How to get better customer service/tech support

I worked in tech support for a while. And while there are people better than me at dealing with humans, I was quite fast in solving customer issues. Those are my personal opinions on how to get better customer service (at least from when I worked with that).

Remember the human

Remember the human, a bad attitude will get the human on the other side in a bad mood. While trained to handle that, no one wants to deal with an a-hole, best case scenario they’ll try to get rid of you as soon as possible.

Be clear

The more information you give upfront, the responses will be faster and more accurate.

Rate the correct thing

When reviewing the support you were given, you’re rating the person, not the company.

Don’t play the sue card.

Threatening to sue is a daily occurrence, this won’t get you far.

Reply

We can’t wait your reply forever (specially on live chat), there are other people in the queue.

Know your position

You are NOT the only company customer, and very likely, you’re not an important one, the company won’t stop to address your every need.

Do you really need to contact tech support?

Do you really need to take time off your life to get in a queue and ask someone else this very tiny minor stuff, and then get angry about it?

I swear I’ve had customers addicted to tech support. They would get in touch over 10 times a day. Sometimes 4-5 times in the same hour, to ask the most minute things.

What have you done?

Did you break something? If so, tell us about it so we can both save time. If someone has to dig around to find what has been done, why not tell upfront?

There’s empathy… up to a point.

Customer support doesn’t care. Your card failed because you had but buy a TV for your grandma? Don’t care, no need to justify anything. You need this fixed urgently because your client blablabla? Don’t care, there are protocols and processes, you won’t jump the queue by being loud.

Don’t vent your frustrations in the first message.

Sometimes you first message can be read before a representative takes your case, in those occasions, DO NOT SCARE OFF BY LOOKING LIKE TROUBLE. Long blocks of texts with a thousand issues, or Everything is broken/buggy FIX ASAP will just make you look like time consuming trouble, so your case might be avoided for later.

Understand the process

Tech support people performance is usually measure by number of solved cases, response time and customer ratings, if there is a better/faster way to solve your case, that will be the choice, no one would choose a worse way just to screw you or something.

Don’t be that guy

There are definitely known recurrent customers, most known people are known due to being rude or annoying, but there are some people that are known for being kind and understanding. You know which gets better service.

Sure, ask for the manager

If we passed every request like this to our manager, we would need as many managers as representatives. What do you want to gain with that?

Is what you need a Google away?

Half of support work is googling things for people and pasting the answer. You can cut the middle man and do it yourself.

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