April 1, 2015

Given that I’ve been working in customer service in some way shape or form for almost all of my career, I tend to be overly sensitive to customer experiences that aren’t great.

I recently had an interaction with a support rep that irked me a bit. Email in a problem and a support case was created. Followed up the next day with an email with an additional screenshot and description with what was thought to be a related issue. The support rep responded, requesting that a new case be created instead. Basically: here’s what you need to do, so that I can have my work organized the way I want it. The support rep had all the info – if they wanted to create a second case out of the additional info, they very well could have created it themselves. Don’t make the customer do this!

It may seem like a small thing, but all those small things make up an overall customer experience.

I found an old blog post that I wrote years ago that reminded me of this same thing:

Verisign Online Tech Support Chat:
Kelley : How may I assist you today?
Gary: Hi Kelly; I need to get a receipt for my recent order # 226088001
Kelley : No worries- to receive a receipt for your recent order, simply email our billing department through billing@verisign.com. Place your order# in the subject field and request a receipt for your order and they will contact you right away.

This was an OK experience. I found out what *I* needed to do to get a receipt.
What would have made this a better experience:

Kelley : No worries- You’ve already given me your name, email address, and order number, so I’ll email you a receipt right now.

Published Tuesday, October 17, 2006 1:21 PM

Walkaway thoughts

Are you pushing your work onto a customer? Can the customer experience be improved? If I was the customer, how would I want the situation to be handled?