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! Continue reading

Popularity: 10% [?]

I know a lot about the pressure in a customer support department! I know about the large number of emails, chats and phones an engineer needs to handle! I know how vague customer requests can be. But under all that stress and all that pressure and in that awful race against time, one rule still needs to be complied with: before starting to write the reply to an email inquiry, stop and read the initial message and make sure you understand it.

If it’s vague, ask for details. If you don’t get it, ask a colleague for help (support teams are usually quite tight and help each other a lot). Whatever you do, do not reply to the email when you don’t fully understand it. Don’t rush into sending a reply, just to tick another email off the target when you think you know what the customer is asking.

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Popularity: 15% [?]

Are you wondering why I’ve kind of disappeared? Well, the reasons are two: my not feeling very well and Kayla chewing up my laptop charger. Does the last one sound a bit like the “Dog ate my homework” excuse? Well, at least it is funny! But being without my laptop really reduced my online time. Why? Because I have to get my boyfriend away from his computer and work without most of my tools. Then again I have no saved passwords and it gets into a big hassle very fast.

Bottom line, I want my computer running . At all times if possible. Now the big question comes: why didn’t I buy a new charger. Well, I couldn’t find one. In the big city, capital even, of Bucharest, with its 4 or 5 Sony Centers, there are little to no Sony Vaio chargers.

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Popularity: 11% [?]

In most cases, before buying something, we stop and evaluate our existing offer. From a cart of milk to a computer, car or hosting service, we need to know we’ve made the right choice, that we’ve invested wisely, especially in a time where the economy is forcing us to act smarter. It sometimes happens that a certain buyers is extremely loyal to a brand, but that doesn’t mean he or she has never compared it against its competition. It only means they chose the brand they most like and trust every time they wanted to buy that same item.

When trying to decide what to choose, a potential customer might request offers from several companies. They might also tell you who you are up against and they might even ask for your opinion. And here’s where the tricky part begins! Continue reading

Popularity: 21% [?]