This gap could be filled in by a best communication channel say, forums. Yes. It’s a simple but a effective medium which can very much help to elevate your organization to higher grade. Human needs varies from person to person. It is impossible have every one satisfied. But by generalizing your doings would certainely help in holding the relationship with
your customers.

Making a playground isn’t complex. Getting the players inside surrounded by audience does matters. So there should be a close attention on every iteration under each topic. Intruding as your company representative to justify their queries will sure facinate your customers. Everyone like Liveliness. That’s the only reason tv sport channels making good money.

Let your customers discuss their queries or views or comments on the things.And get benefited through the like minded individuals which could set you growth in a positve way.

But it’s tough to manage all the coversations scattered arould. So centralize it through supportcenter plus. A easy and fexible channel to have your customers fascinated.

Jai.,

Some people tends to act quiet even though they knew things. Even if you are not sure about things. They would prefer some other means to find the solution. But it is better to think twice for every step you are having them to follow.

Second type will be the people who knows some thing. But they will pretends to show up they are experts. It will be bit tedious to handle these types. They will acknowledge us for the every step we instruct. But it’s a question mark ‘what really goes into their mind?’ we may need to explain things twice or more to dump the information into their mind. Atleast a small recap on the whole episode may help a little.

Next is humble customers. We need to be very careful with these people. They may kill the day’s productivity. They show up themselves as ignorant. But they would get their job done without much efforts.

It would be a bad experience to deal with people totally unaware of things. We may become like a school to teach one by one. But these people would score you better if things got resolved. Remote assistance would be a great feature in the computer influenced firm. This would save a lot of valuable time of a support tech, when dealing with these kind. Once their query is solved they are the ones who comment you good.

Know more about remote assistance. Visit http://www.manageengine.com/products/support-center/remote-assistance.html.

Jai.,

Im very much interesed to try out electronic gadgets. So this month it was a wireless mouse. I had batteries loaded and waited for the lights to come up. But I did’t had any kind of response from that damn thing. Being bit busy I didn’t opt to call or mail in the company, rather I made a tweet saying that “xxxx mouse not working” What a surprise I received a response to press a small button in the bottom of the mouse and try. Then I did press… Hurray… I got the lights blinking. I never expected a troubleshooting tip on a tweet.

After some days, I got a chance to call tech support for another problem (which cannot be written in a tweet). My curiosity made me to ask “how did they found my problem with the mouse” with just a tweet. He explained about some software capable of maintaing tweets. However it was a freedom to let the issues posted anywhere. A real freedom to the customers.

Finally, we’ve decided to provide an option to get tweets inside the product and created as tickets. It is almost completed and going to be released with the next SupportCenter Plus build.

Jai.,

But in some cases, I would be much embarrassed if they approach me before I contact. Luckily my support tool had integrated to our telecom system. So, when i get a call i use to get a popup in my screen with the customer’s information and history of all their tickets. To be frank, I believed it was an unworthy feature to spend on. Later i realized its a surprise gift, when handling annoyed customers.

I’ve a habit of put my head in something even it is not related to my Job or career. But when I dig on “Computer Telephony intergration” I found its a recent trend in all businesses. Starting from a Nice Greeting, Interactive voice response, Call routing, Voicemail.. and so on, this really made me to say “Wow” on the technology.

So, What’s the point in waiting? Have yourself connected to the recent technology “Computer telephony integration”. You know, we people are very lucky in having some people who know our needs and providing it as an open source for free of cost. Yes.. I’m talking about Asterisk - A open source telephony software. Its a piece of software, configurable even by a dummy has a basic knowledge on computers.

Here, the software I was talking about is our own software SupportCenter Plus. If you are really intend to provide “Wow” experience to your customers try http://www.manageengine.com/products/support-center/

Jai.,

The main and top most in my list is the “Tool” we are using. There are many situations i struggled to provide a prompt support to the customer’s because of  faulty tools. So I sincerely advice my clients to go for a software which exactly suit your support needs. Never compromise on a single aspect which it cannot provide.  Even you are compromised today, One day you will definitely feel for the worthless investment.

Take a piece of Paper, Design your workflow. Find all possible ways that your customer would seek for assistance(Phone, Email, web search, tweets, blogs…). So, the software you are choosing should be intelligent enough in getting the requests across all the possibilities.

Then draw a question mark on how you need them to be classified to make you and your team’s job easier.  I call it as “Business rules”. It’s a kind of customized orders set to the requests to find their allotted seats .  Here, You should make the rules clear in directing them to appropriate location. This makes your people save their time rather than finding related requests.

Then prioritize your queries depending upon the impact of the trouble caused by your product. So, Set “Service Level Agreements”. Find how long your customer’s can survive with the trouble. Think as if you are customer of your own product and find how log you will wait for a response from the Company.  So, Check the support tool has a capability to notify higher authority in cause of any delay.

How could I miss the important one? The Knowledge base. I say it as a “Gold mine” for the Support Representatives, even for customers. Verify the tool as an option to embed images, attachment.. Since we can’t explain everything in text format. Being a web world. It is better to have option to have html content in it. And design keywords which are all commonly used. Don’t blindly go with the terminologies used in your product.  Say for example, I will say CPU as Tower. Organize your articles as Popular and recent ones, it would be easy for the newbies to figure out the resolution.

Customer Portal is vital feature you should look in your support tool. It can reduce your support load and time . So better look for a one which can be easily customizable and user friendly even to dummies. Self service portal is an essential aspect if you are dealing with a professional users. These kind of people will tend to track their requests in a regular basis. So the it would benefit you in not repeating the solution given before, also it makes trust on you.

Now-a-days, users becoming lazy to read the technical articles, even to follow the instructions through the phone. Mainly in computer oriented businesses. So it is better if the tool has a capability to provide remote assistance to your users, which will really help to have your customers satisfied with your product.

If you are looking for a one which include the features mentioned above, Please try http://www.manageengine.com/products/support-center/ (A free Customer Support Sofware).

Jai.,

When i was a fresher, It was very hard to get the satisfaction of the Customer’s. But later i realized how easily it can be achieved.

Here’s a simple technique i followed, which worked like a charm.

“How are you doing today?” Many would think it’s a first or second sentence in their welcome script. But this will  really helps a lot to drive the customer through out the call. If the reply is positive, We can assume that the person is in good mood and he is not impacted by the trouble caused. So you can handle them cool and have them satisfied.

If the reply is Negative(not only with the word, also tone matters),  You may have to stop “unwanted probing questions”, which would make them irritated. So better listen them calm and try to figure out what’s their exact problem is.  Then start your “Questioning session”, even take enough time and think of the questions which are all really needed. But these are the customers will score you high if their issue is Resolved. Probably you can provide them some technical articles, it may help in getting good comments on you.

When i talk about probing? As a Support Executive. You should be well enough in framing your questions which should be easily understandable by the person on the other end. Multiple questions may irritate even customers in good mood.

I got a customer when i was in Computer Desktop Support, Said that her computer is got hacked by some one and wants to file complaint against a person who she was suspecting. I simply asked “May i know your computer is behaving differently from normal? She responded, No! the only thing is there is icon on the left of my screen has two computers linked and blinking.  Earlier it wasn’t there. It appeared only after my Ex- Boyfriend worked in that.Then i realized it was the LAN icon showing up the connectivity to the network(Internet). Then i made her to understand that.

If you see, the question i have asked is blunt. But if i would have asked something which is technical in nature. I would never been able to convince her. So we should get in their shoes and probe according to their level of knowledge in your product.

Other thing is we should become an expert in the tool we have been provided. All trouble shooting steps cannot be kept in mind but we should be well enough in search with appropriate keywords to get the solutions quickly. Now-a-days Support software’s  are well equipped with features like “Auto suggest”. Even though the keyword matters.

People tend to move close only to people of similar kind.  Even the “Rate of Speech” matters. So please keep your rate of speech matches to customer’s rate. So that end result would be piece of cake for both.

Jai
Technical Support Engineer
SupportCenter Plus