everything's not lost.

seen in an e-mail signature from a customer:

this is absolutely true :)

i know i print mails every now and then – still hardly ever – and only if there are a lot of things on it i have to cross off, but i know other people who print almost every e-mail and read them on paper instead of the screen. or they archive e-mails the old fashioned way instead of only moving it in their e-mail program. couldn’t believe it myself at first..

working in customer care means, that you will have to find the right words to communicate facts in a language the customer most easily understands. this applies to communicating problems as well. no bullshitting around with technical terms, metaphors are hard too, so try to avoid it.

and a very big part in communicating in support is the ability to ask the right questions to get the answers you need to help the customer. i can do this pretty good, if i may say so. the other way round is a bit more tricky – bringing the customer to ask the right question in the first place.

there is a story i love to tell because a) it really happened and b) it’s a perfect example*.

meet sarah. sarah is our main contact person from a customer. sarah, of course, is not her real name. and she could be a man as well, just to clarify that it’s not about women but about people that don’t have a clue ;)

now to simplify the premises let’s just say sarah is the main contact and there are 15 other contacts in other locations. each contact has it’s own access data. it’s a bit more complicated than that, but enough background information for now. here’s an email she sent to me:

Hi Thomas,

can you please change the passwords for some locations?

thanks
Sarah

if you don’t get it while reading it the first time, you might be my target audience at work.

here’s what i should have replied:

Hi Sarah,

i’ve changed the passwords for some locations.

bye
Thomas

and not a single bit of information more. of course, i didn’t reply with this mail, because – believe it or not – i’m more interested in helping than in proving my point. the way i replied was a short, friendly message like “sure thing, no problem. just tell me the locations and the prefered passwords each”.

before you might think, that her mail could have been just the question, if it is possible, to change passwords, i have to disappoint you – the mail is a direct quote as written above, no misunderstanding here.

other fine, but not so funny examples are mails like these:

Hi Thomas,

I’m getting an error.

bye
Harry

(…)

in these cases, i refuse to think about it for even a second and only respond with a nice “what kind of error message” message. there’s an error message on the screen that is telling you something, if you want me to do something about it, at least have the courtesy to read and forward it. i’m good, but i’m not that good.

the good thing is, most of the customers are learning to forward the full error description, but it’s a hard process to teach ‘em.

* and to be fair it’s quite funny as well :D