspect to our Tech Mission London 09 Part II in October. We love you to return as a mentor.
Best regards
Manoj
great write up. i grew up on that nordstrom story like it was a biblical scripture, but i knew it was factual. there’s lots of companies that have legacy histories liek that they can dip into when they need to brand to their customers, because the saatchi & saatchi guy is absolutely right. branding/some companies brands have become absolutely tired but some of these legacy companies with strong roots haven’t. i mean i saw a nordstrom ad on another website, right before i came here to tc, and i was very tempted to click the ad. ikea is another company…roots…even saatchi and saatchi. tiffany’s is another one.
i think that you ended up with your stongest point at the end. it is always about the customer. i’m sorry to say that but it’s true. i mean i am putting money back into your business so i don’t understand why i have to be so shanked/dismissed constantly like i’m not needed. well if that’s the case then you don’t need to be selling anything because no one wants to buy things from douchebags…or use even free products from douchebags. i agree with your it doesn’t matter how much you spend because i’m the same way. i just want a good consumer experience, and that definately includes the kind of service i get. i will walk out of a store, or stop using products if their customer service completely turns me off. i am a loyal customer and an irrational “lovemark” type of person, but that goes as far as the type of serive i get.
i am loyal to google (i’m trying to change that though), staedler graphite pencils, prismacolor, my 1988 2way sony radio, my rbk shoes (anything rbk really), harper collins, fifa & uefa, and some other things. i love doing i hate searches with google.
good post. thanks andrew.
i’m a consumer, but i also work in customer service jobs and so i know how it feels to be on either side. people sometimes are just so frustrating to serve, but some customer service reps are the absolute complete shit.
a happy customer makes your life as a customer service rep easier, and they usually will become loyalty consumers…although some of them just become personal stalkers.
Oh! there are other kinds that need adding to the list, one of these being “critics”.
Perhaps, this aspect should be considered as “stakeholder management”. At a basic level, queries that require responding, either to fix a problem or educate
Kevin Roberts talks a lot about customer loyalty in Lovemarks, but what makes people love brands is actually the loyalty of the brand to them. It happens when brands keep inspiring them and serving their dreams and expectations (like a totem). It also happens when they feel respected and listened to (like a leader).
To us, a good customer service means:
1.You understand that these are not complaints or problems, they are possible improvements served for free from the people who understand your product the most.
2.You listen carefully.
3.You solve the problem and keep your clients/users posted.
4.In the end they feel they can call/write anytime and you’ll still be there, ready to help.
Thanks for a great topic&point of view.
Twitter as a platform may help customer service, but Twitter as a company suffer the same problems that Facebook do.
It seems that many large online players use the Amazon model of customer service, that is that they try to cut problems off before they emerge rather than deal with them after the event. I can think of very few big online players that have good customer service if you wish to contact them about something.
That applies to Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter etc. Of course this isn’t to say that pre-emptive customer service isn’t valuable and indeed this is quite probably the preferred kind but dealing with queries that slip through that net is still important.
Some large companies get around this by offering up large customer communities and effectively employing customers to help one another out with queries.
Meh, I don’t expect any customer service for something I don’t pay for.
http://www.brandtags.net/browse.php
Somewhat off topic, but Brand Tags is another interesting way to see what people are thinking about brands.
Thanks for this. I fully agree that great customer service is just as important as great products, and our customers tell us as much.
Focusing on building a solid support site and customer service/support team over the years has been integral to Articulate’s success.
In fact, we at Articulate are often told things like this: “You guys set the gold standard for tech support.”
A couple articles from my blog on the topic:
Commitment to the Customer: 7 Ways We Support Your Success
Articulate Named Customer Service Department of the Year
I’m surprised to see no mention of Zappos or Southwest Airlines in this post or the comments.
Southwest Airlines stock symbol is LUV after all and they have big hearts on the bulkhead walls in their planes so every single passenger can see it while flying.
Zappos was doing customer service so well that Amazon, a leading online marketplace was willing to toss out $1B+ for them even though to date they were really only selling shoes.
I think the real takeaway of this article isn’t discussed much by Andrew but that’s fine. I’ll provide some of my thoughts below.
The real challenge as Andrew identified is SCALING the WOW (or LOVE) customer experience as a company grows. It’s easier in the early days because it’s simply easier to convey this value to a core team of 5 employees who all sit within arms-length of each other. It’s also more relevant to them because they are typically more incentivized in the long term success of the startup. They see the first revenue begin to come in and they understand why those customers are paying. They’ve probably even talked to many of the customers face-to-face.
As a company grows, the reason that employees internalize for providing great customer service is different than in the early glory days. It has more to do with being “the right thing” and providing for a “great place to work” in which the employee is more satisfied because they communicate with more happy customers than upset customers.
I’m not trying to debate the reasons to provide great customer service but instead trying to dig into how companies should message their customer service goals and values to their employees. Sort of an answer to the “what’s in it for me?” question that is common from employees in growing companies. Not every employee is a long term fully-invested employee unfortunately… even if they have equity.
I think great customer service in growing organizations comes from two critical practices:
1) Building the cost of amazing customer service into the business model:
There’s a reason why Zappos shoes are more expensive than the rest and great customer service is the reason why most people don’t care. Customers won’t, and really shouldn’t have to, make a cost trade-off decision in favor of paying separately for customer service. For years software companies have sold customer service as an add-on package. In fact, in the open source software world, customer service is the only thing that can be sold.
As the Internet is providing more visibility (first blogs, then Facebook, now Twitter) into the customer service practices of every company the bar is being lifted. Companies that don’t budget for customer service find their customer service goals in direct competition with their financial goals. You can’t let it get this far.
You must build the cost into your business model as soon as you can. Zappos knows that X % of customers will return Y dollars worth of shoes within their 12 month no-questions-asked return period so they can mark up the cost of every shoe by the right amount. So, when customer Z returns a pair of shoes with the soles worn through 11 months and 29 days after buying them because “they never fit right in the first place” you can just get a good laugh out of it. You get the benefit of providing a positive customer experience with no unplanned negative to the bottom line (ie: you already budgeted for this). Then, as a company grows these averages become more accurate (more statistically significant base) and lower risk (more profit to allow for padding incorrect assumptions).
For companies that follow this practice the cost and risk of providing excellent customer service decreases as they increase in size.
2) Obsessive communication and re-communication:
Executives in growing companies must be obsessed about customer experience and must let their teams understand their obsession. It must be repeated time and time again. Execs must clearly communicate the reasons WHY the best customer service is important to the customer, the company, and each employee. And they must use properly customized messaging when they talk with each audience.
Finally, they must build this communication into their daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual meetings and employee training so it never falls by the wayside and remains an inescapable theme.
For companies that follow this practice bad apple employees quit on their own (or never apply in the first place) because if you like being mean to customers you’re really going to hate life in this type of company.
Great comment, Aaron.
Customer service is often overlooked because the value is not immediately obvious. Tying them to the business model to justify cost and making it part of the company’s culture are two good ways to make them more of a priority.
Two more areas for support to play a big role are in product development and sales. Surfacing the biggest bug and the most common feature request is core to customer service, and taking inbound calls for support and then cross-selling / up-selling them different products / services transforms customer service to a revenue generating part of the company. Then it’s immediately obvious.
Customer service is difficult. Period. Small scale or large scale, it takes serious chops to put wanting to help people above all else. It isn’t amenable to the current holy grail of how business works (P&L sheets), it is difficult to quantify the amount of revenue it brings you, and it can even be hard to tell from a supervisory viewpoint when good customer service is being provided and when it isn’t.
As the behavioral psychologist at Thrive (www.justthrive.com), our customer service approach was one of my first tasks when I was brought onboard. How could we do more, I was asked, than just make people happy – how can we make them truly satisfied?
It takes a bit to appreciate the distinction. Happiness is transitory, a little moment of delight, but it doesn’t last – it isn’t deep down belly shaking and it doesn’t tend to persist. Satisfaction, on the other hand, may not peak as high but what it trades for the peak, it gets on duration.
Here are a couple of things we came up with to try to build satisfaction.
1) Be personal and personable. There is the rare person who will wish that you were more formal with them, and it is your job to pick up on who those people are going to be. Everyone else? Be yourself, speak in a way that understandable. If you have to use scripted language for scaling and precision, do it, but use it only when necessary – don’t script out the whole letter, just the parts that need to stay the same. Typing out the name of the customer connects you to them and creates a bond that makes it easier to honor.
2) Back your CS people. I have a standing policy here: if you have an abusive customer, don’t take it sitting down and after trying to help, send them direct to me – I’ll do my best to help them, but I’ll also tell them that we don’t allow abuse of our support folks and that they’ll be going direct to me from now on. Most of them immediately apologize and those that don’t aren’t going to be good users in the long term.
3) Competency is everything. If you study customer satisfaction experimentally, you find that tone matters, hence Rule Number 1. But the ultimate thing that generates satisfaction is actually getting something done: people need to see action and their problems need to get solved. It may take time, they may have to be patient, but if the problem is really a problem, get it solved. Tell them what you’re going to do, how you’re going to do it, set reasonable expectations, and then deliver on it. “Here is what I’m going to do” is the most powerful tool in the CS arsenal.
4) Be visible. We sign all our emails with our pictures. We use our real name. We have bios up. Our number is at the bottom of the page. Persistent help box. Why on earth would you want to discourage someone looking for help? It may help your bottom line, but if you’re in business for the bottom line, why the hell are you in business?
/rant
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You can not provide the same blanket customer service recommendations for a social network as you would a retailer. Having worked as a customer service manager, for three large social networks, I can tell you it doesnt’ work that way. It seems that everyone is assuming the type of customer service inquiries that social networks (or games) get, are the same as those one would get in a bank or retail store. This is a false assumption based on my real world experience. I usually recommend a tiered option. Where paying subscribers receive a wider option of support options (chat, email, or phone). While Non-paying members of the network have more limited options (FAQ’s and Email). However their email is answered at a lower priority. Questions from logged-in paying subscribers should always be answered first. It should be very clear throughtout the site that this is the case.