Satisfy customers
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If you bought a product or used a service, you will ask yourself if the product or service met your requirements. If yes you're lucky and maybe tell it to your friends so that they can use or buy this thing also. The manufacturer or the service provider will be happy too if you as a satisfied customer tell this story to your fellows.
But what if you aren't satisfied? What if you spent money for something that didn't met your requirements or broke down? For myself I can answer this question very easyly: it depends. It depends on how important that thing or service is to me. For example: I bought a software some weeks ago which I like to use. Since it didn't worked as expected I wrote to the customer support. Unfortunately the support wasn't really interested in helping me, so I decided the money was spent to a bad company and I won't use any of their products again.
But there are also other examples. I had an issue with another product. Not a really technical one but let's start from the beginning.
I'm a enthusiastic skier and I try going to the alps several times a season. And if you stay outside a whole day in wind and wheather (and I'm not known as a "good weather skier" - like we call it here in Germany) your equipment is very important. So I invested my money 5 years ago in jacket from KJUS Systems. A brand which is founded from the former Apline skier Lasse Kjus. The jacket wasn't really cheap but I love and used it a lot. But now after more than 5 years I got some trouble with it. I wrote an email to Kjus Systems and told them about. Two days later they answered, had some more questions and came finally back with a answer I've never expected. Because of the very special circumstances and their commitment to the products quality, they replaced my jacket. I was lost for words and have to say a big "Thank you!" to the guys of KJUS Systems!
Those two storries made me think about customer support and my experiences with it. It doesn't matter in what industry you are working, what products or services you are selling or if you've got to deal with collegues on a help desk phone or wherever. It is important for a company to know about the problems their customers or users have with their products. And the customer support is in most cases THE single point of contact. So it is very important to give the customer the feeling that his problems are important for the company. That there will be someone who care's about it. Even if bad processes, illness of colleagues, bad wheather or whatever are making it hard. The customer has priority because he's the one who pays the salary of everyone in the company.
I worked for many customers where this principle wasn't in mind of the help desk people. And I also learned that you can reduce the job of a help desk or customer support to just this:
It's easy to satisfy a customer. Just talk to him. Because it's more easier to make him unsatisfied. Just don't talk to him.
In my experience the customers or users don't expect miracles. They want to be heard and taken seriously. So just talk to them, explain them what happens and even if the result isn't that surprisingly good like my experience with Kjus, the customer will be satisfied.
If you bought a product or used a service, you will ask yourself if the product or service met your requirements. If yes you're lucky and maybe tell it to your friends so that they can use or buy this thing also. The manufacturer or the service provider will be happy too if you as a satisfied customer tell this story to your fellows.
But what if you aren't satisfied? What if you spent money for something that didn't met your requirements or broke down? For myself I can answer this question very easyly: it depends. It depends on how important that thing or service is to me. For example: I bought a software some weeks ago which I like to use. Since it didn't worked as expected I wrote to the customer support. Unfortunately the support wasn't really interested in helping me, so I decided the money was spent to a bad company and I won't use any of their products again.
But there are also other examples. I had an issue with another product. Not a really technical one but let's start from the beginning.
I'm a enthusiastic skier and I try going to the alps several times a season. And if you stay outside a whole day in wind and wheather (and I'm not known as a "good weather skier" - like we call it here in Germany) your equipment is very important. So I invested my money 5 years ago in jacket from KJUS Systems. A brand which is founded from the former Apline skier Lasse Kjus. The jacket wasn't really cheap but I love and used it a lot. But now after more than 5 years I got some trouble with it. I wrote an email to Kjus Systems and told them about. Two days later they answered, had some more questions and came finally back with a answer I've never expected. Because of the very special circumstances and their commitment to the products quality, they replaced my jacket. I was lost for words and have to say a big "Thank you!" to the guys of KJUS Systems!
Those two storries made me think about customer support and my experiences with it. It doesn't matter in what industry you are working, what products or services you are selling or if you've got to deal with collegues on a help desk phone or wherever. It is important for a company to know about the problems their customers or users have with their products. And the customer support is in most cases THE single point of contact. So it is very important to give the customer the feeling that his problems are important for the company. That there will be someone who care's about it. Even if bad processes, illness of colleagues, bad wheather or whatever are making it hard. The customer has priority because he's the one who pays the salary of everyone in the company.
I worked for many customers where this principle wasn't in mind of the help desk people. And I also learned that you can reduce the job of a help desk or customer support to just this:
It's easy to satisfy a customer. Just talk to him. Because it's more easier to make him unsatisfied. Just don't talk to him.
In my experience the customers or users don't expect miracles. They want to be heard and taken seriously. So just talk to them, explain them what happens and even if the result isn't that surprisingly good like my experience with Kjus, the customer will be satisfied.
