Effectively supporting your customers
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The document outlines various communication methods for customer support, highlighting the pros and cons of each method including phone, email, social media, live chat, and ticketing systems. It stresses the importance of a centralized ticketing system for security, efficiency, and better team collaboration while also addressing the differing needs of customer segments. Additionally, it emphasizes the necessity of understanding customer technical abilities and managing expectations for effective support.
![Phone Support
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![Phone Support
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Effectively supporting your customers
- 1. Effectively Supporting Your Customers By Leon Harper
- 2. Communication Avenues Telephone Email Social Media Live Chat Ticketing
- 3. Phone Support • Most wanted by new customers in order to have a “real person” to look after them. Places undue pressure on support teams. • Will be difficult to recruit high quality support staff. • Time consuming, one issue can be dealt with at a time. • Prevents technical communications. • Insecure.
- 4. Phone Support WordPress .htaccess file # BEGIN WordPress <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.php [L] </IfModule> # END WordPress
- 5. Phone Support .htaccess with subfolders RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L] # add a trailing slash to /wp-admin RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?wp-admin$ $1wp-admin/ [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d RewriteRule ^ - [L] RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(wp- (content|admin|includes).*) $2 [L] RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA- Z-]+/)?(.*.php)$ $2 [L] RewriteRule . index.php [L]
- 6. Email • Solves some of the communication problems with phone support. • Unlinked to a customers account. • Very insecure on both transmission and authentication. • Difficult to organise, log and categorise. • Work is at risk of being duplicated with no “assigned to” function.
- 7. Social Media • Arbitrary character limits. • Public by nature (useless for sensitive information). • Insecure
- 8. Live Chat • Depends heavily on implementation • Can be insecure. • Prone to abuse and ”prank chats”
- 9. Ticketing System • Authenticated and secure (you know you are speaking to the customer) • All previous methods of communication can be combined with a centralised ticket system to be logged in a centralised location. • Company wide visibility and simple escalation. • The ability for any member of your team to answer support issues from anywhere. • The ability for all members to “peek” a support issue. • Allows template systems. • Integration with host platform. • Auto diagnostics.
- 10. Your Customers
- 11. • Professional and experienced • Understand real world Limitations • Provide useful and realistic feedback • Communicate effectively with support • Mission Critical site • Will leave if you can't provide the required service • Expect problems to be fixed without involvement • High resource users The Corporate
- 12. • Engaged customers • Knowledgeable and passionate about technology • Offer good quality useful feedback • Able to work with support to resolve problems • May evangelise your support on social media • Require “bleeding edge features” • Early adopters not suitable for mass market • Request unstable technology • High resource users The “Web People”
- 13. Service Customers • Single hosted hobby website • Low resource users • No longer has communication with their designer • As a pure host they will see you as an extension of their designer. • As a designer they will expect a fully managed service. • Has unrealistic expectations • Can be a huge support time sink. • May demand 24/7 phone support.
- 14. Heads of the internet
- 15. Heart Internet Support Structure 1st Line Support Ticket System 1st Line Support 1st Line Support 1st Line Support Senior 1st Line 2nd Line Development Sysadmin Product Management
- 16. Support Cycle and Feedback Loop Customer Problem Support Database Support Request Resolve Bug fix Document
- 18. • Demands a high premium from the customer which in turn can increase profit per unit. • Demands a large number of highly trained and costly staff. • Risky. • Opens you up to responsibility for perceived issues. Managed Server Support
- 19. Unmanaged Server Support • Can be provided much more cheaply for the customer. • Offers the ability to provide increased volume. • Requires an up front explanation of what you are responsible for. • Can hurt sales if your customers are not confident technically.
- 20. Don’t forget the obvious! • Answer all the questions that the customer has asked. • Attempt to judge the technical ability of your customer and pitch answers accordingly. • Does your customer understand their own problem? Patience can prevent a charged emotional situation. • Just because you have heard the question thousands of times, they have only asked it once.
- 21. Thank you Leon Harper