everything's not lost.

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

not a case from myself but what a co-worker just forwarded me.
situation: XML file can’t be viewed by an external company.

*slightly pissed programmer* “the file can’t be displayed!!!111″
*slightly amused supporter* “how do you view xml files usually?”
“with a doubleclick”

thanks. made my day.

so a co-worker of mine is on vacation, leaving me with way more work than usual as i am his holiday replacement. (time to mention that i don’t have a holiday replacement.) problem is, this field of work requires contact with a different kind of customers that i usually deal with. and i’m glad i don’t have to deal with them all the time. existing customers are hard to handle already :)

now i got the request from a customer, that a piece of one of our software (web-application) is causing problems with a new… let’s call it sub-customer… (mentioned different kind of customer). they can’t print a specific page. this is something i know right away and even our customers that usually deal with the sub-customers are aware of this.

so is this customer:
“it’s not the popup-blocker, i always let them add the domain as trustworthy”.

damn, it’s got to be a popup-blocker, i don ‘t know of anything else. don’t know of any other known problems causing this. and there are a few thousand users. so i make up theories and let them check various things, all of them point out not to be a solution to the problem.

the sub-customer is at a point where they say “my computer engineer checked and says that this is your problem”. yeah, it is mine now because your “computer engineer” doesn’t know jack.

i continue to investigate and check things and even make up a remote connection with VNC to see, what the sub-customer is doing (and to check if they’re indeed telling the truth). they do. i checked and the popup-blocker is allowing our domain. still, if i click on the link in the application, the window is not opened. the sub-customer tries to pressure me with saying “that’s your last chance, if it doesn’t work then, i’ll stop using the product.”

and just because i happen to be employee of the month for 23 months in a row now^* i care.

and good thing i was there with VNC and it was a somehow slow connection. because for the glance of a second i saw the text “popup has been blocked” in the status bar.

gotcha!

i’ll check the browser again and see what is installed? the yahoo toolbar. for christ’s sake, the toolbar was not displayed, yet active. and guess what? there’s a popup-blocker in the yahoo toolbar as well. i add our domain and of course it’s working now.

in a very calm and professional way^* i explained what happened, that it was not our fault, their computer engineer doesn’t know anything.

and of course that i was right all along.

and of course, everytime you try to enlighten someone you caught being wrong, they go into denial. the point for me where i don’t try to explain any further because it wouldn’t help or proove anything.

but, case-closed. a happy customer, a somewhat satisfied sub-customer. all i got to worry about so far.

* yeah i made that one up. but it’s true. really.

a few days ago i got the request to export specified data for a customer. only the data has been specified, not the format itself. so i offer a excel or a xml file. i usually do excel, because it’s easier for me to export (plain copy & paste from the query analyzer). this time, the company that will get the data from the customer requested a xml file, because “they don’t accept excel”. works for me.

soon after they got the data, the customer called me and asked, if i can change the sort order of the data.

“can’t they do it on their own?”
“nope…”
“you know, that wouldn’t be a problem in excel”
“i know…”
“and they told you to request a xml file from me”
“i know…”
“and they can’t handle a xml file?”
“nope…”

works for me. but keeps me wondering.

sometimes it’s best to take a deep breath, before answering mails.
just to cool down. people are fun.
or, of course, just to notice that your first impulse would be “it’s all the customers fault” and the second is “oh, wait a minute, wasn’t there this one specific……. ” d’oh!

i will tell you more about my work in customer care some day :D