Customer Support and Service Articles

ANALYTICS ADD POWER TO LEADING SAAS-BASED HELP DESK & CUSTOMER SUPPORT APP

TeamSupport.com (http://www.TeamSupport.com) – the popular provider of web-based customer support and help desk software solutions – has announced the addition of analytics powered by Zoho Reports. Using the collaborative tools, TeamSupport clients can easily filter, sort, view and analyze their business data. An intuitive drag-and-drop interface makes easy work of creating dashboards, graphs and reports to share with all, or selected team members.

Once the integration is set up, TeamSupport automatically updates Zoho Reports with Ticket data, Portal Logins, Chat Requests and Knowledge Base Traffic – all in near realtime. As a TeamSupport add-on, licenses—based on database size—are available directly through Zoho; a free version may be sufficient for the smaller TeamSupport account. Please visit TeamSupport.com for further information.

“Linking Zoho Reports to TeamSupport was an easy choice for us, as it complements our existing integration with their popular CRM software,” said company CEO Robert C. Johnson. “Among our top goals at TeamSupport is providing our users with the best tools available to help make well informed business decisions; Zoho Reports definitely fits in that category.”

Used by customer support and corporate help desks worldwide, TeamSupport is easily configured and customized; the application is offered in several reasonably priced, upgradeable versions. TeamSupport is scalable from a simple help-desk application to a 100+ seat enterprise-wide customer support and product defect tracking system.

Lots of Customer Support and Customer Service Advice, Articles, Tips and Tricks in our December customer support newsletter. Happy New Year and best wishes for 2012!

Have your customers ever submitted an issue that they felt was urgent only to find out later it really wasn’t? If you are a part of a support operation, I am pretty sure your answer is “yes”.

So how do you separate your customers severity from what you believe the severity really is and avoid pissing anyone off? It can be a bit tricky sometimes. In fact, many organizations do not offer the option for the customer to identify their severity – mainly because the selection is often abused.

It’s important to understand customer perception, even though you might not always agree. On the other hand, everything cannot be urgent all the time – and if it is, something else may be going on!  To help this conundrum, we have an easy way to deal with this situation in TeamSupport by simply creating a custom field on your support portal.

Ticket severity is a stock field on all tickets in TeamSupport – and that is the field you should use as your internal severity. Simply create a custom pick list field on the ticket called “Customer Severity” and make it visible on the customer portal.  This way it will be a selectable item when your customer is submitting a ticket.

The next step is to make sure urgent tickets created by your customers jump out at your team.

To do this, create an automation trigger that looks at the custom field you created and perform an action when a tickets “customer severity = urgent” (or whatever you decide to use in your custom field).

Some actions you might add may be to notify someone on the team or perhaps escalate to a manager – or simply log a private note in the ticket that says “the customer has indicated their issue is urgent” which will notify the ticket owner(s). You can even have the trigger auto assign the ticket to an “urgent severity group”.

There are tons of actions you can perform against tickets using our automation feature to help make tricky situations not so tricky, and also save time and resources.

This little tip will allow your customers to express their urgency, and also provide your team the opportunity to review their issue and align the severities more accurately and avoid the risk of upsetting someone.

Some days, it’s really easy. A customer sends you an email saying your product has an issue they would addressed. It’s not a problem, they say, because mistakes are made and they like your company. You have a pleasant conversation via e-mail exchange and are able to quickly resolve the issue and fix their problem. Customer support success!

Other days, it’s not so easy. An all caps, irate email arrives in your inbox on a gloomy morning informing you that not only is your product total garbage, but you’re apparently a useless waste of space. It seems you quite possibly have ruined countless lives just by waking up today.

What am I referring to? I’m talking about keeping a smile in your voice – even when answering an email.

That may sound strange, but it is an absolutely vital tactic when dealing with customers. It doesn’t matter if you’re having the worst day imaginable; when you hit send, the customer should believe you skipped your way to work humming the Sesame Street theme!

So how do you pull off this magical feat? Luckily, it’s fairly simple, even if you’re not in the best of moods. The customer can’t hear your voice, so inflection is taken out of the equation. All that’s left is the words you use and the punctuation you choose. Let’s take a look at a scenario handled both with that smile and without and break down the customer impact of each:

Horace Horason sends an email to the helpdesk saying the robotic possum he purchased leaked oil and ruined their couch. The agent answers with:  “Too bad about the couch. It’s never happened before. Are you sure you assembled the product correctly? Anyway, send the possum back if you want and I suppose we’ll repair it. Peace, love and chicken grease, CSR #1. ”

Understandably, the customer is going to be a little upset with this response. The agent did manage to get across that the company is (sort of) sorry they were inconvenienced and they can get their robot fixed, but not in exactly what you would call a nice manner. The representative even managed to insinuate the customer may have goofed up the assembly of the product, so the damage to the couch is now their fault

Imagine instead a response sent something more along these lines:

“I am so sorry, Horace! We take pride in our Robo-ssum 5000X line and are upset such an error could occur. We will immediately send paid shipping supplies to you so you can return Robo-ssum 5000X to us for repair. If you would be so kind, please call us at 1-800-555-5555 to discuss what to do about your couch. Again, we apologize and I hope we can remedy this ASAP. Thanks, CSR #2.”

In this response we have a customer service agent who IMMEDIATELY takes the blame away from the customer. The customer usually knows it wasn’t their fault, but oftentimes an improperly handled exchange can make them feel like it is. When one goes out of their way to acknowledge this, it quickly sets the customer’s mind at ease that things will be okay.

They then go on to describe the actions the company is taking to amend the problem: send out shipping supplies, and call us about the couch, presumably because they need higher-up approval to fix that particular problem. Then they say they’re sorry again for added measure.

Another big difference is the tone. CSR #1 doesn’t seem like they really want to be there, do they? It’s more casual, with lots of somber sentences that all end in periods and even includes some passive language like “I suppose.”

You can see in CSR #2’s email there is that “smile” mentioned before, even when faced with a big problem like an oil-leaking robotic possum. This response includes a few handy exclamation marks where appropriate. You don’t want to come off sounding like an excited teenager (“We are so sorry Horace!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”), but one or two in the email can really make those sentences stand out. In CSR #2’s case, it lends greater sincerity to the initial apology.

As for professional vs. personal tone, there’s a delicate balance to be struck. This balance often depends on the type of email you’re responding to. In this example, it’s an apology/let’s fix things email, so best to err on the side of professionalism. However, if the message is more along the lines of a question or even a compliment, then feel free to mix it up a little more.

Just remember:  no matter what kind of day it turns out to be, keep that smile in your (written) voice!

TeamSupport.com (http://www.TeamSupport.com) – a popular provider of web-based customer support and help desk software solutions – has announced immediate availability of a year-end software release. It adds a broad assortment of technology and customer-centric functionality enhancements, among them:

• TeamSupport Mobile – with support for all the major platforms, TeamSupport’s new mobile interface enables clients to exceed customer expectations from the office or on-the-road.
• Ticket Deflection – this advanced technology gives TeamSupport the ability to automatically offer likely solutions to issues, increasing customer satisfaction while reducing the volume of inbound tickets.
• Ticket Automation – a very powerful new feature offering the ability to automate selected support ticket actions. TeamSupport users can establish detailed rules governing ticket response, escalation, transfer within the organization, and a wide range of other essential functions.
• Reminders – can automatically remind users to perform follow-up tasks associated either with a specific ticket or individual contact within TeamSupport.
• Customer Portal – TeamSupport’s user-facing portal has been completely redesigned with a more customer-centric interface to enhance the experience for both first time and frequent visitors.
• Facebook integration – TeamSupport is now accessible to more than 800 million users of the mega-social network. Companies with a Facebook presence can use this tool to integrate a TeamSupport tab within their pages.
• New 3rd Party Integrations – The list of TeamSupport partnerships continues to grow with the addition of CRM providers BatchBook and Zoho, as well as e-mail marketing provider MailChimp. Additional functionalities have also been added to the Salesforce.com interface.

“Feedback from ‘hands-on’ users is the key to TeamSupport’s dynamic and successful growth,” said company CEO Robert C. Johnson. “Our software developers are committed to providing our customers with practical, user-tested business-building solutions. We created TeamSupport to improve communication between manufacturers, their customers, and key client-facing teams within their organizations. Happy customers and better products mean more sales,” he concluded.

Used by customer support and corporate help desks worldwide, TeamSupport is easily configured and customized; the application is offered in several reasonably priced, upgradeable versions. TeamSupport is scalable from a simple help-desk application to a 100+ seat enterprise-wide customer support and product defect tracking system.

In our last blog we took a look at some of the businesses that are ranked among the best in providing online customer support. We discussed what makes them stand out and how your business can benefit by emulating some of their practices.  We came across a similar post on Software Advice that we thought we would share. Their 2 part series lists ideas for obtaining customer service preparedness around the holidays in part one and assessing your help desk’s performance in part two.

While the posts are full of insightful ideas, we especially liked the comments regarding Internal collaboration:

Internal collaboration – You have spent the last nine months preparing for the holidays. You have anticipated everything and you know what steps to take to solve whatever problems may arise. Mitch Lieberman, VP of Marketing at Sword Ciboodle, calls this the coordination period. But during the holiday rush, it’s all about collaboration. “Collaboration is when something is outside what could or should have been easily coordinated,” says Lieberman. “Are you ready to collaborate on these emergency issues that you didn’t predict?” The holidays are a great time to monitor how your departments collaborate and problem solve during what is likely to be a stressful time.

Collaboration is one of the primary focus points of TeamSupport. Our customer support software was developed with the goal of bringing teams together. Departmental silos can handicap a customer service team. If every one is in the loop, customers included, we believe that serving the customer will be a much simpler and smoother process during the holidays and year round.

Earlier this year, MSN Money and Zogby International performed their yearly customer service survey. And the results weren’t exactly surprising – companies like Amazon and Apple made the top 10, along with other stalwarts like Trader Joe’s and Publix. Each of these companies revels in something unique when it comes to their customer service.

In anticipation of  the holidays this year, we thought we would highlight some of these businesses and see what they’re doing right. Because when it comes to customer service, you want to emulate the best!

Amazon

If you search around the Internet long enough, especially where shoppers congregate, you’ll undoubtedly run into Amazon customer service success stories. And for good reason; they are consistently proving they know what it takes to satisfy every one of their customers.

For one, if you have an issue, they go way out of their way to solve it. There are many stories of online shoppers receiving damaged or late goods and getting an entirely new product. I’ve even seen one shopper say he ordered the wrong item (entirely his fault) and Amazon STILL sent him the right product for FREE.

Another thing Amazon does so well is to make their contact info readily available. If you search for “Amazon customer service” on Google you’ll get pages upon pages of their contact info. They’ve used SEO for good to make sure their customers know how to get them on the horn when they need them.

Netflix

Um… let’s skip them for now.

Apple

Apple is in the unique position of having an extremely dedicated fanbase. To maintain this air of commonality, they’ve rebranded most of their business model to be inclusive. For instance, you don’t go to a help desk at an Apple store, you go to a Genius Bar.

And while the Genius Bar agents are known for their quick thinking and helpfulness, their online customer service is just as noticeable. Their support page is evidence of this, as there are countless options for customers to choose. Want to do the repair yourself? Look at a manual, watch a video, or talk to other users for assistance. Too complicated for a self-fix? Give them a call, email them, or use one of the “express lanes” to get direct online help about a specific product.

FedEx/UPS

When you’re expecting a package, any delay can drive you crazy. What’s even worse is when you have no idea where your package is or where it may be headed. Luckily, both FedEx and UPS have set up tracking systems so you can easily determine where your precious cargo is.

On the FedEx customer support page, you can track a package by number, reference, or even from the FedEx Desktop. Importantly, just below these options is the FAQ section of the website. You may have a problem that goes beyond simple tracking needs. In that case, the answers to typical questions that come up at FedEx are right there at your disposal.

Of course, we don’t all have the budgets of Amazon, Apple or FedEx, but that doesn’t mean you can’t implement some of their customer service best practices by being personal, giving your customers plenty of ways to contact you, and making it right when an order goes wrong. A customer support tool can aid in helping your team provide exceptional customer service. TeamSupport aims to provide you an affordable method of managing your customer support process and keeping your customers informed and happy.

If you think you and your company can ignore Cyber Monday, think again. The biggest online shopping day of the year may not be as big as Black Friday, but it’s getting there, and more quickly than ever. More and more shoppers are heading online to buy their holiday gifts to avoid traffic, crowds and the headaches that accompany them.

So what does this mean for you and your customer support team? If you’re a product seller, it means both Cyber Monday and the days around it are going to be busy ones for everyone in your team. There are certain issues that arise again and again during these hectic times, so let’s go over them now before the madness begins!

Shipping Times

There are two things shoppers are primarily worried about during the holiday season: pricing (more on that later) and shipping. Namely, will the items they bought get to them in time for Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza?

Last year, a friend of mine participated in Cyber Monday, thinking it would be great for business. As a promotion, he offered free shipping on all sales starting Cyber Monday through the middle of December. The promotion brought in quite a bit of business.

However, what my friend didn’t consider when posting this offer was the constant barrage of questions he would endure from guests wondering whether or not a certain item would be shipped on time. Just because it was free didn’t mean people wouldn’t have questions about it! In fact, people were more leery; they felt suspicious of the freebie. As a result of the promotion, he made some good money, but ended up with some late shipments and irate customers after the holidays. To mitigate this problem, offer a FAQ or simple shipping guarantee in an easily located place on your website or in the confirmation email you send your customers after they place an order.

Problems with Quantities

You can prepare your stock ahead of time, and it is definitely a good idea to do so. But the one thing you can expect during the holidays is the unexpected. You never know when one of the products you sell will take off like a rocket and suddenly become the hot ticket for the season. And all of sudden, you’re out of stock! Now what to do?

Your team absolutely has to have some form of backup plan ready. The answer to a customer simply can not be “We’re out, sorry, bye.” Once they hang up or close that support email, they will never come back again. You will have lost a customer for life.

If you find yourself in the position of running out of product, figure out what your options are ahead of time. Can you redirect them to another, similar product? Perhaps give them an estimated time when you will have more stock in? At the very least, if you’ve run out of stock when someone places an order, offer them a discount on other items in the store for the inconvenience. Whatever you do, don’t let them go away mad!

Pricing

Like we mentioned prior, aside from shipping, pricing is most important to your customers.  Because of the fierce competition between stores on Black Friday and the weeks leading up to Christmas, shoppers are more or less used to getting coupons and discounts. So when there isn’t one they can find or one they consider big enough, they will often inquire in an effort to score a better deal.

Therefore, it’s very important your team and the rest of the company knows where it stands on pricing. The worst thing you can do is tell a customer you’re offering a discount when you have no means to actually give this to them. Imagine getting back on the phone for THAT conversation!

Since it’s Cyber Monday, your company will undoubtedly offer some form of discount to bring in customers. In this case, most of the questions you’ll receive will be about how the discount works; how long does it last, what all is it good for, et cetera. Again, make sure your team has the particulars down, as any lapses or miscommunication can be costly.

There’s a lot of money to be made on Cyber Monday, and often customer service is right on the front lines of this business effort. Make sure to prepare your team ahead of time so you’ll be ready for the unexpected this holiday season!

Read our latest compilation of Customer Support and Customer Service Advice, Articles, Tips and Tricks in our November customer support newsletter.

We are happy to announce a few new features that we believe will make your days brighter and following up easier!

Reminders
We have added a terrific reminder feature to TeamSupport.  You can now add reminders to tickets, customer accounts and specific contacts.  Simply set a reminder and TeamSupport will email you when it is due.  Want to follow up on a ticket later on, or maybe remind a customer it is time to renew a service contract?  With our added reminders feature, this is now not only possible, but incredibly simple.  Want to see what reminders you have coming due or outstanding? You can very easily see a list of your reminders by going to “My Tickets” and clicking on the “Reminders” tab.

We’ve written up this help document that shows you exactly how to use this feature.  We have no doubt this feature will get put to great use!

Customize Email Template Subject Lines
You will be happy to know you can now customize the subject line of any email template in your account.  Account Admins just need to go to Admin->Email tab and scroll towards the bottom where the templates are located.  For those templates that involve tickets, we highly suggest you leave the ticket number on the subject line so that when customers or co-workers reply to these emails, the correct ticket is updated.

We have also added templates for the SLA emails as well.  They are called “SLA – Violation” and “SLA – Warning”.

Minor UI Change to Navigation
You may notice we have moved the ticket type listing on the main left navigation.  This change allows you to minimize the list of tickets, but still see “My Tickets” and “All Tickets”.  This is useful for those customers that may have a lot of ticket types defined but no need to see them all the time.