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.

There are a few ways to handle competition. You can be civil and friendly and help each other out while focusing most of your effort on getting new customers and making sure existing ones stay on board. Or you can play the tough competitor card, hunt for mistakes, real or not, and point fingers every time you can. While I believe professionals in any field should educate potential buyers when it comes to scams of all kinds, when it’s matters of opinion we’re talking about, pointing fingers is not the way.

But if you did indulge in saying how evil and deceiving a competitor was because they did such and such, make sure you stick to what you claimed to believe. Try not to forget about it and give a thumbs-up example from the same range, but coming from a smaller player that you don’t feel is a threat and would like to take under your wing. While people momentarily forget, they tend to remember negative statements, especially when you’re the one to remind them of it all.

Let’s take an example. Industry publication X says industry publication Y is a loser for publishing a top based on the wrong metrics, just because X does not like the metrics, valid as they might be to others. A few months pass by and industry publication X promotes a different top from industry publication Z, based on the same metrics. The tops cover aspects of the same area of business and what’s irrelevant for one, is always irrelevant for the other.

Why is that wrong? If you pose as defender of all things pure in your field, make sure you don’t change your mind later. It makes you look spineless or scared and a genuine mud thrower, whichever it is, it affects your image, it shatters your reputation and credibility as a reliable expert/source in the field. Taking stands does draw attention to you, lots of eyes turning to see who you’re speaking against. They will look again when you abruptly change your mind and cheer for the other side!

How often do you come across people hired to promote a company or their products? I’m referring to those spreading coupons, those showcasing products at stands placed in malls, at those looking nice and interesting at trade events and promoting contests for visitors. How many times were they either too pushy or completely unable to help you?

The person you pay to spread out flyers of all kinds, to present your products or just look hot near a car you’re launching, is a company representative in the eyes of your customer. Customers generally don’t care it’s a temporary gig for them, that you had no time to train them or that maybe they’re just having a bad day. Potential buyers either want answers fast or not to be bothered by pushy people.

First of all, when you choose people to represent you, make sure they fit the profile of your potential customers. Don’t send a funky 16-year-old that knows nothing of business notebooks to present a high tech product that addresses, you guessed it, business customers. I for one need to know details like how much time I have to work when on battery, processor details, the graphic card and technology behind the screen and how much the product costs when I need to buy it. I also need contact details form a sales person. If the kid is fun but clueless and presenting a Lenovo notebook, I’ll just walk away with valuable time wasted.

On the other hand, if you’re targeting teenagers and young people that love having fun and smiling a lot, send out a fun person that likes chatting with them, giving them a bunch of cool details and has a genuine smile. Don’t send out an older company rep that has forgotten how it’s like to engage kids and is too technical for them.

After selecting who to use, make sure you train them, even if it’s for 15 minutes. Tell them not to be pushy, tell them to smile and try not to look like fate is punishing them in every second of their lives, tell them a bit about your company and the product or service they’re advertising. It would also be great to supervise them and make sure you are there to help when they are faced with a situation they were not told about and to give them on-the-fly advice about how to approach customers.

If you tend to forget it, write this on a piece of paper and post it somewhere visible – the people you employ represent your company in the eyes of your target audience. Customers identify them with your brand, your products, services and company value. If they disappoint, potential buyers won’t be disappointed by a random individual, they will be disappointed by your company!

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

The first week of spring is officially here and we have some chirpy blog posts for you to read. How you find them as inspiring and energizing as a sunny spring day.

Drew McLellan shared some amazing marketing insight after learnign a few tricks from a dog whisperer. Now that I’ve read the lessons, Drew, could you be so kind as to teleport the dog whisperer here, I think I need some help with my lab!

The newest, coolest thing when going to a conference is to live tweet it. So how exactly do you effectively present to a room full of tweeting birds? The answer comes from Tamar Weinberg on Pistachio.

Do you want a custom design for your blog? I know I did and my dream came true. But before you imlement this project of yours, please stop to consider a few issues explained by Alex Cristache of Blogsessive.

Stuart Bruce discussed PR, SEO and the fact that public relations, while employing quite a lot of search engine optimization, is not really about SEO, it’s about reputation.

We’re all obsessing about elevator pitches. While doing so, Frances Cole Jones, guest writer at Women on Business, point out that we overlook the importance of the FAQ page and the great results such a page can deliver.

What do you do when you want to launch a new product or service and have no idea what customers would think of it? Daniel Secareanu suggest the simplest and best solution: ask your customers.

You’ve all seen your share of teasers before something new hits the market. Michael Martine of Remarkablogger shows us how to get an audience drooling for a blog that doesn’t exist yet. His approach seems a lot more effective than a criptic add!

Google rankings involve a lot of things. It’s a secret recipe everyone’s after. And one of the reason no one has discovered it yet is that it’s learning and adapting to new tricks. Aaron Wall noticed a new trend: Google started placing heavy emphasis on branding.

When organizing an event, keeping the audience interested and excited about it is critical. Barbara Rozgonyi shares 9 ways to keep events alive with social media.

And we’re closing this week’s edition with a business puzzle from Corina Saceanu. Where’s the money?

What great posts have you run across last week? Please share them in the comment box!

I’ve recently received an email looking like an attempt at email marketing, promising me some world renowned book for free. I was intrigued by a) the fact that the spam filter didn’t catch it and b) my not knowing anything about the book. So I took a second look at the content, thinking it might be some promotional ebook version sent out to bloggers by someone with way too little experience.

I saw the price for the book, big and shinny, along with a promotional discount image. I deleted it and moved on. But it got me thinking about all the promises marketers and PR people make in their emails and how not keeping them makes them lose potential customers, potential exposure on different channels, their reputation and more.

Why do people make promises they don’t keep in the email body? Simply because they’ve read somewhere that the subject line needs to be informative, but catchy. It needs to make the person seeing it want to read your email. And yes, you need to give it your best shot, but making up a big fat lie won’t help you! So if it’s a big fat discount, say so, if it’s a newsletter, make sure it’s not pure sales copy (see news in the name), if you’re offering something free, ok, you can say it with a clever phrase (not the capitalized FREE that triggers spam filters). But say what you mean, don’t hide behind false pretenses!

It’s like those articles who’s headline says one thing and they’re actually about something else. They disappoint you, get you a bit angry and no matter what, you won’t really give in to a second try. Once you’ve disappointed a potential customer, they won’t buy from you, unless they are forced to (company policies, an explicit request from someone). But they will do so only if their attempt at convincing the others to switch to a different product or service fails.

So why lose customers, get some bad reviews and damage your reputation just to increase the number of “read” emails. While we all want to know how many people have read our emails and how many of them clicked on the buy/more/visit us links and thoroughly keep an eye on these metrics, they are not really relevant. Clicks are a bit more relevant. But opening an email does not mean the user has read the copy, understood what you are saying and is just about to come buy what you’re selling. That you’ll get to measure by paying attention to who actually bought, the number of replies saying they’ve actually tried and loved your product or service, etc.

When it comes to blogging, email marketing and a bunch of other PR and Marketing tools, taking the metrics out of context and relying on them alone happens all too often. We lose sight of what’s really important and that is getting more people to buy by helping them solve a problem, increase productivity, making them happy or whatever it is that you do for your customers.

Photo credit: unknown apparently, I found it here.

Guest post by Iuliana Butuc-Cerchez

Let’s say you are the founder and the general manager of an Internet company. One of the best in your country. Let’s say that a worldwide financial crisis makes you afraid of the future.

Let’s say that you have a dating portal in your management, besides other websites (a job portal and so on). Let’s say that, in the country where the biggest chunk of your market is, one TV show proposes you, the general manager, to participate and to make fun of yourself right there on the screen, in the front of several million TV viewers. The “prize”, if you happen to be the winner of the TV contest, is to get married to a so-called TV star. Not a nice or hot looking one, believe me!

Would you accept the proposal? Would you choose to be the subject of mockery in blog posts and press articles and, also, to “risk” getting married to a woman of doubtful reputation just to advertise your dating portal? Really, how low can you go with your personal brand to get some awareness on the TV for one of your company’s products?

Iuliana Butuc-Cerchez has been the Corporate Affairs Manager of the Gecad Group for over 4 years. She’s an exceptional PR professional and a true mentor for me. Before starting her PR career, she used to be this hard-core IT journalist at one of the best business and financial newspapers in Romania. She’s also a blogger, but as her blog is in Romanian, only part of my readers will be able to enjoy her articles.

There a clear difference between work hours and after work fun time when it comes to your employees. Their personal life is something the company can’t control, it’s their private business and what there’s nothing an employer can do to control their activities. If they are high-profile figures in promoting your image, the story is a bit different, but when it comes to the average Joe-employee or Jane-employee, you have no say in matters that can in the end affect you. Like stealing, murdering someone or other such negativity that can be associated with you.

When it comes to breaks, there’s something you can do. You can’t tell anyone when to take breaks or where to take them and I would never recommend something of sorts. But you can kindly ask your employees to display a decent behavior. And if you don’t know what they do or say on their breaks, I suggest you try and find out. Because customers visiting you don’t care you’re staff is on a break, they will associate their behavior with your image because everything happens in your garden.

Why is this important? An example might help. A few days back I went with a friend to get some juice from the bistro in our office building. It was 3pm, long after the rush hour, and half of the employees were taking a break on the hallway. And they’re fun activity of choice? Imitating the sounds of an extremely horny cat! Can you imagine what was going through our minds seeing three grown up men laughing over and over again at the same tasteless joke? Given it was half they’re employees in this category, it was enough to form a pretty general opinion on the company’s staff and the values the employers promoted, the customer care skills they had, etc.

Luckily, I also knew the nice, decent people working there. But for a first time customer, would it have mattered? I seriously doubt it!