Your company has an innovative product, a flashy and attractive website, a bevy of investors on board, and a technical support staff consisting of one intern that you spent five minutes training via email. What’s wrong with this picture?

How Tech Support Affects Your Company’s Image

In many cases, your tech support representatives are your only employees that regularly interact with your customers. When your support reps also happen to be your lowest paid, worst informed and (understandably) most short-tempered employees, can you expect your company to build a positive reputation among your target audience?

Tech support is under-utilized. Far too many companies treat their tech support teams as a last line of defense between angry customers and imminent organizational failure, and consider the idea of sending their tech team leaders to management schools as completely ridiculous . You should have two primary goals for your technical support services, both of which will improve your company’s image when accomplished:

• Solve the problems posed by your customers in a timely, efficient and (this is important) friendly manner. It may sound simple, but it often requires more creativity than simply asking the customer to check his system settings or unplug and reconnect a few cables. Your customers want a fast solution, which might involve providing suggestions to use your product or service in a way that you hadn’t previously thought about.
• Use the information gathered from customer support calls to improve your products or services. In their fits of anger, disappointed customers often reveal the weakest points of what you sell. Fixing the problem permanently will lead to satisfied customers who have no need for a tech support call.

How to Use Available Tech Support Channels Properly

Live Chat – This is a relatively new and increasingly popular technical support method utilized by many sites, including giants like Amazon.com. Unfortunately, many companies feel that simply offering live chat will distract users from the fact that the service itself can be woefully poor. Most of the live chat services I’ve used were staffed by support reps who barely understood my simple questions, let alone were able to sufficiently answer them. Live chat is ideal because it’s fast and it allows the customer to save the conversation for later reference. However, live chat reps that make grammatical and spelling errors can damage the user’s perception of your company’s competency.

Email – This is a standard tech support method that no company should sacrifice, even when offering a plethora of other support channels. Many users who have grown weary of real time support methods such as live chat and phone prefer email, simply to avoid the confrontation they expect when they complain about a product. Email has similar benefits to live chat in that it effectively records the conversation for later reference. The same general rules in regards to grammar, spelling and tone apply to email support as well.

Phone – The preferred tech support channel of most customers, phone support also calls for the highest level of competency on the part of your tech support staff. It can also make for the shortest successful support calls, especially when the problem is technical in nature and requires constant feedback (Try this. That didn’t work? OK, try this but change this first.).

How to Approach Your Customers

The basics are obvious: be nice, be respectful, don’t blame the customer, know what you’re talking about, say you’re sorry even if you’re not, etc. Following these common sense guidelines will, in most cases, lead to satisfied customers who will continue to use your products and services. However, that’s probably where the effects of the customer support inquiry will end.

Provide a customer support experience that’s so positive and so beneficial to the customer that he or she will be compelled to talk about it with friends and post about it online (blogs, social media sites, forums related to the types of things you sell, etc). In most cases, this will involve a monetary benefit for the customer, usually at the detriment of your own bottom line. Offer free return shipping, even if the customer ordered the wrong thing (Zappos, an online shoe retailer, has seen enormous success largely because of this single policy). Issue a full refund past the warranty period. You’ll generate such a positive buzz around your company that the initial financial burdens will be more than mitigated in just a few months.

How to Use an FAQ Effectively

An effective FAQ can intercept customer complaints and resolve problems before a tech support inquiry is even made. Follow these tips to write a good one:

• Don’t think of a clever name for it. Angry customers aren’t in the mood to spend time determining whether that cutely-titled link on your navigation bar will have the answers they’re looking for.
• Only include questions that you frequently receive. Technical details are better left to product manuals, though this can partially depend on the nature of what you’re selling.
• Keep it updated.
• Make it easy to navigate and scannable. If you do feel the need to post a lengthy FAQ, users should be able to find the answers they’re looking for without resorting to ctrl-F.

How to Bolster Your Tech Support with Social Media

Although social media sites like Twitter and Facebook can be used to beef up your tech support operations, they don’t replace phone and email. However, you can use social media to keep more customers happy and eliminate some would-be customer support inquiries. Search around on social media sites and see who’s talking about your company. Don’t like what you see? Interact directly: tell the angry customer to call your company, and promise a resolution to their problem. Don’t get defensive, and don’t use it as an opportunity for a cheap sales pitch.

With nearly 600 million users on Facebook and 200 million on Twitter, people are guaranteed to see how you respond, and it won’t take them long to make a judgment about how you handled the situation. Mobile Internet devices are constantly reducing the time it takes for word of mouth to travel.

How Not to Implement Tech Support

• Don’t give your support staff less power than is necessary to do their jobs. If you don’t trust your tech support reps enough to allow them to authorize a return, for example, you either need to find more competent, trustworthy reps or rethink your customer service model entirely.
• Don’t ignore your support reps. If they report receiving calls about the same problems every day, fix the problems even if your reps seem to be handling them easily.
• Don’t take complaints personally. When a customer complains, it means that something is definitely wrong – maybe with your product or maybe with the way your customer is using it. Tactfully correcting the situation in either case is what separates good tech support from the mediocre tech support seen at many companies.

About the author

Kevin Lenton works with companies to build and maintain their online relationships with clients, as well as prepare content geared at high conversion rates. In his spare time he enjoys playing the harmonica – an activity he’s been involved in since the age of 12.

Why is a hotel always full while the next door one is empty, although they offer the same services at comparable prices? Why does a certain video game convince millions to play it, while others struggle with a lot less buyers, although they are a bit cheaper? Why does an IT product sell, while others don’t, although they provide similar features? Why do you need an appointment made weeks in advance for some beauty salons and you need none for others, as their personnel seems to always be waiting for customers that never come?

It’s easy; people are not buying products and services only. They buy experiences which include those products and services. Everything else going on while they are researching, testing and buying is of ultimate importance, just as how they are treated after getting the product or service and they come back to either buy more or require assistance.

It’s all part of a complex process. The experience is what matters and what makes you stand out. You need to build it, then promote it, then live up to what expectations you’ve created every time. A few quick examples! There’s no software product that’s flawless. If you start using it intensively, you will run across some bugs or some missing feature. That’s not a problem, we’ve all learned to expect it. But if the tech support fails to fix the problem once you’ve asked them to, or fail to properly explain things to you, you will change products.

Think of a spa. You pay for great products, relaxation, but could you relax if let’s say someone giving you a massage would be rude to you? Or at a hair dresser’s, if you look great in the end but the person has been pulling your hair all the time, bringing tears of pain in your eyes, will you ever come back?

It all seems easy to grasp, everyone is preaching it, but most companies seem to be overlooking this important aspect. Even if they offer these complete experiences to their customers, they fail to properly promote them. They get caught up in features and innovation and high tech and they forget to translate the benefits to their customers. They fail to explain how the entire process works and how they will be assisted every step of the way. And I have to wonder why. If the information is out there, if when we go buy something we evaluate the entire experience, why do we fail to translate everything we know in our own businesses?

I have a confession to make… I am extremely harsh when it comes to customer support. I’ve spent quite a while being a tech support engineer, I know how much it matters in building a great relationship with customers. So when I make my decisions about certain products or services, the quality of tech support backing them up is extremely important.  Why? It is simple. Anything can crash. No one should look for guarantees they will have no problems, they should make sure they will have help solving them when they appear. And based on my fare share of customer support talks, chats, email exchanges, I thought I’d make a top of the best ways to drive customers away.

1. Don’t pick up when they call

Definitely, this is the fastest and never dethroned method to make sure your customers will switch you for any of your competitors quicker then lightning.

2. Ignore the problems!

Have your customers report the same problem a few times and then make sure you constantly ignore it when you reply. This is bound to drive them nuts! So you’ll have a lot less of them to worry about!

3. Be nice, but completely unhelpful!

Make sure you explain in the nicest manner out there that nothing of what the customer needs will ever be possible. Remember, smile and keep being inflexible and unwilling to adapt or change! That should scare them off!

4. Don’t get your message straight before sending it!

Confuse them and then rule them all! The moment they get  a bit upset, send them a quick email promising something, to then have it contradicted by another representative of your company.

5. Be completely inconsiderate when it comes to their needs or issues

When you make major changes that affect the way their business works, don’t ever ask them if they’re OK with it! Just go ahead and if it’s in the middle of the week, even better!

What would you add to the top? I’m curious to find out what your experiences have been.

Need to increase the satisfaction and loyalty of your customers and turn them into evangelists through effective communication? Our marketing and PR agency can help!

You might have an amazing product or service. You might have done a great job promoting it, everybody knows it, they can see it everywhere and new customers are likely to recommend it. But if the customer service you offer is faulty, say goodbye to repeat customers and to long term deals. Because no matter how good, affordable, innovative, useful your product is, there always are problems! In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be, but in ours, there are. And what happens when your customer has a problem is what turns your relationship with them into a long term one. Yet here’s where most businesses fail!

Customers aren’t always looking for the perfect product or service. They’ve been around long enough to know that problems arising or not is a matter of luck. Smart customers will always prefer the company that makes them feel that if they ever have a problem, it will be solved fast and without them jumping through hoops for it.

Customer service means everything from technical support, to payment and invoicing support, to a good communication between the company and its customers.So don’t think that making sure your solution works is enough to keep customers happy. Cause if they can’t buy it in the first place, it won’t do much.

To make it all clearer, I’ll give you an example. There this bank that has amazing products. When it comes to SMBs, they simply rock; they have great consumer products as well. When you read about their products and services, you just want to sing that contract! And I for one did, on quite a few of their offerings.

But! They have email support that is useless. I’ve been in tech support, so when I have technical issues, I usually send out an email with screen shots, all the solutions I’ve tried, reference to their knowledge base articles I’ve tried, etc. I know lack of information delays the solution, so I’m willing to help get it over with. The lady I was talking to asked me to call their support, as she wasn’t able to help me. What happened to forwarding my email to someone who’s able to? I would have called if I wanted phone support.

They have misplaced a contract I’ve signed and I never got my copy! They promised to call when they found it, but never did. And I can tell you a lot about tired, annoyed and bored employees. Unfortunately, I’m not the only one, a lot of friends who work with this specific bank have had similar issues.

Right now, they handle my business account, I have a credit card from them and a savings account, plus a lot of associated services. Would I recommend them to anyone else? Sure! But I’m a special case: I work with 4 different banks on a monthly basis, I stay informed and I know that their competitors either don’t offer the services I need, or their support is just as bad. So I would recommend them, but I’d also warn everybody that customer service sucks. And that if they’re not willing to put up with it, they might as well go some place else. And trust me, the moment I find out some other bank offers better customer care for similar services, I’ll be running out the door!

The conclusion? If you want to outplay your competitors, make sure your customer service is top notch. It won’t compensate for a bad product or faulty service, nor will it help with the fact no one has ever heard of your product, but it will turn your customers into enthusiastic supporters, you’ll get plenty of word of mouth recommendation and you won’t worry about losing half of your business over simple issues that could have been solved, should you have taked the time to treat your customers as they deserve to be treated.

What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

Welcome to a new and sunny edition of our Monday reading list. I’ll start with something a little differnent today, an entry for this month “What I learned from” group writing project, lessons from a sidewalk. And it’s Brad Shorr’s entry, talking about sales lessons learned while pounding the pavement, it’s downsides and the many pluses of newer technologies.

Jonathan Fields has some adivice for you if you want to be a better speaker – go commando! What does that mean? It meand improvising, creating on the fly and coming up with a very real speech.

Jean Murray of Home Biz Notes talks about a rather sensitive issue: what to do when your spouse doesn’t support your work? Read her article for some great tips on how to get them on your side.

John Bell of the Digital Influence Mapping Project talked explained the difference between paid media, earned media and word of mouth, in the context of what brands want.

Shirazz Data thinks social networking has really nailed customer satisfaction. The next task on its to do list? Customer loyalty. Read his entry to get an idea of how to make the transition.

And to chear you up for this week, here’s an amazingly funny entry from Jaffe Juice: click to see how Michelangelo’s David would look after spending too much time in the US . And Ian Lurie’s explanation of why SEO is just like bacon!

The internet is a really dizzingly large place, I’m sure I’ve missed a couple of great articles. Let’s share them in the comment box!

What I think you shouldn’t have missed last week…

Hello everyone, nice to see you at a new edition of our Monday reading list. Hope your new week will be better than the last!

Worried about how to tweet, if you should unfollow certain people or about what will happen if you disappear from Twitter for a couple of weeks? Forget all of your fears and just start tweeting after reading Joanna Young’s 21 irresponsible ways to improve twitter confidence.

Bounce rates are an important metric, yet are often ignored. Tad Chef of SEO 2.0 shared 7 simple ways to decrease bounce rates and get more conversions.

The recession is claiming it’s victims. And great customer service is a much needed lifeboat. Joseph Thornly of Pro PR has a great case study from the travel and tourism industry to show you just how much high quality customer care can do for you.

Thinking to start your own business blog? I’m sure you’ve read a lot about it, but you should add Linas Simon’s list of things to check before you start.

Are you on the look out for a cause to join? I found the perfect one for you, recommended by Donna DeClemente of Lip Sticking: help stop violence against women. Don’t let the headline kid you, it’s a good thing they’re promoting

Sonia Simone starteg a wonderful series on Remarkable Communication showing the 7 big mistakes small businesses do. Here’s mistake number 2.

Is there something you want added to this week’s list? Let us know in the comment box!

See you all next week!